The best free programming book, and one of the best books in general, I've ever read was Programming from the Ground Up. It's not on the citizen428's list, but the mofo's list has it.
Learn you some Erlang is a web site, not an ebook, and apparently the author can't help us get it in PDF or kindle form for legal reasons. (http://learnyousomeerlang.com/faq) Yet he/she does hint that there is a kindle version out there. Here is what looks like the most likely candidate to me - I will try it out on the kindle later this afternoon. (https://github.com/igstan/learn-you-some-erlang-kindle#readm...)
It didn't appear that Let over Lambda was free either, just some select chapters at the bottom of the page.
If you click on "Table of Contents" (http://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/toc) the author gives access to the first 6 chapters with only 2 non published online. Which I think is great, I've been considering buying this book for a while but was afraid it would be too far over my head. Now I get to find out first.
Let Over Lambda is amazing and I highly recomend it for those that would like to know just what you can do with Lisp macros. It builds on the work in On Lisp, but you can get by without reading it first.
Mastering Node doesn't seem to have been updated in some time, and the author is now co-writing a book for Manning Press.[1] (It's available for pre-release as a pdf there.) He may still release it on the Mastering Node site later, but for now that site seems quiet.
Sorry, I don't mean to get off-topic, but I want to start learning Python, but I'm on a Windows machine. Should I work on Linux instead? Because I fins most of the help offered is Linux-based. Thank you! (:
I ended up installing Python 2.7, gedit, and then I had to edit a path field to load Python from the terminal. I've just started Learn Python the Hard Way by Allen B. Downey and I really like the tone he uses, actually. He mentions this, though: "A programmer will eventually tell you to use Mac OSX or Linux. If the programmer likes fonts and typography, they'll tell you to get a Mac OSX computer. If they like control and have a huge beard, they'll tell you to install Linux. Again, use whatever computer you have right now that works. All you need is gedit, a Terminal, and python." I hope when I do transition over to the Linux version, it's not a steep learning curve. I already use Debian, but I've decided to work on Windows...I hope it doesn't hold me back from any valuable learning experience.
Learn Python the Hard Way is available for free on the web, but you have to pay (a nominal fee) for the pdf or epub versions. So I'm not sure it counts as a "free ebook".
