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Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

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Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#61

Post by greymeister »

commandlinefan wrote: post #37
wilsonnb wrote: post #34

Our field is so varied that there is no good answer to this question unless you specify what you want to focus on. Some people are inevitably going to recommend The Art of Computer Programming , which hardly anyone has read and isn't that relevant to the work that 99% of us are doing. Someone will probably recommend The C Programming Language , also called K&R after the authors, but again it's not very useful unless…

> recommend The Art of Computer Programming And, if you do decide to dive in and read them, plan to spend a few years on them.

I sort of wish my CS grad school had just been studying those books versus some of the stuff I did cover.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#62

Post by heinrichhartman »

pera wrote: post #26

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs : https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp

This is the most influential book I have read in my SE career. It's not a LISP book. It's a book about programming fundamentals. E.g. Objects are covered as well. They even build a register machine at the end.

I think a translation to a more modern language (lua!) would boost adoption quite a bit.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#63

Post by heinrichhartman »

mfrw wrote: post #30

My take on some which I think should be atleast read once: 1) The unix programming environment 2) The design of the unix operating system 3) The Pragmatic Programmer 4) Programming Pearls 5) Computer Systems: A Programmers Prespective 6) K & R C 7) The art of Unix Programming. PS: I admit my bias towards systems.

I like (1) The unix programming environment

It's very old and underrated. Many people have problems getting started with the command line and basic UNIX tools. This is _THE_ place to learn about this.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#64

Post by clumsysmurf »

chollida1 wrote: post #2

Three boks I'll recommend you read as soon as possible. 1) The Mythical Man month 3) The Pragmatic Programmer 3) Code Complete. The thing about these books, well atleast 1 and 3 is that when they were written they broke new ground. Or if that phrase bother you, they were the first mainstream publications that brought their core ideas to developers. Reading these books early in your career will help cement these best…

I kinda wonder, after all these years, if there would ever be a new edition of the Pragmatic Programmer; or even a discussion from the authors on how their thinking has evolved over time.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#65

Post by ozim »

You start career. If you already have been programming like in high school or something and finished CS university don't focus much on technical books. Learn how to work with people not computers and listen. I assume you know objects, ifs, for loops. It is enough for technical start. I don't expect more from junior. "The pragmatic programmer" is quite good start on it.

If you lack technical background and have problems with structure because you have not worked through university/school in structured way then "Code complete", "Clean code". Pick also something in depth for your specific area you are going to start, for C# good would be "C# in depth" to get really details of tech you will be working on. Get details in one programming language really well then you can pick up some other tech.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#66

Post by nur0n »

manaskarekar wrote: post #38
chollida1 wrote: post #2

Three boks I'll recommend you read as soon as possible. 1) The Mythical Man month 3) The Pragmatic Programmer 3) Code Complete. The thing about these books, well atleast 1 and 3 is that when they were written they broke new ground. Or if that phrase bother you, they were the first mainstream publications that brought their core ideas to developers. Reading these books early in your career will help cement these best…

A quick reference for the important points in Pragmatic Programmer : https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-pragmatic-quick-reference/ Code Complete: http://codecourse.sourceforge.net/materials/Code-Complete-A-...

Thank you. The most value I get from these kinds of books is to become aware of important concepts so that I can actively work on improving them. In other words: what I seek from these books is the mental framework that experienced developers rely on, the rest is mostly noise.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#67

Post by nur0n »

bgutierrez wrote: post #52
pcprincipal wrote: post #10

Some I haven't seen mentioned here: 1. Coders at Work Peter Seibel does an amazing job of asking programmers questions that make them explain their methodology. The interview with Donald Knuth is awesome; really enjoyed hearing him talk about literate programming. 2. The Soul of a New Machine Tracy Kidder's 1981 Pulitzer Prize winner I think is a brilliant case study on how engineers work together and the things that…

+1 for Little Schemer. Before I read it, I could write recursive methods, but after I read it I could think about recursion naturally.

This! The primary benefit of this book is in learning to understand recursion. Lisp just happens to be a good environment for naturally expressing recursion.

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#68

Post by papaf »

commandlinefan wrote: post #37
wilsonnb wrote: post #34

Our field is so varied that there is no good answer to this question unless you specify what you want to focus on. Some people are inevitably going to recommend The Art of Computer Programming , which hardly anyone has read and isn't that relevant to the work that 99% of us are doing. Someone will probably recommend The C Programming Language , also called K&R after the authors, but again it's not very useful unless…

> recommend The Art of Computer Programming And, if you do decide to dive in and read them, plan to spend a few years on them.

It works as a reference, just today I found out that the devops darling of anomoly detection [1] is in volume two [2].

[1] https://www.slideshare.net/tboubez/5-things-i-learned-toufic... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%E2%80%93Smirnov_tes...

Re: Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?

#69

Post by travmatt »

mfrw wrote: post #30

My take on some which I think should be atleast read once: 1) The unix programming environment 2) The design of the unix operating system 3) The Pragmatic Programmer 4) Programming Pearls 5) Computer Systems: A Programmers Prespective 6) K & R C 7) The art of Unix Programming. PS: I admit my bias towards systems.

I’m halfway through the 5 and its an amazing resource.
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