Books that changed my career as a software engineer • Hacker News Board

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#231

Post by Jtsummers » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:19 PM UTC

Invictus0 wrote: post #230

dorinlazar wrote: post #76

I have a terrible problem with people recommending books that „changed their whatever”. And sometimes I think that it comes from an arrogant place where people being „influenced” by books is a bad place. But I do understand that sometimes books can change the way one thinks about things, and it makes sense to make a list of those. For me, there are books that had a negative impact on my work. The GoF book is one such…

What the hell is GoF

“Gang of Four”. It’s how the book * Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software* is often referenced. The “four” being the four authors.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#232

Post by a_square_peg » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

I didn't know about "Unwritten Laws of Engineering" - skimming through some of it, this is an excellent book and I wish I knew about it before.

I was fortunate enough to be around senior engineers who took upon themselves to mentor junior engineers like myself. Now that I'm in their shoes, I find that the engineering landscape has changed quite a lot (especially in software) and often find that junior engineers don't see themselves needing to be mentored and sometimes even offended by recommendations.

I think some of this can be seen in this thread as well - some are commenting about how bad these recommendations are, and some even about the general practice of recommending books (how dare you!).

Given that the OP is just talking about books that he felt changed "his" career, I think it's really not something to be challenged and disagreed in such manners.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#233

Post by ptx » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

aesyondu wrote: post #164

wiseowise wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clean code... To this day I cringe when I see methods/functions over 20 lines long.. Or when I see commented code blocks in one function.. To this day I cringe when I see dogmatic opinions of a fraud taken like an absolute truth.

Interesting. This is the first time I've seen Robert Martin to be referred to as a fraud. I'd like to read an elaboration of this. I looked around and found this video [[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb9VPWbrqmE][Uncle Bob (Robert Martin) is a Fraud!!!]] but most of the comments are dismissive of the review.

Not a great video. He starts by attacking Robert Martin for taking 10 minutes to get to the substance of his talk, but then his own video never progresses from there and never gets to anything substantial.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#234

Post by zanethomas » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

I got my start with

o Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines --- Minsky

o The Art Of Computer Programming --- Knuth

o Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs --- Abelson and Sussman

In that order. Everything else is syntactic sugar.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#235

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #222

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #180

The one thing that I find is not helpful, is the “litmus test” approach. i.e. “You are a bad programmer/engineer/scientist/person, because you did not read this book, or know this technique.” Thing. I see this frequently. As a [mostly] self-taught software developer, I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of this behavior. In my case, I have a real “Oh yeah? I’ll show you!” streak. I became expert at stuff, simply b…

> "A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow." -Charles Browder Not just ideas, people have lost their careers to unkind jibes. Here's English Cricketer Monty Panesar explaining the unexpected course his life took after a retort by Australian cricketer Shane Warne that "Panesar hasn't played 33 matches,…

> A relevant comment from a thread on CalyxOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28101853

Ooh... that's ugly.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#236

Post by dorinlazar » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

rmk wrote: post #112

dorinlazar wrote: post #76

I have a terrible problem with people recommending books that „changed their whatever”. And sometimes I think that it comes from an arrogant place where people being „influenced” by books is a bad place. But I do understand that sometimes books can change the way one thinks about things, and it makes sense to make a list of those. For me, there are books that had a negative impact on my work. The GoF book is one such…

I think you are being unfair towards GoF. GoF came out when Object Orientation was the rage and it provided a useful compendium of solution archetypes that can be used in response to (solved, recurring) problems. That is not to cast aspersions on your personal experience. It sounds like you had an encounter with an Architecture Astronaut and ended up in a bad place, but the fact that you are writing about it is a goo…

It's not a judgment of GoF per se, although I have some critique on the book as well, but of the impact it had. Unfortunately, a lot of people (mis)took it to heart, and GoF became just another book to learn by rote when interviewing.

Somehow related, Google right now demands interviewees to prepare using the Cracking the Coding Interview book. Pretty much it's like someone sells you a door and hands you a set of lockpicking tools instead of you using the key to enter.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#237

Post by underdeserver » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

pastage wrote: post #185

underdeserver wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find the opposite. Many books belabor the point and take a chapter to explain what a paragraph could. It might sometimes be useful - for example, to explain a scenario to a newbie who can't relate from their own experience - but for someone who's been in the industry for a while, most of that information is just not useful.

Called US writing style over here, just being overly verbose. Course literature, e.g. Calculus, suffers from this. It is a style in which you wax on and drive home the point by repetition. This style is popular nowdays and finding books that succintcly describes a subject is hard. This is mostly because you need to have common ground, and writing for the smallest common denominator is better.

I actually think Calculus textbooks are justified in being long. he material is just so hard to grasp for newbies that giving you more and more examples sort of provides you with more time to digest the ideas in the background. Many students need that at that stage in their studies.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#238

Post by pydry » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #180

The one thing that I find is not helpful, is the “litmus test” approach. i.e. “You are a bad programmer/engineer/scientist/person, because you did not read this book, or know this technique.” Thing. I see this frequently. As a [mostly] self-taught software developer, I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of this behavior. In my case, I have a real “Oh yeah? I’ll show you!” streak. I became expert at stuff, simply b…

Litmus tests are how git has managed to get away with having such an abysmal UX.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#239

Post by pydry » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #62

wpietri wrote: post #9

Huh. Mine would be: * The Mythical Man-Month, Brooks * Rapid Development, McConnell * Extreme Programming Explained, Beck, et al * Test-Driven Development by Example, Beck * Domain-Driven Design, Evans And something that wasn't a book but made a huge impact was Eric Ries's blog, Startup Lessons Learned, circa 2009. He correctly spotted that things like Extreme Programming are generic software development processes, b…

I love the Mythical Man-Month, but it’s one of those books that only software engineers seem to read, and they already know what’s in it.

It has a tendency to rankle managers trying to boost their headcount.

It's difficult to get a man to understand something when their raise depends upon them not understanding it.

I can still remember when the CTO I argued with came into the room one day and said that he'd been given the green light to hire as many additional people as he liked. He was grinning from ear to ear. I suspect he knew it wouldn't actually fix any of our issues but he didn't really care.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#240

Post by analog31 » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

Osiris wrote: post #61

Is it just me or do other people struggle to read these kinds of very technical books? It's not that I don't comprehend, it's that my brain finds it boring and hard to focus. I think I have trained my brain so much on rapid skimming of websites for useful info, while throwing away most of the content, that I tend to do the same with books, which really doesn't work well. Has anyone found alternative ways to consume t…

I admit that I got through a lot of technical books by learning things in a classroom. I don't subscribe to the "children have different ways of learning," but I don't think I would have survived my college majors (math and physics) had I tried to learn them on my own from books, even good books.

On the other hand, I taught myself electronics and programming from a combination of books and just trying things. Maybe trying things is a different kind of classroom in a sense. Certainly a different teacher: Mother Nature, who takes no crap from cocky teenagers.