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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?

#91

Post by charlysl »

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.

"The unix programming environment"

I read this in like a week at one of my first jobs. I learned so much that in a few days my status in the team radically changed and became the go to person when people's scripts didn't work; word spread and soon I had people from other teams seeking help with their scripts too. No one else read the book though AFIK ...

What I really liked about this book at the time:

- it explains the few key concepts extremelly well

- the exercises were truly outstanding, really testing your understanding of subtleties of above concepts

One for the ages.

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

#93

Post by godelmachine »

mcphage wrote: post #85
godelmachine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's next to impossible to find a soft copy of "Deathmarch", except for in Russian. I tried but I haven't found yet.

Do you mean this one? https://www.amazon.com/dp/013143635X ? Or do you mean a different book?

Yes, the link is about a hard copy, not a soft one.

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

#94

Post by mcphage »

godelmachine wrote: post #93
mcphage wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean this one? https://www.amazon.com/dp/013143635X ? Or do you mean a different book?

Yes, the link is about a hard copy, not a soft one.

Is hard copy vs soft copy different than hard cover vs soft cover?

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

#95

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mcphage wrote: post #94
godelmachine wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the link is about a hard copy, not a soft one.

Is hard copy vs soft copy different than hard cover vs soft cover?

Yes. Hard copy is printed (hard or soft cover); soft copy is electronic.

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

#96

Post by mcphage »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #95
mcphage wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is hard copy vs soft copy different than hard cover vs soft cover?

Yes. Hard copy is printed (hard or soft cover); soft copy is electronic.

Huh, I’ve never heard “soft copy” used for that before—I’ve always used electronic copy or digital copy. TIL.

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

#97

Post by telltruth »

This might sound either obvious or naive but if you are not a CS major, I would really emphasize reading CS textbooks such as CLRS, Programming Pearls, Dragonbook and most importantly textbooks on statistics m probability, linear algebra. There is a pyramid of skills for developers. People who haven’t studied throughly above stuff usually ends up at bottom (aka “enterprise” or “web” or “database” developers). They spend their lives in trivialities of patterns and plumbing and only very rarely doing something interesting such as distributed computing, game programming, systems programming, ML/AI.

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

#98

Post by skfist »

heinrichhartman wrote: post #62
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.

How To Design Programs pursues a similar goal. Esp. 2nd edition has largely been rewritten and uses a more modern programming language. Maybe give it a try?

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

#99

Post by skfist »

My favorites so far:

- Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt

- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

- The Effective Engineer* by Edmond Lau

- The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas

- SQL Performance Explained by Markus Winand

And http://teachyourselfcs.com curriculum is pretty good as well.

As a side note, there's so much we can learn from game programmers and OS/database/compiler engineers.

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