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Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

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Re: Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

#121

Post by vldx »

BJanecke wrote: post #118
vldx wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just recently bought "Gödel, Escher, Bach" -- looking shortly to start it. Curious, how did it influenced you in connection to programming?

Just like the other non programming book on the list(Thinking Fast and Slow) GEB is a lot about perception to me. Understanding that nothing is purely logical nor is it purely expressionistic; by pigeonholing your perception of any design whether it be Code, Math or Art to either Logic xor Expression you are blinding yourself The other angle for GEB is design I read GEB along with Design of Design years ago following…

That's fascinating. Just ordered Design of Design to supplement GEB. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

#123

Post by josmar »

anentropic wrote: post #122

Does anyone else here never read programming books?

They are a great ladder for when one wishes to climb up the shoulders of giants. Much can be learned in blogs, but long-form text is not that easily replaced.

That said, my books-to-read list is ever growing as well...

Re: Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

#124

Post by skytreader »

SICP (w/ Brian Harvey's CS61A lectures) influenced how I approach abstraction _a lot_. Its "baby brother" _How to Design Programs_, with its design recipe approach, ingrained testing and iterative refinement in me early on.

_Head First Design Patterns_ is a great influence too when it comes to OO-abstraction, for good and bad.

Re: Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

#125

Post by harshdeep »

nlawalker wrote: post #70

Dependency Injection in .NET by Mark Seemann was the trigger that started my transition from someone basically writing "script spaghetti" in an OO language to someone that could actually decompose a conceptual set of processes into decoupled parts and assemble a software system from them. It came along at just the right moment in my career, when I was struggling to understand how I could build things in a more elegan…

+1, This book is real gate opener for my career.

Re: Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

#126

Post by pbreit »

caseysoftware wrote: post #35
artursapek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruby makes programmers happy while they're writing their sexy new code base. It makes them cry when it's time to refactor it.

I don't know why you're being voted down.. even Avdi Grimm supports that: http://www.virtuouscode.com/2015/08/11/what-its-like-to-come...

I would not equate refactoring an active project with returning to a dormant project.

Re: Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

#127

Post by psyc »

anentropic wrote: post #122

Does anyone else here never read programming books?

I think I've read fewer than 5 programming books in 30 years. For the most part, I don't read about programming. For certain specific problems, I'll read articles or watch talks by people in my field who I respect a lot. Mostly, I just write a lot of code, observe what I don't like aesthetically, and think about how to make it better.

Re: Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

#128

Post by jdmichal »

usmannk wrote: post #62
jdmichal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think design patterns went out of fashion. I think the opposite happened -- they gained such mindshare that they became a solution looking for a problem for many people. That is, they forgot that design patterns are meant to solve problems, and that you should also only solve problems that actually exist. Instead we started getting things that resembled "Hello World Enterprise Edition" [0], which has been dub…

They meant the book Design Patterns https://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Elements-Reusable-Obj...

The person I replied to, sideshowb, explicitly asked about both design patterns and Design Patterns. Regardless, that book was what elevated design patterns into common knowledge within the object-oriented world. Their fate is tied together; the book and the patterns described within are practically synonymous.

Re: Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?

#130

Post by vram22 »

akprasad wrote: post #57
vram22 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same opinion. I always recommend it to my programming students. Also, The Pragmatic Programmer is good, for topics both about programming and beyond programming per se.

Ditto for both books, though I prefer The Effective Engineer to The Pragmatic Programmer . I found that quite a bit of the tactical advice in TPP is already standard practice (e.g. "always use source control"). Comparatively, TEE has more of an emphasis on project planning and team/company health, and I found that more useful for my work.

Thanks for the tip.
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