Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

Good thing that programmers are more often self-learned, which makes the problem relatively benign compared to say, economics books.

I even tried Land of Lisp only because it was supposed to be fun, but unfortunately it used this horrible and widespread format where the author writes all the code for you and proceeds to an explanation.

There is no creation (or creative problem solving) ! And creation is the fun component, it should be the point of programming.

Later, I read the Little Schemer and I found it very fun and engaging. Because I had to think by myself, I realized I learned more in 30 minutes with the Little Schemer than 200 pages of Land of Lisp.

My first attempt at programming was with an horribly dull PHP book. 5 stars on Amazon, but it was again the same format where the author writes all the code for you and then explains it, and did not provide any exercise.

I think the perfect programming book would be a mix of the Little Schemer and K&R : the quiz format for the theory coupled with challenging exercises. There is no greater reward and way to learn than solving problems by yourself.

Sadly, O'Reilly appears to have lost interest in this series; the Rails book dates to 2006 and is too far behind now to recommend. Look no farther than the #2 rated Amazon review ("28 of 29 people found the following review helpful") to find out why: "Given that this book is only 127 pages long without the Appendix, it's a pretty pricey little item.... a $29.99 retail price seems exorbitant... this little book would make a great introduction to a more comprehensive book on Rails. Stand-alone, it feels like a rip-off."

I was also going to recommend "Effective Perl Programming" -- but now I see that the second edition has been bulked up to 500 pages from the original ~200. Ugh.