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The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

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Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#201

Post by Nition »

gnufied wrote: post #7
hbex5 wrote: post #3

Ah, the good old Design Patterns book, responsible for more atrocious over-abstracted, unreadable, hard to maintain Java code than anything else before or since.

Careful there - lest you throw the baby with the water. As with all things - there are some good ideas there and some bad. And as I understand it, the book simply presented patterns - programmers were already using at that time. So the book's existence in itself wouldn't cause bad code IMO. Now if someone were to write a "modern design patterns" book, people will probably write about: 1. Actor pattern and concurrency…

Having read Design Patterns in the past, I found http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com to be a really good modern follow-up, though it's targeted at game developers in particular.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#202

Post by p1esk »

lebca wrote: post #191
JelteF wrote: post #79

Although not directly development related. The most impressive book I've had the pleasure of reading is "Gödel Escher Bach: An eternal golden braid" (also known as GEB) from Douglas Hofstadter. It's hard to explain what it is about exactly, but it contains ideas and concepts from mathematics, computer science, philosophy and conscience. All of it is explained in very clear and interesting way. I can recommend it to a…

While I have not read the book, when I've spoken about it to reputable Bach musicologists and logicians, one group says Hofstadter misinterprets Bach's work and tries to create something that actually isn't there while the other says he oversimplifies Gödel's work to the point that it is uninteresting and misleading. I haven't found a visual artist who's read it to discuss the Escher parts. These opinions steered me…

My experience with the book was similar to my experiences listening to Bach's WTC, understanding Godel theorems, or looking at Escher's Relativity. Just start reading it.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#203

Post by agumonkey »

jasode wrote: post #30
hbex5 wrote: post #3

Ah, the good old Design Patterns book, responsible for more atrocious over-abstracted, unreadable, hard to maintain Java code than anything else before or since.

>, the good old Design Patterns book, responsible for more atrocious over-abstracted, This is a misunderstanding of the DP book. It would be similar to saying that the existence of TVTropes.com is responsible for terrible scripts of tv shows and movies. Or, the existence of the Oxford English Dictionary is responsible for bad novels and useless documentation. The DP book is a catalog (to gain awareness) and not a che…

A friend used to say that, he likes to share vocabulary, so they can avoid duplication. Which is entirely true, that said this book gave me nightmare, because I found the mindset so ceremonious; borderline off topic.

Giving name like flyweight to a simple "compression" scheme... The whole thing felt like "duh" to me. Sure it give common ground to people; but none of it felt like something to be written down, even less worshiped like it was.

I also strongly feel about the critics saying that it targets poor OOP languages (cpp, java <5), rendering the whole thing moot in other paradigms.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#204

Post by softawre »

amargado wrote: post #192
DigitalJack wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this mindset baffling. I mean that earnestly. Can you try to explain why other people making money bothers you? It seems pretty clear that amazon thinks affiliates provide a useful service. And if you go to amazon because someone shared something that interested you enough to buy it, they've provided you with a service. What exactly is the problem?

Because it is a undisclosed conflict of interest.Imagine you go with a friend to a bookstore , and he recommends to you several books. Since you seem to trust your friend and you have the money, you buy the books. Unbenknownst to you, your friend receives a 5% commission, and he never disclosed it to you. Same principle. It is a whole different game if he mentions this to you in advance, since now you consider your f…

Except this page discloses it...

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#205

Post by code_duck »

curuinor wrote: post #104
JelteF wrote: post #79

Although not directly development related. The most impressive book I've had the pleasure of reading is "Gödel Escher Bach: An eternal golden braid" (also known as GEB) from Douglas Hofstadter. It's hard to explain what it is about exactly, but it contains ideas and concepts from mathematics, computer science, philosophy and conscience. All of it is explained in very clear and interesting way. I can recommend it to a…

I heard a story from an AI professor a few years ago, who had an interesting heuristic for picking grad student applications to trash: if it mentions GEB, off it goes into the circular file. Fun book. Hofstadter actually doesn't like computers, apparently: this is in the record, and I've heard him mention that fact multiple times. He just likes playing with ideas.

For someone who doesn't like computers, he spends a lot of time writing about Lisp.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#206

Post by aleph_naught »

guelo wrote: post #128
sAbakumoff wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, this book has the soaring rating on Amazon. I added to my "to read" list, 10x for suggestion

I wouldn't bother, it is an incomprehensible mess, impossible to get through, pretentious, non rigurous sloppy thinking, and ultimately a disservice to Godels incompleteness theorem.

