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The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

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Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#161

Post by DigitalJack »

eogas wrote: post #142
eliben wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I see what's wrong with this. The author obviously invested work in this and provided a resource others may find useful. You're free not to buy books through their affiliate links.

>You're free not to buy books through their affiliate links. You're only free to do this if you know that it's an issue. Unless you know about the affiliate program, you may be supporting this person against your own will. Even if you do know about the affiliate program, you may not know that after you click an affiliate link, the owner of the code gets a chunk of ANY Amazon purchase you make in the next 24 hours, wh…

I find this mindset baffling. I mean that earnestly. Can you try to explain why other people making money bothers you?

It seems pretty clear that amazon thinks affiliates provide a useful service. And if you go to amazon because someone shared something that interested you enough to buy it, they've provided you with a service. What exactly is the problem?

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#162

Post by wwweston »

megawatthours wrote: post #78

JS: The Good Parts is obsolete

Really?

It's certainly incomplete, as there are some new good parts.

But most of the language is still there, and I'd rather imagine the same perspective that helped a lot of programmers coming from other languages adapt to it is still helpful.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#163

Post by k__ »

gt2 wrote: post #9
k__ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only Java... But I guess the Problem is how OOP is teached. Before I learned about design patterns I only saw car or animal examples. Design patterns were the first real world OOP stuff I saw at university.

Out of curiosity how long ago were you at university?

I studied my BSc from 2007 - 2011

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#164

Post by pierrebai »

guelo wrote: post #157
orf wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a harsh critique, can you elaborate?

Recursion, self reference, emergent properties are important topics and there are many good resources for studying them, GEB just isn't one of them. Most people that embark on the journey of reading the book fail and are unable to complete it. I believe the author tried to make the book itself some kind of self referential repeating work of art, which might be appealing to some but doesn't end up giving a rigorous tr…

GEB is not a study book. It's written as a multi-layered musing on various inter-connected subjects. It's also not hard to read and entertaining. I get the feeling from the anecdote about the AI professor rejecting students based on having read it and your own reaction that people in the field resent it for not being course material? I also sense a sub-text of resentment about the positions and criticisms of the author about various approach to AI. It's clearly an exposition of his philosophical basis for his position. You might disagree with him but that's no reason to be insulting.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#165

Post by nkrisc »

awfgylbcxhrey wrote: post #137
crispyambulance wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its OK to use the word "hack" on "hackernews"... negative connotation is not automatic here !

Your entire comment came off as negative, the use of 'hack' is only part of it.

I think you're reading too much into it. Taking the word choice at face value it's a pretty neutral, if not positive, statement.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#167

Post by msluyter »

jasode wrote: post #30
hbex5 wrote: post #3

Ah, the good old Design Patterns book, responsible for more atrocious over-abstracted, unreadable, hard to maintain Java code than anything else before or since.

>, the good old Design Patterns book, responsible for more atrocious over-abstracted, This is a misunderstanding of the DP book. It would be similar to saying that the existence of TVTropes.com is responsible for terrible scripts of tv shows and movies. Or, the existence of the Oxford English Dictionary is responsible for bad novels and useless documentation. The DP book is a catalog (to gain awareness) and not a che…

I've seen this argument before, but I don't really buy it. Why did they subtitle their book "elements of reusable object oriented software" if they didn't intend to present "patterns" as "templates." (After all, "reusable" is a good thing, right? So if you follow these patterns your code will be reusable, hence, good.) Why did they use the word "pattern" at all? Why not name the book "Software Structures: observations about software out in the wild?"

In any event, it doesn't really matter what the original intent of the GoF book is because in practice, people treat design patterns as, well, what the word "pattern" would suggest: "something designed or used as a model for making things ".

This is further indicated by the term "anti-pattern," which basically means, "something you should avoid." If you should avoid the "anti" then it stands to reason you should follow the "pattern."

For even more demonstrations of this fact, look at subsequent design patterns book, like one by the Head First. These explicitly treat patterns as improvements to be made over some previous attempt at a coding problem. Or hell, check out this description from https://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns -- "Design patterns can speed up the development process by providing tested, proven development paradigms." " Reusing design patterns helps to prevent subtle issues that can cause major problems and improves code readability for coders and architects familiar with the patterns."

Whether it was the original intent of the GoF or not, design patterns are mostly perceived to be _good things_ that should be adhered to.

Now, as many have suggested, the wisdom of reaching for design patterns has been increasingly viewed with skepticism, and rightly so. It'll be interesting to see over time how much weight they carry and where the equilibrium lies. My guess is that certain patterns will essentially fade from relevance (if your language has first class methods, do you really need Strategy, for example?) While some (adapter, facade) remain useful ways of handling various problems.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#168

Post by k__ »

pjmlp wrote: post #19
gt2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity how long ago were you at university?

Not the OP, but to provide an idea how it used to be. I learned OOP with Turbo Pascal 5.5, for MS-DOS, around 1990. Started using Turbo Vision with Turbo Pascal 6.0. Eventually also started coding with Object Windows Library in Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++. Borland manuals were my introduction to OOP, followed by books like "Designing Object-Oriented C++ Applications using the Booch Method.". Only later I got to learn…

Yes.

I mean, I did OOP in some languages, because, well, they had object like constructs. For example VBA had all these Excel tables modeled as objects you could access and modify via code.

Then there was C++ and Java with their factories and factory factories and whatnot.

And lastly the examples of cars that have wheels and animals that inherited stuff etc. pp.

So I had different concepts in my mind, all being objects.

On the one hand the examples of university.

On the other hand the tangible Excel table of VBA that I understood. "At table is an object with some methods and properties"

And then the "real programmer stuff" like a controller, a presenter, a singleton, a emitter... Things that were really abstract to me, because they didn't map directly to tangible things I saw in the software as a user.

Design patterns somehow made this more easy to grasp.

But I first started to understand the whole thing after building my own API in PHP (started after it got classes haha) that had module- (controllers), protocol- (views) and data-objects (models).

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#169

Post by ska »

Unbeliever69 wrote: post #45

Didn't see SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) on that list. Surprised considering how often I hear it quoted on SO. You would think it was the bible of computer science. A little old in the tooth i'd imagine.

   A little old in the tooth i'd imagine.
In some ways, but not others - that's the advantage of something that teaches computer science fundamentals, as much of what is in there is timeless. In many ways it's never been matched (in that particular domain).

I suppose the programming environment does make it a bit less accessible over time.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#170

Post by mr_pink »

jasode wrote: post #51
dragonwriter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> >, the good old Design Patterns book, responsible for more atrocious over-abstracted, > This is a misunderstanding of the DP book. It is discussing an effect of the book, not the intent . > It would be similar to saying that the existence of TVTropes.com is responsible for terrible scripts of tv shows and movies. Which would be entirely accurate if script writers were widely using TVTropes pages as templates and cr…

>It is discussing an effect of the book, not the intent. Do you truly believe that specific DP book caused that effect? I don't. The DP book is extremely dry reading and most programmers have not actually read it. ([In terms of readership/ownership ratio] It's a book like Stephen Hawking's "Brief History of Time" ... everybody knows about it and some might have it on the coffee table but very few actually read it.) I…

> Do you truly believe that specific DP book caused that effect?

Yes, definitely. People used to cite the GOF book left and right while over-engineering crappy CRUD apps.

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