Free Programming Books (Chinese): 免费编程中文书籍 Index
Free Programming Books (Chinese) is a GitHub-hosted index of free Chinese-language programming books and tutorials, sitting at 118,080 stars and 28,234 forks. Reach for it when you already know the topic - Git, Go, Redis, LLMs - and want a fast list of translated or native Chinese material to click through. Skip it if you want a graded curriculum: entries are flat links with no reading order, and some carry a `:worried:` tag for dead URLs.
What is Free Programming Books Chinese?
Free Programming Books (Chinese) is a single long GitHub README linking to free programming books and translated manuals in Chinese, grouped under headings such as AI, Go, C/C++, Web, NoSQL, and version control. There's no dedicated site and no search box. You scroll the headers or hit Ctrl+F, then click through to wherever the book lives - a GitBook, a personal blog, a GitHub repo, sometimes a raw PDF.
Highlights of the Book Collection
- ✓Splits into two top-level buckets, 语言无关类 (language-agnostic - OS, Git, design patterns, databases) and 语言相关类 (language-specific - Go, C/C++, Java); oddly, the README's own 目录 section only prints those two labels with no jump links, so you scroll past them to the real category headers below.
- ✓The AI section links Chinese-language LLM courses from Renmin University (大语言模型) and Zhejiang University (大模型基础), plus community projects like Happy-LLM and the RAG 技术全栈指南 guide.
- ✓Carries full Chinese translations of canonical texts - Pro Git, a SICP lecture translation, and Go语言圣经 (The Go Programming Language) - so you skip hunting for a translator's mirror yourself.
- ✓Flags dead links inline with a `:worried:` emoji instead of deleting them, so entries in categories like Web, C/C++, and 管理和监控 show which ones are broken before you click.
- ✓Language-specific sections run past the usual suspects into AWK, Fortran, Clojure, and Elixir.
- ✓New entries land only through pull requests.
How to Utilize This Resource for Learning
- •You already know you want to read Pro Git or the SICP translation and just need the canonical Chinese link instead of digging through search results.
- •You're ramping up on LLMs or RAG in Chinese and want university-produced courses (Renmin, Zhejiang) rather than generic blog posts.
- •You're building a reading list for a specific stack - Go, C/C++, Docker - to hand a junior engineer, and want a starting set of Chinese references.
- •Bookmark it, then Ctrl+F when a topic comes up.
Strengths
- ✓Covers a wide spread of categories - from AI/LLM courses down to AWK and Fortran - that a narrower, single-language list wouldn't bother including.
- ✓Several entries are full Chinese translations of well-known English texts (Pro Git, SICP, The Go Programming Language), which saves the search for a translated edition.
- ✓AI-section entries link current LLM and RAG courses from Chinese universities rather than only years-old material.
- ✓Pull-request-based contribution keeps the list growing without one person sourcing every entry alone.
Potential Drawbacks and Considerations
- △目录 (the table of contents) prints only two bare labels - 语言无关类 and 语言相关类 - with no anchor links, so it doesn't function as a real jump-to-section index.
- △No entry is annotated with a reading order, difficulty level, or note on whether a translation is complete - you find out by clicking through.
- △Some links carry the `:worried:` broken-link flag, and flagging only happens when a contributor notices and files a PR;
- △GPL-3.0 covers the repo's index and README, not the books it links to - each linked resource carries its own, often undocumented, terms.
Other Free Programming Book Collections
Common Questions About the Index
Free Programming Books (Chinese) links only to books, tutorials, and translations that are free to read or download, per the repo's own title and description. Hosting sites can still go offline later, which is why some entries carry a `:worried:` broken-link flag.
Submit a pull request to the justjavac/free-programming-books-zh_CN repo on GitHub with the new entry under the right category heading - that's the only contribution path the README documents.
Open a pull request that appends a `:worried:` emoji right after the broken link - that's the exact convention the maintainer asks contributors to follow for flagging dead URLs.
Free Programming Books (Chinese) splits into a language-agnostic bucket (OS, Git, design patterns, databases) and a language-specific bucket covering Go, C/C++, Java, C#, Clojure, Elixir, Fortran, Haskell, and more.
It works for beginners only once they know which topic or language they want. Free Programming Books (Chinese) has no learning path, difficulty labels, or recommended order to guide a total newcomer.
The repository is licensed GPL-3.0, per its GitHub metadata. That license covers the index and README, not the individual books it links to, which each carry their own terms.
Who should try it — and who should skip
Free Programming Books (Chinese) suits a Chinese-reading developer who already knows the topic they want - Git, Go, LLMs, C/C++ - and just wants the fastest path to an existing free translation. Skip it if you want an ordered curriculum with prerequisites, or if you don't read Chinese: there's no English content and no reading path, just a scrollable list of links sorted by category header.