How about Clean Code?
Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
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Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#32Is Code Complete still worth reading for a working developer?
Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#33Cue the circus of people who argue over the contents of this list, despite having actually used the learnings from books only in job interviews. There are so many developers (like your peers at work) who have literally read none of these books. In a Darwinian sense, isn't that evidence that there's nothing so special about these texts for what you do? Skip the books and just memorize what's on Interview Cake. I love…
I genuinely feel bad for people who have only used the learnings from these books in job interviews. Either they've never had to work on a really Hard Problem, or worse they have tried to solve such a problem without the hard-won lessons present in these books.
> a really Hard Problem
I've heard senior recruiters express skepticism about candidates who say they're into "Hard Problems." Experienced engineering managers usually hear that phrase when you're looking for a lifestyle and you don't really care what the application is.
For example, "I have no qualms that your business arbitrages nonconverting clicks from bots and sketchy web traffic (i.e., 99% of the Internet) into Google AdWords revenue, using up a Google customer's ad budget until the customer has barely made a profit... You see, I'm into Hard Problems. Besides, bots don't click twice! It must be real traffic!"
It turns out that junior people on the interview team care a lot more about Hard Problems and the stories in these books than senior people do. And you'd never want your hiring pipeline run by junior people.
In my opinion, Google's focus on Hard Problems has robbed academia of all the sincere Hard Problems people. Then, they've ruined the interview process for everyone else, ironically with the book How Google Works, convincing CEOs that they should be asking about C.S. fundamentals and Hard Problems totally unrelated to their Actual Problems.
Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#34What does it say about me if I haven't read any of those books?
Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#35I have a hard time believing Petzold's Code is in the first list, or even the second, because its content is so very different from most of the other books. It's not particularly directed at programmers either. As for the design patterns book, I've glanced through it and didn't find it all that useful; that being said, I was never a fan of that school of thought (OOP, UML, patterns, etc.) either.
I bought Code as a gift to my mother, who is absolutely illiterate on computer science. She was thrilled to have learned about morse and binary code. She didn't get too far on the book, though, mostly because she is not completely fluent in English (and it's definitely a difficult read for non-programmers). But yeah, I agree this book shouldn't be on either list.
Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#36I've read the books on both of those lists, among many others. Not because these are all required reading, but because I've had a long career and I've fought to continually improve my knowledge in Computer Science. It seems rather arrogant of the author to decree that one list is canon and the other list is not. Each of those books has its use. Does this mean that someone needs to read any of those books to be good a…
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Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#37I've read the books on both of those lists, among many others. Not because these are all required reading, but because I've had a long career and I've fought to continually improve my knowledge in Computer Science. It seems rather arrogant of the author to decree that one list is canon and the other list is not. Each of those books has its use. Does this mean that someone needs to read any of those books to be good a…
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Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#38I've read the books on both of those lists, among many others. Not because these are all required reading, but because I've had a long career and I've fought to continually improve my knowledge in Computer Science. It seems rather arrogant of the author to decree that one list is canon and the other list is not. Each of those books has its use. Does this mean that someone needs to read any of those books to be good a…
He praises almost all of the books on the second list, he just thinks a large percentage of the people that recommend them haven't read much of them.
He also doesn't seem to make the claim that the first list represents "canon" and that the second list represents "non-canon". The first list is a list of great books that are easily understood by most students. Many of the books on the second list are far more advanced.
I agree that some students can learn using any of these resources. However, most people would struggle with books like TAOCP.
Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#39I've read the books on both of those lists, among many others. Not because these are all required reading, but because I've had a long career and I've fought to continually improve my knowledge in Computer Science. It seems rather arrogant of the author to decree that one list is canon and the other list is not. Each of those books has its use. Does this mean that someone needs to read any of those books to be good a…
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Re: Books Programmers Don't Really Read (2008)
#40>On the positive side, if you're looking for the solution to >a problem in TAOCP (and the appropriate volume has been >published) and you can't find it, the solution probably >doesn't exist. It's extremely comprehensive over the topic >areas that it covers.
That's almost certainly wrong. TAOCP is very outdated in many ways and doesn't really cover modern algorithms. It's great for classic CS upto 90ies(?) or so, but there has been a lot of progress since then.