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Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

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Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#61

Post by yathern »

falcolas wrote: post #24

Programming 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.

> Programming Python from O'Reilly. It helps lift my monitor nicely.

Wow - same with me. Perfect size to match my monitor base! I also keep a 2002(?) copy of "Creating Web Pages for Dummies" to remind me of my roots.

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#64

Post by bluedino »

falcolas wrote: post #24

Programming 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.

>> 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.

In the old days you might use a compiler for 3-4 years. Nowadays, something you'd buy a book on could change versions in less than a year. Anything I bought in the early days of XCode/iOS was obsolete before I knew it. I bought a JQuery book and it was already a point release behind.

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#66

Post by 3uclid »

microtonal wrote: post #57

I rely mostly on hypertext for referencing, mostly through Dash for macOS and man pages. Books that I still occasionally reference: - Speech and Language Processing, Jurafsky & Martin - K&R - Sedgewick & Wayne, but more for teaching than anything else. In a previous life: - The C++ Standard Library, Nicolai Josuttis, - C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4, Jasmin Blanchette and Mark Summerfield - The C++ Programming Languag…

Do you write C++ by chance? ;)

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#69

Post by matthewwiese »

A few immediately come to mind:

- Garner's Modern American Usage

- The Hardware Hacker (I am a huge fan of bunnie)

- The Art of Electronics (Horowitz and Hill)

I don't really have "reference" books on my desk. Most rotate out quite frequently depending on what I'm researching and writing about. These can range from Raizman's History of Modern Design to Lewis Carroll's Symbolic Logic.

In addition I make plenty use of thesauruses. I have a few old ratty copies but mostly do a quick flit over my keyboard to pull up synonyms. When a word is on the tip of your tongue, looking up another that you know is related to it in a thesaurus is the best way to efficiently jog your memory.

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