121–130 of 137 posts
One of my favorites not on the list: Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Petzold https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JDMPOK2/ Takes you from simple mechanical switches all the way to a CPU.
You're dead, marincounty. I've never seen it before, where someone's comments can be dead sometimes and available others.
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Whoops. In that case, I think they are referring to http://danluu.com/learning-to-program/
Interesting read. "I managed to get a B.S. degree without ever using or seeing anyone use version control." This agrees with my own experience. Do tech courses teach VCS's these days?
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We had "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Abelson/Sussman when I was at university, which I found a good introductory book. For a more thorough understanding I would recommend Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming".
Both of those books were recently (as in two days ago on here) in a list of "Books people claimed they read but really don't."
But there's one thing I've found interesting. I'm still stuck in Chapter 1.2: the infamous Mathematical Preliminaries section. I am not proud of this. From what I can tell, the various aborted liveblogging attempts I've seen also all get stuck here. Knuth himself recommends skipping it if you get stuck.
But even though I haven't yet managed to finish that single part of the book -this part which comes before any actual computer stuff- I STILL come out of it a much better programmer. Every. Single. Time. I haven't yet written a line of MIX or MMIX, and I have STILL been able to use this book to level-grind, just by getting further in 1.2 than I was able to get before. It's awesome. Even when I fail, I come out stronger.
I do eventually plan to blog my own attempt. My plan, though, is to not actually blog 1.1 and 1.2 live: I will do these chapters, write the articles on them to give myself a buffer, and only put up the blog once I'm already through The Big Filter. I figure this will give me a much better chance of actually succeeding once I start.
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Both of those books were recently (as in two days ago on here) in a list of "Books people claimed they read but really don't."
I've tried a couple of times. Gearing up for another attempt soon. But there's one thing I've found interesting. I'm still stuck in Chapter 1.2: the infamous Mathematical Preliminaries section. I am not proud of this. From what I can tell, the various aborted liveblogging attempts I've seen also all get stuck here. Knuth himself recommends skipping it if you get stuck. But even though I haven't yet managed to finish…
You might want to try starting with "Concrete Mathematics" (also by Knuth): it's a longer intro to the same material, but covering a lot more of the background that TAOCP just kind of assumes that you already know.
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SICP is still a very good book for learning abstraction techniques, although it does sort of throw you in at the deep end in some ways. TAoCP is great as a set of reference books that you can take a look at when stuck on a problem, but I don't think it's really designed to be read from cover(s) to cover(s).
I certainly don't think TAOCP is designed to be a reference. If so, it wouldn't be full of excellent exercises.
I often here comments about finishing a mathematical/technical book over the course of a "few" weekends. But I don't see how thats possible if it includes completing all (or even most of) the given exercises. Especially when you have a full-time job.
I think such books are pointless if you aren't going to use them in your day-to-day work.
I skim technical books that are not immediately useful to i) build a mental index and ii) fill the gap of my unknown unknowns.
When I hit a problem, sometimes much later, I won't remember the details, but I'll remember that there is a concept that could help me, and know where to look to find more information.
For example, I've read much more about low level networking and messaging than was immediately useful at the time. Months later, a messaging pattern I read about turned out to be a good solution to a problem I was facing. If I hadn't read the book I wouldn't even have known what to search for.
(I also read about some technical topics more deeply for my own enjoyment/future career prospects, but the value of that is more uncertain.)
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I'm currently a stay-at-home twin dad, and I absolutely crave to learn something new in my spare time (which varies from none to even two hours a day if I'm lucky). I don't care if I forget, but for me life just becomes too stressful without constant learning. Of course, if I was working, I'd probably have enough to learn at work.
Here here, constant learning is the only thing to save our sanity. Regarding work, I do have a fulltime job, yet one has to fight hard to ensure any amount of learning, constant or otherwise.
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Adrian Banner's The Calculus Lifesaver is an excellent companion text as well. It's not really a textbook, but it's a great reference to help you alongside it that's written in a way meant to be accessible to introductory students. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8351.html
Made account to reply: I got this book at a used bookstore for $10 as my first calculus book, I read the entire thing over a week long vacation. It was sweeter than candy, I have not read a better non-fiction book in my entire (18 year old) life.