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Free Programing Books

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Re: Free Programing Books

#21

Post by Jtsummers »

dotancohen wrote: post #16
dunham wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do pdfs count? % mdfind -onlyin ~ kind:pdf |wc -l 11116 (2k of those are in my directory of github checkouts and there are duplicates in there.)

Is mdfind a Windows executable? Is there a standalone version that I might be able to use on the rare occasions I need to fight with somebody's Windows box?

mdfind is a built-in with macOS. It's similar to find (should be on your *nix system if you have one) which can be installed with Cygwin on Windows. On Windows, you'd use Powershell and Get-ChildItem (I don't think it's case sensitive, but I don't use PS much).

Re: Free Programing Books

#22

Post by AfterHIA »

A few more that young developers need to read:

Computer Lib by Ted Nelson. This used to be the, "Bible" before Nelson fell into relative obscurity. Ted Nelson was the first to coin the term, "Hypertext" in the 1960s after reading a famous article by Vannevar Bush

https://worrydream.com/refs/Nelson_T_1974_-_Computer_Lib,_Dr...

Mindstorms by Seymour Papert. Introduction to, "interfaces as pedagogy." This lays a foundation for, "what computer interfaces look like when you can use human intuition to work through them."

https://worrydream.com/refs/Papert_1980_-_Mindstorms,_1st_ed...

Jef Raskin was the original head of the Macintosh team. This treatise on humane design is invaluable and has been largely ignored. Any person that takes these ideas and makes them work will be a proverbial father of, "the next generation of computing."

https://archive.org/details/humaneinterfacen00rask

Douglas Engelbart who is often regard as, "the inventor of the mouse" founded his working philosophy by describing an operation paradigm for continued exponential improvement in groups. In some sense it's a masterwork in, "computer ethics."

https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/papers/scanned/Doug_Engel...

Early article describing Hyperlinking and aspects of the Internet some of which haven't been or have been under-realized. Imagine what, "social histories for extending research" would look like if taken seriously.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...

Computers As Theatre by Brenda Laurel; "think of the computer not as a tool but a medium." Brenda is an actress that applied Aristotle's Poetics to computer design. An absolute foundational classic.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~social/reading/Laurel-ComputersAsThe...

Worthy mention: Alan Kay's Quora. This is a literal goldmine of insights into the history of programming languages and computing paradigms. He'll answer your question if it's meaningful.

https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Kay-11

Remember: computer paradigms have changed every few decades. We started with pontifications by philosophers about the foundations of mathematics to mechanical machines to vacuum tube machines to (skipping some things) huge mainframes to mini-computers to linked personal computers (Engelbart) to the Xerox Alto. We now live in a world of castrated, linked post-Altos and a failed realization of portable computers in the form of b̶r̶a̶i̶n̶w̶a̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶-̶o̶u̶t̶r̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶c̶h̶i̶n̶e̶s̶ smartphones. Ask yourself-- what comes next? How can we significantly improve computers for human beings?

Re: Free Programing Books

#24

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

mindcrime wrote: post #9
dunham wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do pdfs count? % mdfind -onlyin ~ kind:pdf |wc -l 11116 (2k of those are in my directory of github checkouts and there are duplicates in there.)

They totally do! And epub, mobi, djvu... prhodes@troubadour:~/Downloads/pdfs$ find . -name "*.pdf" | wc -l 18952 prhodes@troubadour:~/Downloads/pdfs$ find . -name "*.epub" | wc -l 2385 prhodes@troubadour:~/Downloads/pdfs$ find . -name "*.djvu" | wc -l 1384 prhodes@troubadour:~/Downloads/pdfs$ find . -name "*.mobi" | wc -l 125 (There are definitely duplicates in those, FWIW)

Why are you downloading mobi files? Seriously, I only do that if there is no epub, and only keep it long enough to convert it.

Re: Free Programing Books

#25

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

globular-toast wrote: post #13

So many people I know download PDFs and never, ever read them. I truly believe reading is one of the best things you can do. If you find you're not reading then the PDFs aren't working for you. Try getting hard copies of some books you think you should read. Personally I can never read text books on screens, but I devour them in paper format.

