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Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

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Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#101

Post by qntm »

masterzora wrote: post #28
qntm wrote: post #8

Programming Perl is definitely guilty of this.

Is it supposed to be a tutorial book? I always thought that it was trying (and epically succeeding) to be a massive reference. I know O'Reilly has the llama and alpacas that are intended to be the actual tutorials, though I can't really speak for their quality (I actually did learn Perl via Camel Book + external projects).

I learned Perl by reading Learning Perl, but even trying to use Programming Perl as a reference since then has been difficult for me. The book is conversational and humorous in its tone, which makes it extremely verbose and irritating to read when I'm actually trying to get information out of it. There's too much raw text and not enough examples, particularly when it comes to syntax. I also find that because the book attempts to be a complete reference, and because Perl at its core is insanely complicated, Programming Perl (like the Perl online documentation) spends far too much time dwelling on minor technical details and edge cases which no sane coder should ever be thinking about using.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#102

Post by lemming »

andrewcooke wrote: post #74
notsosmart wrote: post #10

So aside from K&R, what are some of the best small books?

Effective Java is the best book for general Java that I know - http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-Programming-Language-Gu... It's not a tutorial, but a collection of recommendations that could take you from just-learnt to competent. Very slim, and very good - Javascript: The Good Parts http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockfor... For a C reference, Harbison & Steele is excellent - http://www.amaz…

I don't know Harbison & Steele, but both Effective Java and Javascript: The Good Parts are really excellent. Worth noting that they're both really only about the language, not the accompanying libraries/environments.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#103

Post by cypherpunks »

Anyone know of the equivalent of Stroustrup for Python? If anyone's not familiar with Stroustrup, his book on C++ explains the language in-depth, and gives clear rationales for the design decisions made, so you understand not just the hows but also the whys. It's not a reference manual -- it emphasizes depth over breadth -- but it's also not a tutorial.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#104

Post by andrewcooke »

lemming wrote: post #102
andrewcooke wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective Java is the best book for general Java that I know - http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-Programming-Language-Gu... It's not a tutorial, but a collection of recommendations that could take you from just-learnt to competent. Very slim, and very good - Javascript: The Good Parts http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockfor... For a C reference, Harbison & Steele is excellent - http://www.amaz…

I don't know Harbison & Steele, but both Effective Java and Javascript: The Good Parts are really excellent. Worth noting that they're both really only about the language, not the accompanying libraries/environments.

H&S is what I thought K&R would be, but wasn't. It's an obsessively detailed description of the C language and standard libraries, in readable english, that describes everything from "traditional C" through ISO, to C++ compatible. When I'm working in C I use it as much as I use man pages, to help me keep the code as standard and cross-platform as possible.

"Steele" is Guy Steele, btw - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_L._Steele,_Jr. (author of "Common Lisp, The Language", developer of Fortress, etc etc).

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#105

Post by kanak »

ramy_d wrote: post #95

just dropping my two cents, I did not enjoy the pick axe, and when I turned to learn erlang I was essentially weighing two options: Pragmatic Bookshelf's erlang book and O'Reilly Media's erlang book. I chose O'Reilly's because I didn't want a long winded tutorial, I want the feature list gradually shown to me in order of complexity so I can jump into my own project without having to build the outlined in a book. The…

I found it worthwhile to read the erlang books concurrently. Other than a few misalignments, they present topics in roughly the same order, but the way they explained the different topics were different enough that I found myself learning something new.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#106

Post by dkarl »

loy22 wrote: post #16
peterb wrote: post #2

I agree 100%. K&R is the standard all authors should strive for. The length of these books is also our fault. Bigger books sell better. I hope there is a backlash brewing. K&R, Little Schemer, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, were all great small books.

I tried to learn programming but I was discouraged by the utter lack of pedagogy in the books I've picked so far. The author pretty much nailed it. 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 i…

For challenging Scheme exercises, check out the sample programming assignments for SICP: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/psets/index.html

SICP itself (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/) is worth checking out, too. I doubt you would find the book itself to your taste, but there are programming exercises at the end of each section.

Also, for what it's worth, my favorite language for working Project Euler problems is Scheme, by far.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#107

Post by ramy_d »

kanak wrote: post #105
ramy_d wrote: post #95

just dropping my two cents, I did not enjoy the pick axe, and when I turned to learn erlang I was essentially weighing two options: Pragmatic Bookshelf's erlang book and O'Reilly Media's erlang book. I chose O'Reilly's because I didn't want a long winded tutorial, I want the feature list gradually shown to me in order of complexity so I can jump into my own project without having to build the outlined in a book. The…

I found it worthwhile to read the erlang books concurrently. Other than a few misalignments, they present topics in roughly the same order, but the way they explained the different topics were different enough that I found myself learning something new.

how ironic that you would read 2 erlang books concurrently.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#108

Post by adambyrtek »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #9
peterb wrote: post #2

I agree 100%. K&R is the standard all authors should strive for. The length of these books is also our fault. Bigger books sell better. I hope there is a backlash brewing. K&R, Little Schemer, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, were all great small books.

Agreed. Obviously K&R is a benchmark. But I'm also thinking of "Effective C++". This was a fairly thin book, but after reading it, I realized that I didn't know half as much about C++ as I thought I did, and in its relatively small number of pages, it taught me a hugely disproportionate amount of how C++ really works.

I love the format of the whole "Effective ..." series, especially the fact that the books are focused on best practices instead of individual language features.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#109

Post by adambyrtek »

Goladus wrote: post #31

In the long run (and often even in the beginning) I find well-written, well-organized reference material to be more useful than a tutorial guide. I did not use Lutz to learn python, for example, I used David Beazley's Python Essential Reference. He includes a brief tutorial of the implementation and basic language features and moves to a large selection of the python standard library. My favorite C book is the refere…

I never understood why would anybody want a bulky reference book describing the standard library, when they same information – only more up-to-date and searchable – can be found online.

Re: Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.

#110

Post by thisrod »

Kroem3r wrote: post #100
peterb wrote: post #2

I agree 100%. K&R is the standard all authors should strive for. The length of these books is also our fault. Bigger books sell better. I hope there is a backlash brewing. K&R, Little Schemer, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, were all great small books.

One of the points of unappreciated genius of C is that when I used it as a reference, the example code often had something to do with the issue that I was currently facing. It was if those guys had used the language for a few years building a diversity of things with it; kept notes; and then really thought about the future reader. I'd have thought that it was a revolutionary approach, not a historical oddity.

It was if those guys had used the language for a few years

I hope that's a joke. If you don't know who K and R are, and where they wrote the book, you should look it up.

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