8 shades of grey
Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
211–219 of 219 posts
Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
#212Programming Python from O'Reilly. It helps lift my monitor nicely. Honestly, I've yet to find a physical book that has proven to be a useful reference in the long run. Programming languages just change too quickly; it's the web or the code. As for more meta-programming/business/interpersonal books, the few that I've read are not ones I've ever had any real desire to go back to.
"I've yet to find a physical book that has proven to be a useful reference in the long run" Me either, but how else do you signal to other programmers how knowledgeable and well-rounded you are in the field?
Your collection of PDFs :-)
Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
#213- Structure and interpretation of computer programs More by nostalgia than by need - The art of computer programmming - Hacker's delight These two are of great help when doing programming challenges. Hacker's delight is about bitwise tricks. - Open Data Structures Useful for a quick refresh on data structures.
Love all those books. Hadn't heard of the last one though. Looks like it's available online [1]. And actually, it has a few cool links on its homepage to similar books. In particular, there is a link to this gem [2], which, for example, has a chapter [3] on what appears to be a very interesting generalization [4] of the "master theorem" of CLRS. Another good resource that pages links to seems to be [5], which was rec…
Algorithms, Etc. by Jeff Erickson chapter on dynamic programming is great, especially that part:
In a nutshell, dynamic programming is recursion without repetition. Dynamic programming algorithms store the solutions of intermediate subproblems, often but not always in some kind of array or table. Many algorithms students make the mistake of focusing on the table (because tables are easy and familiar) instead of the much more important (and difficult) task of finding a correct recurrence. As long as we memoize the correct recurrence, an explicit table isn’t really necessary, but if the recursion is incorrect, nothing works.
Dynamic programming is not about filling in tables. It’s about smart recursion!
http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/notes/05-dy...
Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate that the default attitude of our society about people with religious beliefs necessitates your disclaimer.
What attitude can you expect from rationalists towards those who decide to believe in claims without requiring evidence or justification? The moral high ground which you seem to think exists for you, does not.
At this point no one may even read this, however I’d like to get it off of my chest. Philosophy, the fundamental study of reason, existence, knowledge, values, etc., has been around a very long time and yet is still more valuable to us an individuals and in a society then it has ever been. Religion is a lovely and long studies framework for studying those philosophical principles. It’s not the only framework but it is an exceptionally accessible framework to use.
Philosophy does not require evidence. Philosophy does not require justification. In fact at times it’s best to remove those from your philosophical thought experiments in order to better understand some principle or thought.
Rationalism as a philosophy isn’t without its faults. And many lovely arguments have been made around it. Keep that in mind.
Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
#215I don't have any physical books on my desk[1]. Most of the stuff I usually need is online and takes less time than thumbing through books & indexes.
[1] I think this is most likely situation but wasn't sure if more would answer this.
Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
#216Pete the Cat and the Missing Cupcakes
It reminds me that life is suppose to be fun and not just about algorithm and technologies!
Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
#217Programming Erlang.
Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
#218Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment It's often a better reference than the POSIX spec is.
On that topic, I really liked Advanced Unix Programming by Marc Rochkind. [1] It was an early Unix programming book and covered very well how to correctly use many important Unix system calls and showed how to write some non-trivial apps including a simple DBMS, using them. IIRC I read recently that he is coming out with a new edition after many years:
[1] I got to read it because it used to be shipped for free with all HP-UX servers for some time, when I was working in an HP joint venture company.
Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?
#219The Hardware Hacker by Bunnie Huang. It's great for casual reading and some reference to how electronics are manufactured. UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook. I have an old version but it's also great material and excellent writing.
>UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook.
That's a great book. I've read parts of both the Unix and later Linux versions.
Edit: It also reminded me of the O'Reilly book Unix Power Tools - another classic. I had bought it early on and read almost the whole thing. Both it and the Handbook are quite thick, too.