I've read several programming language manuals from start to end.
Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
51–60 of 156 posts
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#52I tend to get too distracted to give many books the cover-to-cover treatment. Some great ones that made the cut were: 1) Metaprogramming Ruby. 2) The Art of Rails. 3) Ruby Design Patterns 4) Services-Oriented Architecture in Ruby These stick out for me. Even if the last one in the list felt a little "rushed to production", it still covered important topics you won't find anywhere else. Plus I find when a book has typ…
> Plus I find when a book has typos (either in the text or in the code), that just makes me engage with it a little bit more.
Really? I wasted almost an hour double-checking my code due to a typo in an algorithm in _Programming Collective Intelligence_ (pg. 35, should end in "return num/den", not "return 1.0-num/den".) That's just sloppy. I added it to the errata page (http://oreilly.com/catalog/errataunconfirmed.csp?isbn=978059...).
It makes me feel that while the author's explanations are pretty good, the code samples are rather dodgy. I've switched to looking up the relevant mathematical formulas and converting them to code myself.
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#53I have never read a programming book from start to end, since most of them are either dry or not though-provoking. Three PL books that I liked very much are:
- Prolog and Natural-Language Analysis. An enjoyable introduction to Prolog and Natural Language analysis:
http://www.mtome.com/Publications/PNLA/pnla.html
http://www.mtome.com/Publications/PNLA/prolog-digital.pdf
- The Reasoned Schemer. I didn't read the other Schemer books, but liked this one very much. Simple and to the point.
- Purely Functional Data Structures, for showing how simple and elegant functional data structures can be.
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#54I have never read a programming book from start to end, since most of them are either dry or not though-provoking. Three PL books that I liked very much are: - Prolog and Natural-Language Analysis. An enjoyable introduction to Prolog and Natural Language analysis: http://www.mtome.com/Publications/PNLA/pnla.html http://www.mtome.com/Publications/PNLA/prolog-digital.pdf - The Reasoned Schemer. I didn't read the other…
Thanks for posting that Prolog/NLP book, I didn't know there was a free pdf. Same with your work-in-progress one: http://nlpwp.org/book/
My copy of _Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing_ just arrived in the mail, too. :D
Purely Functional Data Structures is excellent.
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#55JavaScript: The Good Parts.
This book was terrific and restored my faith in Javascript.
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#56JavaScript: The Good Parts.
it's a miniseries: *, the Good Parts http://www.amazon.com/Java-Good-Parts-Jim-Waldo/dp/059680373... http://www.amazon.com/PHP-Good-Parts-Delivering-Best/dp/0596...
A miniseries in title only. Both of those were released after the success of JavaScript: The Good Parts, and neither involve Douglas Crockford.
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#57"Coders at Work" is very well written and flows like a good novel. You must be a real hardcore hacker to enjoy it, though :) [Edit: I've actually posted a short review of it after I finished reading it - http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2010/01/09/book-review-coders-a... ]
The interviews are thought-provoking, particularly the ones with Peter Norvig and Joe Armstrong. Seibel expands on some recurring themes on his blog ( http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/category/books/coders-at-wo... ). My wife also liked _Coders at Work_, though she has a lot of experience doing interviews for documentaries, and there were a couple times she was frustrated about comments Seibel should have pursued fur…
Personally I enjoyed the interviews with Brad Fitzpatrick and Donald Knuth the most, although Norvig was also pretty good.
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#58The best books I have read are ones that walk through a project from start to finish. I usually read through the entire book first without any programming. I take notes on the side and highlight key concepts. Then I walk through again and program the entire project. I haven't needed to learn a new programming language or framework in a while, but this method has proved to be fairly effective.
Simply Rails 2 was the last book I read like this 2 years ago. We are now one of Engine Yard's case studies.
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#59One of my favorites, a long time ago, were the "Bible" series, like the Quick C Bible. They were the perfect balance between reference/encyclopedia of methods and a straight read-through for how I/O works, etc. I wish more programming books were written this way.
Re: Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
#60K&R