Henry Warren

author

Henry Warren

Best known for Hacker’s Delight, this longtime IBM researcher turned low-level programming tricks into a book that became a favorite among systems programmers. His writing is admired for making bit manipulation, arithmetic hacks, and machine-level thinking feel surprisingly clear and fun.

2 Audiobooks

Banks and Their Customers A practical guide for all who keep banking accounts from the customers' point of view

Banks and Their Customers A practical guide for all who keep banking accounts from the customers' point of view

by Henry Warren

The Story of the Bank of England (A History of English Banking, and a Sketch of the Money Market)

The Story of the Bank of England (A History of English Banking, and a Sketch of the Money Market)

by Henry Warren

About the author

Over a long career at IBM, Henry S. Warren Jr. worked across generations of computing technology, from the IBM 704 era to later processor architectures. Biographical notes from his publishers say he also worked on military command-and-control systems and on the SETL project before joining IBM's Research Division in 1973, where he focused on compilers and computer architecture.

He is best known as the author of Hacker’s Delight, first published in 2002. The book gathers practical algorithms and clever techniques for bit-level operations, integer arithmetic, and other performance-minded programming problems, and it became a well-known reference for programmers who enjoy understanding how computers really work.

Warren is often described as both an engineer and a clear teacher. His reputation comes not just from technical depth, but from the way he presents dense ideas with a playful, approachable style that has helped generations of programmers sharpen their low-level coding skills.