The Book That Every Programmer Should Read • Hacker News Board

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#51

Post by grigy » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 5:12 PM UTC

tagawa wrote: post #43

grigy wrote: post #13

I picked the basics of programming and how computers work with a book called "The Beginner's Computer Handbook - Understanding & Programming The Micro". Actually this book was the reason I became a programmer. I was 8 years old when received it as present on birthday from my dad. I could not find a link to the book, but found this blog post which has also some pictures: http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2004/06/the-b…

Yes, me too! Oh, how many hours I spent typing in those programs in the hope they'd look like the book's illustrations...

I didn't have computer, so I was running these programs myself mentally or on the paper. Well the simple ones.

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#52

Post by metaobject » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #45

angersock wrote: post #44

So, I picked up this book on a whim from Half-Priced Books about six months ago. I've since loaned it out to a mechanical engineering friend of mine, and he's finished it; I'll be loaning it out again soon--it's one of those books that I consider essential for spreading the good word of CS/EE. ACTUAL REVIEW/SPOILER CONTENT: So, the book does start pretty slowly. It considers the case of signaling with flashlights. Th…

SINGULAR OF FACT (ANECDOTE): I just thought I'd mention this as well. As my ME friend (at that time, roommate) was chugging through the book, he'd randomly come up and ask me questions or points of clarification. This culminated one evening during dinner. He, my other roommate (a Linux sysadmin/applied mathematician), and I (software developer and former ME) were enjoying some Indian food, and the ME began bugging us…

I wish I had friends like you guys. :( The kind of conversations that I have with them range from mind numbingly boring to suicide inducing.

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#53

Post by moreorless » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

mapleoin wrote: post #28

BTW, if you want to buy the kindle version, buy it from O'Reilly instead of Amazon: 5 formats and no-DRM: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780735611313.do ($1.83 more though).

O'Reilly it is.

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#54

Post by dustingetz » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 6:33 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #47

dustingetz wrote: post #33

alright, meh, not convinced. we're all busy people and my bedside book stack is 12 high. compare books like CODE, SICP, and related books discussed below, to books like Beautiful Code, Higher Order Perl, Mythical Man Month, Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, tons of whitepapers. do I really need to read CODE? Seems like a bottom-of-stack book that will never quite make it to the top.

It really depends on where you are. If you've done a CS undergrad program you probably already know everything in CODE. But for a bright high school student or self-taught programmer interested in CS the only book I'd rank higher would be SICP.

yeah, that seems to be accurate. that's the thing about these "best book ever for all software engineers" posts -- anyone reading even just a few industry books a year already knows this stuff.

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#55

Post by nobody31 » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 6:56 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #47

dustingetz wrote: post #33

alright, meh, not convinced. we're all busy people and my bedside book stack is 12 high. compare books like CODE, SICP, and related books discussed below, to books like Beautiful Code, Higher Order Perl, Mythical Man Month, Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, tons of whitepapers. do I really need to read CODE? Seems like a bottom-of-stack book that will never quite make it to the top.

It really depends on where you are. If you've done a CS undergrad program you probably already know everything in CODE. But for a bright high school student or self-taught programmer interested in CS the only book I'd rank higher would be SICP.

If ONLY cs undergrads knew everything in code.

I'm still trying to teach some of them that a memory copy isn't instant.

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#56

Post by dustingetz » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 7:06 PM UTC

nobody31 wrote: post #55

kenjackson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on where you are. If you've done a CS undergrad program you probably already know everything in CODE. But for a bright high school student or self-taught programmer interested in CS the only book I'd rank higher would be SICP.

If ONLY cs undergrads knew everything in code. I'm still trying to teach some of them that a memory copy isn't instant.

yeah, but the ones who actually care about CS probably do know most things covered in CODE.

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#57

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 7:38 PM UTC

metaobject wrote: post #52

angersock wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SINGULAR OF FACT (ANECDOTE): I just thought I'd mention this as well. As my ME friend (at that time, roommate) was chugging through the book, he'd randomly come up and ask me questions or points of clarification. This culminated one evening during dinner. He, my other roommate (a Linux sysadmin/applied mathematician), and I (software developer and former ME) were enjoying some Indian food, and the ME began bugging us…

I wish I had friends like you guys. :( The kind of conversations that I have with them range from mind numbingly boring to suicide inducing.

[deleted]

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#58

Post by azelfrath » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 7:53 PM UTC

Before reading this book, I had what I thought was a fairly solid grasp of computing. I was 19 (20 now), largely self-taught from spending nights on Google instead of going to parties, and if I didn't know the details of something, I knew enough about the concept to get by. I could program well enough in a few languages, talk about hardware, security, and protocols for hours...

I still had no idea how 10010011000110101001010 etc etc allowed me to play World of Warcraft. There was a small part of me that hoped beyond hope that computers were magic and there was some grand conspiracy going on to cover that fact.

Then I read CODE.

My hopes were shattered, but they were replaced by something much more treasured: Understanding.

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#59

Post by BrandonM » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 8:03 PM UTC

dustingetz wrote: post #33

alright, meh, not convinced. we're all busy people and my bedside book stack is 12 high. compare books like CODE, SICP, and related books discussed below, to books like Beautiful Code, Higher Order Perl, Mythical Man Month, Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, tons of whitepapers. do I really need to read CODE? Seems like a bottom-of-stack book that will never quite make it to the top.

I ordered The Mythical Man-Month a year or two ago. This is something of a blasphemous statement on Hacker News, but for me the book was a letdown. It felt like a rehash of ideas that I already knew from reading Paul Graham's essays, other technical blogs, and comments on Hacker News.

The reality, of course, is that the book was so spot-on and insightful that many of its ideas have simply been absorbed into the way we approach software development. It seems so common sense today that people don't even cite an idea stolen from TMMM.

Unfortunately, this meant that nothing in the book was new to me, and reading it was rather dull. Because of that, if you've spent much time following the tech community, my recommendation is to prioritize reading TMMM below many of your other suggestions.

Re: The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

#60

Post by cpeterso » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 8:19 PM UTC

A good layman's guide for computer science is Danny "Connection Machine" Hillis' "The Pattern On The Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work". He builds up from Boolean logic to Turing machines to quantum computing in fewer than 200 pages.