41–50 of 106 posts
For those of you who claim to start and finish a book in a weekend, are you spending literally the entire weekend doing nothing by reading? Do you take breaks? Do you speed read? Do you take notes? What's your strategy?
I’m cheating a bit because this is only under 200 pages because it’s a work in progress.
It’s such an easy read, but does a great job at explaining the value of functional programming for building real-world applications without getting bogged down in monads, currying, and complex type systems.
Once it’s complete, I’d make it required reading for any new junior/intermediate devs on my team (or anyone unfamiliar with functional programming).
Finally picked up Strunk and White after years of procrastination and so far it has been a tour-de-force consolidating/spelling out the knowledge I picked up along the way (ESL). I found mentally swapping out words about writing for words about programming to be fun.
Ullman, 'Elements of ML Programming'. It's where I learned functional programming back in the 1990's, and I still think it's one of the clearest expositions around. Yes, it's the same Ullman who wrote the dragon book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19305264-data-and-realit...
164 pages. This book has had a bigger impact on my professional work than any other.
tl; dr: Any description of reality is subjective, which means that no data model can be an objectively correct description of reality. The book presents methods for reasoning about data in spite of this.
A Philosophy of Software Design. Very well-written. At 190 pages, quite likely finish-able in a weekend. But if you get 70% of the way through it, that is still very valuable. It makes sense as an underlying set of principles that explain why you would use design patterns.
I enjoyed reading Professor Frisby's Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming, 146 pages. https://github.com/MostlyAdequate/mostly-adequate-guide
Programming Pearls 2e (239 pgs)
Practice of Programming (267 pgs)
I see Algorighms + Data Structures = Programs, but I know that's well into 300 pgs w/out looking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can really do fiction books that fast. If I really push I can do a 350 page book in one day of about eight hours. I do take breaks if I have a need such as eating, or the rest room. I do not speed read. My strategy is to sit down, read, and get done at some point. Non fiction is a bit different, and depends wildly on the topic, how familiar I am with the topic, and how dry the book is. I also enjoy nonfiction podca…
> I also enjoy nonfiction podcasts, and talks which I play at 1.5x speed while doing things like bike riding, or cleaning. Listening to a podcast or audio book while doing monotonous tasks is both life changing and addictive.