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Programming books you might want to consider reading

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Re: Programming books you might want to consider reading

#81

Post by tech2 »

Jach wrote: post #71
peruvian wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the weekend? I can't do it. Even if I forced myself to read for 6 hours Saturday and Sunday I'd forget everything during the weekdays. An hour or so every day is much better and realistic.

Depending on the material it is doable over the course of a few weekends. Consider many college courses meet twice a week for one hour each time, so two hours a week. ~14 weeks leaves only 28 hours of in class instruction time. Devote three of your weekends this month to complete study and you'll easily match the hourly total lecture-wise (you could even do it in one weekend if you're hardcore), what can kill you is…

I always thought the point of a university was to teach you _how_ to learn, the actual material learned being an added bonus.

Re: Programming books you might want to consider reading

#82

Post by hollander »

jcoffland wrote: post #48

The best Calculus book I've ever found is free from MIT. https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-001-calculus-online-tex...

This may be the best book and it's great that you can download it for free, but it's scanned, and that makes it horrible to read. Still I marked it in my book list under math, and hope I'll find the time to read it in the future. I will buy a decent EPUB or PDF then. I don't mind to pay for that convenience.

Re: Programming books you might want to consider reading

#83

Post by marincounty »

lisper wrote: post #45

One of my favorites not on the list: Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Petzold https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JDMPOK2/ Takes you from simple mechanical switches all the way to a CPU.

I have that book.

It's good for other field too. I've know union Electricians who didn't know how a three way switch works. They could wire it, but couldn't conceptualize it. Same with relay, and transformers.

It wasen't there fault. They just weren't taught it in the right fashion.

I do feel the book is dry though. I don't feel you need to read it front to back. I personally got more out of the diagrams, than the writing.

(My pet peeve in most technical books is the apparent lack of editing. If anyone is on the road to writing a technical book; there is nothing wrong with short books. People will pay for short books. Less is more--much of the time.)

Re: Programming books you might want to consider reading

#85

Post by Jach »

tech2 wrote: post #81
Jach wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the material it is doable over the course of a few weekends. Consider many college courses meet twice a week for one hour each time, so two hours a week. ~14 weeks leaves only 28 hours of in class instruction time. Devote three of your weekends this month to complete study and you'll easily match the hourly total lecture-wise (you could even do it in one weekend if you're hardcore), what can kill you is…

I always thought the point of a university was to teach you _how_ to learn, the actual material learned being an added bonus.

Some students might learn how to learn as a side effect of surviving the system, but there are easier ways of surviving the system than actually learning. There are strong incentives against actually learning too -- e.g. when the material to be learned is obsolete or irrelevant in the face of modern technology. In any case I think you're the first I've heard say they thought the point of the system is to learn how to learn, I've never seen that even historically. (And if it were true, the system is an even bigger failure than it already is while addressing its other stated purposes...)

Re: Programming books you might want to consider reading

#86

Post by edanm »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #79
webmaven wrote: post #74

Interesting comment on DeMarco's Peopleware: > This book seemed convincing when I read it in college. It even had all sorts of studies backing up what they said. No deadlines is better than having deadlines. Offices are better than cubicles. Basically all devs I talk to agree with this stuff. > But virtually every successful company is run the opposite way. Even Microsoft is remodeling buildings from individual offic…

Anyone counting Microsoft as "successful" is scoring companies on their ability to threaten price discrimination to exclude competitors' products from the marketplace.

Or using pretty much any metric of successful you can think in the financial world.

Re: Programming books you might want to consider reading

#87

Post by webmaven »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #79
webmaven wrote: post #74

Interesting comment on DeMarco's Peopleware: > This book seemed convincing when I read it in college. It even had all sorts of studies backing up what they said. No deadlines is better than having deadlines. Offices are better than cubicles. Basically all devs I talk to agree with this stuff. > But virtually every successful company is run the opposite way. Even Microsoft is remodeling buildings from individual offic…

Anyone counting Microsoft as "successful" is scoring companies on their ability to threaten price discrimination to exclude competitors' products from the marketplace.

Anyone who thinks that was the only (or even the primary) driver of Microsoft's success doesn't understand the dynamics of the market (and isn't it interesting that you thought of Microsoft specifically?).

Certainly plenty of people thought so at the time (including myself, as well as Microsoft's execs, or they wouldn't have done it), but although without the underhanded tactics they would have had a somewhat smaller market share and correspondingly smaller profit margins, in hindsight they would still have been the dominant platform vendor for desktops, office suites, and back office servers.

It turns out that Microsoft's strategy of sucking customers in with 'Better Together' all-MS integrated offerings, never making a customer have to consider another vendor because some custom in house software they rely on won't run anymore due to an upgrade (no matter how poorly), and as a distant second, introducing breaking changes for competing vendors' offerings wherever they could (eg. 'Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run', and even that tactic was eventually abandoned due to the overhead it introduced), was all they needed in order to maintain and grow their early lead.

Re: Programming books you might want to consider reading

#89

Post by CalChris »

jcoffland wrote: post #48

The best Calculus book I've ever found is free from MIT. https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-001-calculus-online-tex...

Stewart, Calculus, at a mere $285. Or like $5 for the fifth edition. He's very readable.

Strang is a fine lecturer, especially his Linear Algebra videos. But Linear Algebra Done Right is much better than Strang. MIT, Stanford and Berkeley agree on this one thing.

http://www.linear.axler.net/

The abridged version sans proofs is available in PDF:

http://linear.axler.net/LinearAbridged.pdf

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