Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A list of free programming books

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 69 posts

Re: A list of free programming books

#31

Post by sygma »

guynamedloren wrote: post #25
aram wrote: post #4

It's interesting to see how git/Github as a platform replaces Wikipedia in certain cases for collecting information and enabling people to contribute.

Yep. There are huge advantages to a GitHub model over Wikipedia for collecting information. Shameless plug, but highly relevant: I'm trying to make 'git as a platform' more accessible for non-programmers with a project I'm working on - http://www.penflip.com . Wrote about it in detail here: http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers Glad to discuss it further if anybody's interested.

Have you seen Draft [0]? It seems fairly close to your concept of "github for writers".

[0] https://draftin.com

Re: A list of free programming books

#35

Post by Splendor »

blinkingled wrote: post #9

This one about building Android apps using HTML/JS/CSS isn't free anymore - http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449383268/ - itwas in Open Feedback Publishing System some time ago. Now you'd need to buy it. (BTW, it has 2.5 stars on Oreilly site.)

That's already been identified as an issue in the github repo.

Re: A list of free programming books

#36

Post by pekk »

puzanop wrote: post #26

wish there was a list of !!!good!!! programming book, not even free. Like, book that would make you a better dev.

Can you point out at least one programming book which makes you a worse developer?

Doesn't it depend on what specifically you are trying to learn?

Re: A list of free programming books

#37

Post by webjprgm »

ohblahitsme wrote: post #8
aram wrote: post #4

It's interesting to see how git/Github as a platform replaces Wikipedia in certain cases for collecting information and enabling people to contribute.

Yeah, especially with Markdown integration, which makes incredibly easy for someone to host their own "information site" and make it look nice and modern. I wonder if Wikipedia would ever change their revision system in favor of git.

Someone would have to own each Wikipedia page to approve pull requests. As it is now, anyone can do the edits directly even if there's not a person dedicated to curating a particular page.

Re: A list of free programming books

#38

Post by malexw »

pekk wrote: post #36
puzanop wrote: post #26

wish there was a list of !!!good!!! programming book, not even free. Like, book that would make you a better dev.

Can you point out at least one programming book which makes you a worse developer? Doesn't it depend on what specifically you are trying to learn?

I think the point is that there are only so many hours in a human lifespan. While I'd love to read everything that the world has to say on the subject, I'd like to focus on books that will be the most enlightening (or entertaining).

Re: A list of free programming books

#40

Post by iyulaev »

justin66 wrote: post #30

It seems worth mentioning specific books by name, since lists of lists don't help people differentiate the great from the good. Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani looks really promising as an introductory algorithms textbook. I wonder if anyone has experience using it in class? http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html I wonder a little about that text's status as a freely ava…

Algorithms by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani looks really promising as an introductory algorithms textbook. I wonder if anyone has experience using it in class?

We used this in our upper-division intro to algorithms course. Solid book, goes over important algorithms while remaining short and concise, A+ would read again.

Post reply on HN