Books are among the smallest (complete) media I own. Even a single album weighs in heavier than all but my largest books, and even with the largest those only just barely exceed the smallest of albums. They're easy to store, I won't later want a "higher resolution" book. Easy to organize (and it will only become easier... I expect technology/software that will allow better indexing in the near future). The books I keep now can become my family's library, shared and copied as my family becomes larger and more distant in the future. Immune from DRM or copyright regulations, invisible to anti-piracy efforts, and ever growing.

They don't even print the books I'd want on the kinds of paper that would last more than 20 years, and I can't afford the sort of museum-level-preservation effort it would require to take advantage of that supposing they did.

Re: Free Programing Books

#26

Post by johnnyanmac »

pessimizer wrote: post #14
piskov wrote: post #2

Tsundoku (積ん読) is the phenomenon of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in a home without reading them. The term is also used to refer to unread books on a bookshelf meant for reading later.

I think it's way better to shop at a bookstore filled exclusively with stuff you've already shown interest in, like your bookshelf or ebook directory. The only caveat when it comes to paper is not to buy shit e.g. bestsellers, or software books that you're not going to read and use right away. If you don't buy shit (this is also true with board games and guitars), you can resell likely for about what you paid (or som…

>Honestly, don't ever buy bestsellers. They're all bad and everything in them is wrong. Things become bestsellers because they find an audience beyond people who are smart or shrewd.

In the context of technical/political pieces, perhaps. But I have some reservations with even that limited scope

1. It's fine to target a more general audience if it gets them interested in a subject to begin with. Some inaccuracies help give context to learning before you break them. e.g. Saying "you can't subtract 3 from 2" in early learning, before later learning about the negative number space.

2. How many books of this nature even make best seller? Most stuff tends to be fiction or biographical so there's not much "wrong" there. Political stuff will be there as well, but is ultimately subjective.

Re: Free Programing Books

#27

Post by dunham »

dotancohen wrote: post #16
dunham wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do pdfs count? % mdfind -onlyin ~ kind:pdf |wc -l 11116 (2k of those are in my directory of github checkouts and there are duplicates in there.)

Is mdfind a Windows executable? Is there a standalone version that I might be able to use on the rare occasions I need to fight with somebody's Windows box?

mdfind is the command line interface to macos "Spotlight", which is the global file index. So it can do things like full text search in addition to matching metadata values or size bigger than X.

I don't know windows well enough to know the equivalent. But I think there is an index on windows, and powershell may be able to poke at it.

Re: Free Programing Books

#28

Post by johnnyanmac »

dotancohen wrote: post #15
pessimizer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's way better to shop at a bookstore filled exclusively with stuff you've already shown interest in, like your bookshelf or ebook directory. The only caveat when it comes to paper is not to buy shit e.g. bestsellers, or software books that you're not going to read and use right away. If you don't buy shit (this is also true with board games and guitars), you can resell likely for about what you paid (or som…

> I think it's way better to shop at a bookstore filled exclusively with stuff you've already shown interest in That sounds like quite the endorsement for targeted advertising. In a good way - really I would love targeted advertising if it were implemented differently.

Targeted ads are great, when it's actually consumer focused. Sadly the nature of modern ads makes it so all the power is taken from the consumer. A proper targeted ad should have the ability to say to it "I never want to see yo again", and virtually no advert would ever want that to happen.

Re: Free Programing Books

#29

Post by mandeepj »

globular-toast wrote: post #13

So many people I know download PDFs and never, ever read them. I truly believe reading is one of the best things you can do. If you find you're not reading then the PDFs aren't working for you. Try getting hard copies of some books you think you should read. Personally I can never read text books on screens, but I devour them in paper format.

> So many people I know download PDFs and never, ever read them. I truly believe reading is one of the best things you can do. If you find you're not reading then the PDFs aren't working for you.

I think if you can convert them into audio, then they'd have a better chance of getting consumed while doing an activity like cooking, working out, or walking. I find it hard now to find dedicated time for just reading a book.

Re: Free Programing Books

#30

Post by dotancohen »

dunham wrote: post #27
dotancohen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is mdfind a Windows executable? Is there a standalone version that I might be able to use on the rare occasions I need to fight with somebody's Windows box?

mdfind is the command line interface to macos "Spotlight", which is the global file index. So it can do things like full text search in addition to matching metadata values or size bigger than X. I don't know windows well enough to know the equivalent. But I think there is an index on windows, and powershell may be able to poke at it.

Thank you
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