Perhaps if all you want to do is write papers with lots of equations about algorithmic complexity, then Crochemore may be a fine choice. If you want to write papers with graphs showing your new library’s string processing bandwidth goes up and to the right (this is for street fighting, yes?), then you want Navarro and Raffinot over ol’ stuffy Crochemore.
Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
21–30 of 67 posts
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#22Manning’s Introduction to Information Retrieval is awfully useful. https://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/information-retrieval-book....
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#23Does anyone have recommendations for how to read books like these? Looking for advice around note taking / annotating / skimming.
Use PDFs of the books (pay for them, of course).
Searching and bookmarking make navigation much faster and easier, including for cross-referencing, glossaries, etc.
Annotations are far more powerful; they are editable, copyable, come in many forms (highlight, underline, text boxes, draw, hyperlinks, etc etc.). You can type much faster and fit much more than you can write with a pen.
PDFs are of course far more portable, and they are durable over decades (esp. PDF/A).
I'll never study a book on paper again; it's just too inefficient, so much that it's not worth matching PDF functionality. I'll just wait however long it takes to obtain the PDF.
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#24Does anyone have recommendations for how to read books like these? Looking for advice around note taking / annotating / skimming.
Use PDFs of the books (pay for them, of course). Searching and bookmarking make navigation much faster and easier, including for cross-referencing, glossaries, etc. Annotations are far more powerful; they are editable, copyable, come in many forms (highlight, underline, text boxes, draw, hyperlinks, etc etc.). You can type much faster and fit much more than you can write with a pen. PDFs are of course far more portab…
All this depends on the person.
Personally i find studying from a pdf basically impossible.
Everyone is different though, what is important is finding what is right for you.
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#25i am not sure i agree some of those book are a bit too hardcore - Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming - Pierce, Types and Programming Languages And its too unix focused, too systems or low level programming focused there is a lot more to programming than mastering unix and c I think this list needs - A Python book - A SQL book and a Relational DB book - Some windows and unix admin books - A book about testing and…
I get the impression the author of the list is the type of person who believes that if you master the hard core stuff the soft core stuff will come easily.
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#26"Programming Windows" by Charles Petzold is such a thick book that it might be useful in an actual street fight.
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#27Needs a database book (suggestions?), an OS book, (Silberschatz, Galvin, and whatever coauthors they have by now, maybe Tanenbaum as well) and a graphics book (Foley and van Dam, again plus however many coauthors they have by now).
Someone else suggested a machine learning book. I'd agree, except I doubt there are any books out that give enough coverage to the LLM stuff that's exploding everywhere. That stuff is still coming out in academic journals, not textbooks. Maybe in five years.
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#28Are there really people who actually read this many textbooks? I read half the textbook “Rigid Body Dynamics Algorithms” and it took a couple months. And I had time because I read it for a research project in grad school. I can’t imagine going home after work and grinding these textbooks for years.
Well I do, some of them. But only for studying a few specific topics. I used to have the copy of TAOCP vol 1 - 3, and eventually only read vol 2 because I was interested in (pseudo) random number at that time.... :D
> eventually only read vol 2 because I was interested in (pseudo) random number at that time
Your comment comes at the perfect time, I am looking at learning about random number functions and tests of randomness myself. Do you have any other resources about these topics?
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#29I love Nick Black
Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)
#30Stevens (APUE and Network Programming) doesn't hold up. You'd do better with Beej. They weren't all that great even at the time; what they were were book-length treatments of the topics that you could reasonably expect to find on the shelf in a suburban Borders bookstore. Even the motivation for those books is obsolete! Varghese is much too situational a book for this list; it's like bringing a trebuchet to your stre…
Alexandrescu's "Modern C++ Design" is a collection of mostly impractical "clever" tricks that should be avoided in most situations. Like design patterns books, none of its advice should be used unless it solves a real problem that you noticed while not looking for a place to use the technique you just read about.
I kinda hate the book, it's about the exact opposite of what I consider good programming: trying to make complicated things look simple.