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Secret Hacker Bookshelf

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31–40 of 56 posts

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#32
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used hotmail any time recently? I had a hotmail from way back and was going to swap (only held back by the lock in of my current email address being everywhere), but honestly now I don't see much reason to. Hotmail web interface is close enough to the gmail one now and windows live mail integrates nicely if your running and windows machine.

Yes, I have seen my friend using hotmail recently (on Windows). It is pretty good.

It's really not very good at all.

1) The back button doesn't function as you'd like.

2) With Chrome as the browser at least, checking an item can result in all other checked items being unchecked - this I think happens only after the first AJAX postback.

3) Logging in takes you to a page other than the inbox - that's an unnecessary additional click

4) The spam filter isn't a patch on Gmail's.

5) The search filtering has nothing on Gmail's

6) Because it uses .NET's AJAX methods as opposed to another model such as jquery ajax + web services, all actions involve posting back the entire page and therefore hotmail is much slower than gmail. (*This is an assumption based on how slow hotmail is - I haven't checked in firebug).

7) Last time I checked you can't auto-forward mail.

All this said, I still use my ancient hotmail address whenever I need to post an email address in public or give an email address to a company that's likely to spam me. Perhaps it's the same with the article's poster.

Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of the above

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#33
Nice to see "How to Get Rich" by Felix Dennis in there. Best lesson from that book? "Equity isn't the main thing, it's the only thing", as in, don't give away any part of the only thing you have of value; your business, unless you have to.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#34
post #27

I'm surprised that The Pragmatic Programmer isn't on there. Am I that much out of date that this book is no longer recommended? It completely changed the way I thought of development at the time.

I think the fact The Pragmatic Programmer is a little less "crunchy", in terms of the technical content, than books like SICP and Code Complete probably has something to do with the fact it doesn't seem to get mentioned as much any longer. It's still one of the best programming-related books I've ever read, and I'm kind of disappointed that it does not seem to get mentioned as much as it once did (based on what I've seen).

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#35
post #2

This is a good list, but if you're a startup founder you generally only need to know 1% of each of these books. Don't buy them all. If you had to choose 3 books from that list, what would they be?

(Caveat: As a hacker with an interest/need to learn marketing) 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing - just the best overview for how to get out there (in the words of Steve Jobs, "it's a noisy world, the best you can ever hope or ask for is that just one single idea about what you do can be remembered"). Also might as well throw Positioning in there as its compliment. Made to Stick - how to encapsulate a single idea, and h…

+1 for 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. I purchased it after Tim Ferris cited it as one of his top books and I learned a lot from it.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#36
post #27

I'm surprised that The Pragmatic Programmer isn't on there. Am I that much out of date that this book is no longer recommended? It completely changed the way I thought of development at the time.

Kernighan and Pike's _The Practice of Programming_ covers a lot of the similar content better, IMHO, often with more concrete examples.

(Also, _The Pragmatic Programmer_ might have more impact if people hadn't been systematically ripping it off for blog content for years.)

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#38
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I have seen my friend using hotmail recently (on Windows). It is pretty good.

It's really not very good at all. 1) The back button doesn't function as you'd like. 2) With Chrome as the browser at least, checking an item can result in all other checked items being unchecked - this I think happens only after the first AJAX postback. 3) Logging in takes you to a page other than the inbox - that's an unnecessary additional click 4) The spam filter isn't a patch on Gmail's. 5) The search filtering…

If you're referring to .NET's UpdatePanels, they do send the entire post data, yes. But the response only contains required HTML to rerender that area.

ASP.NET can also take any "web service" (i.e., a bunch of function you define and mark as directly callable via XML or whatever), and VS will generate JavaScript proxy objects for it. Then you get lightweight calls (only send and receive parameters and response), but get IntelliSense and stuff on them.

Hotmail might do something stupid and be slow. I don't know or care, but .NET offers plenty of options.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#39
post #30

I think that Effective Java by Josh Bloch deserves to be added to this list.

If I were to recommend only one Java book, it would be this one. Definitely deserves to be on the list.

If I were to recommend only one Java book, it would probably be some kind of "Ruby for Java Developers" book.

I kid, I kid. Kind of.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#40
post #25
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you should really take a look at who posted the article and who wrote the article, jacquesm and Daniel are some of our most respected and informational members that we have. Both have contributed volumes of information to this site without asking for anything in return. If there is anyone one this site that could be accused of having the passion for the subject matter of this site it would be Daniel. As is s…

As well you don't lose anything by giving someone an affiliate sale, so unless your getting tricked into clicking someones links I think people can tend to make a bigger deal of it than is needed.

I upvoted you, but the general problem with these links is that they affect author motivation, whether or not they realize it. This is especially true for subjective listings such as this one, they are simply a brain dump of whatever the list author could think of. That's why you get SICP next to "Head first HTML", and that's why you don't get "Coders at work" at all, even though it's mentioned >800 times on this site, vs much less for other titles on the list.
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