I got about 200 pages in, and just could not continue with it. 'incomprehensible mess' would perfectly describe my sentiments.

As having taken undergrad/grad courses in logic and set theory, any interesting nuggets about recursion/completeness/incompleteness/etc that one could glean from GEB can much more coherently and succinctly be obtained from a proper book on logic/computability.

The counterargument would be that this book is meant as entertainment: from my experience with the first ~200 pages, it was a complete chore to read, as ideas were presented enigmatically and slowly, to the point of frustration. Granted, my attempt at reading it was almost a decade ago.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#207

Post by kirubakaran »

Unbeliever69 wrote: post #45

Didn't see SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) on that list. Surprised considering how often I hear it quoted on SO. You would think it was the bible of computer science. A little old in the tooth i'd imagine.

Perhaps you mean "long in the tooth"?

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#208

Post by amargado »

softawre wrote: post #204
amargado wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is a undisclosed conflict of interest.Imagine you go with a friend to a bookstore , and he recommends to you several books. Since you seem to trust your friend and you have the money, you buy the books. Unbenknownst to you, your friend receives a 5% commission, and he never disclosed it to you. Same principle. It is a whole different game if he mentions this to you in advance, since now you consider your f…

Except this page discloses it...

Except it didnt when the post was submitted, it was fixed later by author and good for him since he was in violation of Amazon TOS

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#209

Post by pedasmith »

moron4hire wrote: post #39

I wonder how many people actually read the books they were suggesting. Like here on HN, Art of Computer Programming gets mentioned a lot. But I've not met anyone who has actually read it. And I own a copy. It's so hard of a read that I am just going to assume anyone who says they did is either lying or Donald Knuth. I'm suspect of books as a means of information conveyance. They make great mediums for narratives, but…

I've read the first three volumes. And recently when paring down my collection, it went out. Sorry, Donald, but you've got too much about multi-phase tape sorts and not enough about current programming.

I started volume four but couldn't get my head around the first page, and am very dubious that plowing through it would have any real value.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#210

Post by xpe »

The results from the "Compiler-Construction" are not good. You'll find better results from a search engine, Q&A site, or bookseller:

Here are the top 10:

    #1 Design Patterns - Ralph Johnson, Erich Gamma, John Vlissides, Richard Helm
    #2 Clean Code - Robert C. Martin
    #3 The C Programming Language - Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie
    #4 CLR Via C# - Jeffrey Richter 
    #5 Modern C++ Design - Andrei Alexandrescu
    #6 Large-scale C++ Software Design - John Lakos
    #7 Inside the Microsoft Build Engine - Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi, William Bartholomew
    #8 Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 core reference - Dino Esposito
    #9 Compilers - Alfred V. Aho
    #10 Accelerated C++ - Andrew Koenig, Barbara E. Moo
Ok, #9 is a sensible choice. The rest are not about compiler construction.

Now, the top 20:

    #11 Hacker's Delight - Henry S. Warren
    #12 Nos camarades Français - Elida Maria Szarota (actually The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup)
    #13 Compilers - Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi
    #14 Inside the C++ Object Model
    #15 Code - Charles Petzold
    #16 Hacking, 2nd Edition - Jon Erickson
    #17 C Plus Plus Primer - Stanley B. Lippman, Josée Lajoie, Barbara E. Moo
    #18 C Interfaces and Implementations - David R. Hanson
    #19 Language Implementation Patterns - Terence Parr
    #20 LISP in Small Pieces - Christian Queinnec
Ok, #13 and #19 look relevant. The rest... not so much, at least by a quick skim.

Here are the top 30:

    #21 Linkers and Loaders - John R. Levine
    #22 Assembly Language Step-by-Step - Jeff Duntemann
    #23 The Garbage Collection Handbook - Richard Jones, Antony Hosking, Eliot Moss
    #24 Game Scripting Mastery - Alex Varanese
    #25 Domain-specific Languages - Martin Fowler, Rebecca Parsons
    #26 Computer Architecture - John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson
    #27 The Elements of Computing Systems - Noam Nisan, Shimon Schocken
    #28 The ACE Programmer's Guide - Stephen D. Huston, James C. E. Johnson, Umar Syyid
    #29 Modern Compiler Implementation in C - Andrew W. Appel, Maia Ginsburg
    #30 Algorithms + Data Structures - Niklaus Wirth
Caveat: I am not a compiler writer, though I have read many of these books. Still, my point stands, a good search engine gives more convincing results. Let me know if I'm missing something.
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