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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?

#221

Post by patrick_99 »

mytec wrote: post #131
henrik_w wrote: post #3

I really like: - Code Complete by Steve McConnell - The Effective Engineer by Edmond Lau - The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

Yes to Code Complete. I read the first edition at a time I wasn't sure if I'd pursue a career in computer programming. I hadn't used a computer for nearly a month making that decision. After reading and re-reading that book during that time, I pursued programming with a passion. That book struck all the right chords with me.

I read the second edition of Code Complete when I started my first job. Very good book to transition from fresh grad to professional. It has some very dry sections (eg. a chapter on how to name variables) but these are the little things that make a big difference and allows you to 'level up' as an engineer.

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

#222

Post by mattmanser »

johndubchak wrote: post #177
fsloth wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the book seems too old" 2004 is old now? Really? Honestly, good books don't age as long as their core domain stays valid. Structurally C++ is pretty much the same as when the book came out.

Modern IDEs can deliver many of the recommendations of the book. Our productivity has increased a great deal. Back then there was no intellisense, code navigation through clicking on method names/classes etc. highlighted syntax errors, built-in unit test frameworks etc. It was written for a different type of developer and a different type of development environment and a specific language, C++. You haven't looked at…

Intellisense (the MS one) was introduced in 1996. VB6 had good intellisense. I seem to remember having intellisense while working in classic asp vb (as in pre .Net), but could be wrong, it's so long ago now.

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

#223

Post by fatjonny »

I've been thoroughly enjoying "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" by Martin Kleppmann. It primarily deals with the current state of storing data (databases, etc) starting with storing data on one machine and expanding to distributed architectures...but most importantly it goes over the trade-offs between the various approaches. It is at a high level because of the amount of ground it covers, but it contains a ton of references to dig in deeper if you want to know more about a specific topic.

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

#224

Post by vram22 »

henrik_w wrote: post #3

I really like: - Code Complete by Steve McConnell - The Effective Engineer by Edmond Lau - The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

I agree with your 1st and 3rd titles. Both are really fundamental and highly recommended. Will check out the 2nd one.

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

#225

Post by jcadam »

jerf wrote: post #147
chii wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd find it quite hard to apply lessons from SCIP using java or c...

These are indications of the weakness of Java and C, not SICP. I do not mean this as empty snark; it is something you can see across the board in programming language evolution. It is virtually impossible to propose a new general-purpose programming language today that does not have closure support, which is the biggest thing you're finding missing from C and Java to use the techniques in SICP. (It is not the only th…

The "Compiler Design" course at my university was the hardest CS course I've ever taken -- and it was generally taken your very last semester (and was infamous for being a common cause of many senior CS students not graduating on time).

Had it been optional, I would have been sorely tempted to skip it. But, taking it was probably good for me in the long run :)

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

#226

Post by solatic »

Nobody recommended The Phoenix Project yet by Gene Kim?

Unless you have some understanding of your system's architecture, how it's run in production, and why a production environment is Really Different and a Big Freaking Deal, and how operations is supposed to look like, you'll never be an effective programmer, no matter whether you run your own operations in a small start-up or work for a large enterprise with dedicated operations teams.

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

#227

Post by atilaneves »

johndubchak wrote: post #177
fsloth wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the book seems too old" 2004 is old now? Really? Honestly, good books don't age as long as their core domain stays valid. Structurally C++ is pretty much the same as when the book came out.

Modern IDEs can deliver many of the recommendations of the book. Our productivity has increased a great deal. Back then there was no intellisense, code navigation through clicking on method names/classes etc. highlighted syntax errors, built-in unit test frameworks etc. It was written for a different type of developer and a different type of development environment and a specific language, C++. You haven't looked at…

A lot of people have to maintain legacy C++98 codebases and don't get to play with new compilers.

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

#228

Post by throwaway7645 »

bogomipz wrote: post #112
throwaway7645 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good. A good book to go with it is: Learning Computer Architecture with the Raspberry Pi.

This looks amazing(and affordable). I had not heard of this. Thanks for sharing!

No problem. It is surprisingly advanced too and was co-authored by Eben Upton who started the Raspberry Pi. Nice whirlwind tour of computing architecture and history.

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

#229

Post by jerf »

pvg wrote: post #198
jerf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are indications of the weakness of Java and C, not SICP. I do not mean this as empty snark; it is something you can see across the board in programming language evolution. It is virtually impossible to propose a new general-purpose programming language today that does not have closure support, which is the biggest thing you're finding missing from C and Java to use the techniques in SICP. (It is not the only th…

They're indications the book is also not 'language-agnostic', for all of its merits. The language is there for pedagogic purpose.

I don't think a book is "not language agnostic" because two particular languages aren't very good at it. C's lack of closure support is unique among any language still in use, for a variety of reasons. Java... was Java. If you weren't there you may not remember or understand, but at the time OO was at its most dogmatic and either it was an object or it was not included. Anything you could do with a closure could be done with an anonymous inner class. (Which is, technically, true. But the amplification factor on the effort and the sheer quantity of text involved to do so in Java is astonishing.) You can hear some of the echos of this in the older Ruby rhetoric, though I haven't heard it in a while.

Any other general-purpose language you'd be inclined to pick up right now would be fine.

IIRC, you end up implementing a scheme, which you can do nearly in the language of your choice, then the book covers that language you are implementing.

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

#230

Post by weavie »

c3534l wrote: post #157
candiodari wrote: post #156

Purely functional data structures by Chris Okasaki Let Over Lambda forgot by whom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c Not technically a book, but watch it anyway.

> Purely functional data structures by Chris Okasaki Is that really language agnostic? I don't know how you could follow along with it without knowing some ML or Haskell.

You would need a cursory knowledge of ml to be able to understand it, but you can implement the examples in plenty of other languages. The principles taught are fairly universal. (At least for the first half, I haven't made it beyond that yet...)
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