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Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)

nick-black.com

11–20 of 67 posts

Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)

#11

Are 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

Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)

#12
Anderson, Security Engineering (Wiley) would make an excellent addition to this list.

(The blog post omitted anything infosec saying the field is “part of QA” but it’s not like this list is pure CS — a lot of engineering topics aka “applied computer science” are on the list already.)

Security economics is important when building real world software because one has to know one’s enemy in order to decide what to defend against. It is literally the most “street fighting” topic in the field.

Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)

#14
There’s some good ones here. But there’s also some that are deeply silly. The Barendregt book (I’m not even remembering the correct spelling) is definitely of no use for applied computer science, or most flavors of theoretical programming language work.

Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)

#15
post #11

Are 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

How long did it take you to read these 3 books and did you read them in depth?

Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)

#17

There’s some good ones here. But there’s also some that are deeply silly. The Barendregt book (I’m not even remembering the correct spelling) is definitely of no use for applied computer science, or most flavors of theoretical programming language work.

Even too theoritical for functional programming research, perhaps?

Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)

#18
post #16
post #3

“Street fighting mathematics” is a fantastic textbook. https://books.google.com/books/about/Street_Fighting_Mathema...

[flagged]

You didn't call him an "anti-vax conspiracy nutso" in the first comment, you said he was "pretty insane based on his tweets" with no other context (though I, and probably others, found the anti-vax stuff based on looking it up). (I didn't downvote/flag it, but I'm not vouching/upvoting it either, this comment is much better than your first.)

As to turning a dissertation into a book, it's sufficiently common that universities like Georgetown have content like this on their university library site referencing other major universities: https://library.georgetown.edu/scholarly-communication/etds-...

Re: Book list for streetfighting computer scientists (2022)

#20
post #2

Stevens (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…

> Stevens (APUE and Network Programming) doesn't hold up. > They weren't all that great even at the time I can’t say I agree with this. Stevens’ books have always been a go to for me for ever. They don’t have great coverage on more recent topics like Anycast and Multicast, so probably outdated at this point, but I can’t think of a single author who taught me more about network and unix/posix programming. All of the c…

He died way too young.
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