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Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

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Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#201

Post by bphogan »

Can I plug my book, Exercises for Programmers? https://pragprog.com/book/bhwb/exercises-for-programmers

It's a collection of programming exercises I used when I taught introduction to programming. They start out incredibly trivial, ("prompt for a name, print "hello [name]" back to the screen. But the trivial part is, in my opinion, the fun part when you work with a new language.

That program is a two line program in Ruby. But it might be much more complicated if you implemented that as your first GUI app in Swift for iOS.

I wrote the book to teach beginners, but I and others use those exercises to learn new languages. The book has no answers, just the problem statements.

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#202

Post by ucsdrake »

Chaebixi wrote: post #186
zerr wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And original MIT video lectures (for HP employees) are must watch. The mood/feel they have, impossible to receive from the book alone.

> And original MIT video lectures (for HP employees) are must watch. The mood/feel they have, impossible to receive from the book alone. Link?

I assume it's: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#203

Post by eastWestMath »

barrkel wrote: post #168
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #58

Some of the most interesting books I've read in support of my software-development work are: * "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, & Tools" by Aho et al. (i.e., "the dragon book") * "Data Flow Analysis: Theory and Practice" by Khedker et al. * "Understanding MySQL Internals" by Sasha Pachev. * "Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques" by Gray and Reuter. * "Fundamentals of Wireless Communication" by Tse and V…

Don't read the dragon book if you're interested in compilers. It's lex and parse heavy, and is not up to date with more recent best practice on codegen. Further, the lex and parse end of it is focused on the kind of theory you need to build tools like lex and yacc, rather than stuff you need to know if you want to write a compiler. For a good intro of modern back end development, check out Engineering a Compiler. It'…

Writing a parser is broadly applicable to a wide range of problems, not just writing a compiler.

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#204

Post by pvg »

yomly wrote: post #173
chii wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you start to get to the parts about abstracting a circut, and making it streamy/lazy, you'd find that the impl details of a non-lazy language can make it more difficult than it needs to be. Also, as a beginner, you don't want both the difficulties of contepts _and_ the difficulties of language to combine to stop you from learning as effectively.

But Scheme isn't a lazy language - granted, you'll need a language that supports first class functions to lift their implementation of a stream though. >Also, as a beginner, you don't want both the difficulties of contepts _and_ the difficulties of language to combine to stop you from learning as effectively. Are you referring to the need to learn Scheme to work through SICP? While the asker specifically requested la…

Scheme was chosen as a language for SICP for being a "syntax-free" language...

First-class functions, lambdas, closures, lexical scoping, etc. Abelson wrote, for instance:

"6.001 differs from typical introductory computer science subjects in using Scheme (a block-structured dialect of Lisp) rather than Pascal as its programming vehicle. The subject's developers feel strongly that Pascal is hopelessly constraining, and that important ideas (such as functional programming and object-oriented programming) can be addressed within Pascal only awkwardly, if at all."

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#205

Post by hinkley »

sepent wrote: post #90
mikekchar wrote: post #28

Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. It's a bit hard to wrap your brain around the Java and C++ examples unless you have experience with them, but the techniques are timeless. You may need to practice them extensively before you understand how important they are, though. In a recent book club we did at work, a common complaint was, "This just looks like common sense". Indeed it does... though the…

I just finished reading this book yesterday. I am not an expert in refactoring but the book seems too old, although most advises could be still useful. Anyway, today I found a new book by the author: Brutal Refactoring: More Working Effectively with Legacy Code. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good review of the book on the Internet. But I think it could be more useful.

Every day I wished I'd listened to the XP guys the first time I encountered it, and most of that material is from the late 90's.

And Fred Brookes' book is over 30 and sadly just as relevant.

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#206

Post by antfarm »

zerr wrote: post #134
d0m wrote: post #40

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Program (it's written in scheme but it's mostly for convenience and its lack of syntax). Definitely the best book I've read on programming.

And original MIT video lectures (for HP employees) are must watch. The mood/feel they have, impossible to receive from the book alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY&list=PLE18841CAB...

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#207

Post by l0stkn0wledge »

If you are writing code, you are doing yourself (and anyone using your code) a disservice if you do not read something on secure coding. There are not a ton of code agnostic resouces, but you may want to start with "Software Security: Building Security In"

I would then look for language specific options as well, because programming for security can vary a lot amongst languages. Writing securely for native applications running on a system is much different than writing secure web apps.

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#208

Post by tarp »

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #199
zerr wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And original MIT video lectures (for HP employees) are must watch. The mood/feel they have, impossible to receive from the book alone.

Link, please?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#209

Post by [deleted] »

Chaebixi wrote: post #186
zerr wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And original MIT video lectures (for HP employees) are must watch. The mood/feel they have, impossible to receive from the book alone.

> And original MIT video lectures (for HP employees) are must watch. The mood/feel they have, impossible to receive from the book alone. Link?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?

#210

Post by tmaly »

Understanding the Four Rules of Simple Design by Cory Haines

I like the 4 simple rules, I think he originally got these from Kent Beck. It is easier to keep this system in your mind if it is just a few basic principles.

Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

As others also mentioned this. I think this is becoming more important as people transition to new jobs where they have to take on existing software. Having a process to deal with code that lacks documentation and tests is really important.

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