January 26, 2012

Book Recommendations

Updated January 26, 2012

This is an unordered list of books I like so much I would like to promote them a bit. There are programming books but also fiction and manga.

Programming Books

The Pragmatic Programmer

#2 in the Stackoverflow question "What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?" and that is no joke. I have yet to read the #1 on the list, Code Complete, but so far The Pragmatic Programmer is the best programming book I have ever read.

It does not teach you to program instead it teaches you how to think as a programmer and small tweaks you can do to become more effective and smarter. It's a little hard to explain but in programming it's the small things that matter and you'll get a ton of improvements from this one. Read and re-read!

Modern Perl

One of my favourite programming books. It's not a book that teaches you how to program which practically every other language specific book does. It simply teaches you the Perl programming language in a modern fashion. It's not a cookbook but it contains a lot of "how to do this" which I found extremely helpful.

I read this book when I wanted to learn Perl. I had read the camel book before but I was a bit impatient to appreciate it I guess. Modern Perl is a very thin book, only 250 pages, but it teaches perl so well. If you want to learn Perl but know how to programming, this is clearly the book for you.

Learn You a Haskell For Great Good

A very fun and easy going book but it's also a good introduction to something as hard as Haskell. How do you get those two together? After you've read this one you'll think that's the way to go.

Effective Java, Effective C++, More Effective C++

I'm actually lumping these together but they are individually excellent books for their language. Some argue that these are the best and I would have to agree.

Misc

Design for Hackers

This is a great introductory book about design. Before reading this I thought programmers were superior to designers but that's a very foolish thought. I used to guess how my web page or my game should look like but now I know that there's something called negative space, receding colors and that you can go infinity deep in font design. Now I'm more aware of the difficulties and the thought and work that goes into making something pretty and usable.

I guess it's the case where the more you know, the more you know that you don't know. Consider for example a child lost in the forest. He's hungry so he picks some berries to eat. When you're a bit older you might know that they could be poisoned, but you don't know which ones. Now you're in a dark and scary place and you don't dare to eat anything at all! I used to be the toddler, happy and unknowing, but now I know how much I don't know. It's a refreshing feeling.

Fiction

Song of Ice and Fire

I have never been a big fan of fantasy, for example I didn't care for the bible of fantasy The Lord of the Rings at all. Bilbo, another of Tolkiens books in the saga, was good but that's it for my positive fantasy experience. But that was before I read this series.

Wonderfully dark and engaging, this is not the classic long vinding good vs evil fantasy (Tolkien I'm looking at you). This series is easy to read and very dark. The villains are the best I've ever met and yet (most) are not completely black and you will even start liking or agreeing with some. Fantastic.

Jeffery Deaver

I fell in love with Jeffery Deaver when I read his book A Maiden's Grave about some escaped prisoners who kidnap a school buss full of deaf girls. The situation escalates to a hostage situation with non-stop action. His book The Cold Moon continues the tradition of smart, twisted and entertaining plot. Here the paralyzed csi Lincoln Rhyme hunts a serial killer by analyzing hints and clues, much like in the tv-show but with more detail and excitement. There are almost 10 books in the series of Lincoln Rhyme and they are all very good.

I also want to highlight The Sleeping Doll which focuses on the human aspect of catching killers. Initially not a very appealing idea but this might be his best book of them all.

November 9, 2011

Swelling with New Shiny Books

So I read the wonderful Design for Hackers and I managed to win some money for books from a course... So I ran away and ordered some new books, and they just arrived today. Yay!

First off I ordered Introduction to Algorithms which is the de facto book about algorithms and it seemed like a fitting thing to do as I won it by doing algorithm assignments.

Secondly I've been wanting to grab Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs for a while and I finally did. It's one of the classical computer books you have to read once in your life (or so they say).

I wasn't going to get a third book, but on adlibris where I got the vouchers you couldn't pay with two vouchers on one order. So I had to split it up and it felt kinda dumb to not use it all... So I ordered a third book. I had no idea what book to get though, but stackoverflow came to the rescue! It's a bunch of answers to the question "What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?" and is like a top X list for programming books.

Incidentally I've got a few of those already, and the two I've already decided on was there (SICP is 3rd, Introduction to Algorithms 5th). Of course I wanted to get either the 1st or 2nd and I ended up choosing the 2nd one, The Pragmatic Programmer just because it seemed a bit easier to read. I've got a ton of fairly hardcore programming books I need to plow through so something a bit easier to digest should be welcome.

Go go programming books!

November 5, 2011

Done this, done that. What now?

Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn't quite go as intended) and starting some new courses in school. I'm liking my choice of Computer Science more and more. Data structures and Algorithms was a super fun course, I actually ordered a new book about the subject just yesterday. Linear Algebra is really fun now as we're getting deeper into it and we're looking into assembly and processor structures now too. Awesome. I can't believe I considered doing physics or electronics when I could take these courses. Now if I only could do operating systems, compiler construction and language design...

In the meantime I've finished Design for Hackers and it was a really nice book to be honest. I never knew there was so much about design and now I keep noticing funky stuff like what font a particular website is using, what colors and how they direct the reader. I also see a lot of inadequate stuff on my page and I have a few things I'd like to try.

I also read Watchmen, the comic, and it was absolutely wonderful. Sadly I saw the movie before but, naturally, the comic was a lot better. So wonderfully dark and ah... Simply awesome.

October 19, 2011

Design for Hackers has arrived!

It's here! After about a month of waiting I've finally gotten the book that will make me a design god! Or at least make me aware of something called design. Joking aside I'm really terrible at design and making things look good. Admittedly my programming art for my games has gradually improved but I honestly don't know what I'm doing, I just mess around until I get something decent. Maybe this can be a small aid? I even have some websites I want to design, and while I'm at it I want to try the Perl web framework mojolicious which looks totally awesome!

September 16, 2011

Design for Hackers

I get these.. urges sometimes. Not like Dexter no, but sometimes I just have to buy a specific thing. It happened again yesterday (or was it the day before I don't know) when I saw this post on hackernews.

It's a book this time, again, but this is something a little different - it's about design. Now I know nothing about design but I've enjoyed designing some sites and I really like to design games but I don't have a clue how to do it in a structural manner. I just try different colors and different stuff until "hey that looks kinda good" and it's done! That's not how you make something useful or something that looks good - good design. But this book seems to teach you just that!

It's a book for hackers, in the original non-journalistic definition, and it explains stuff in a logical manner! Now I might get a feel for why I think something looks good and I might even be able to improve on it? Happy times!

The only issue is that I promised myself to not order any more programming books until I've gone through the ones I have - but this isn't one so it should be okay! So now I made myself to promise that I'll do the math assignments for the week and then I can order!

Instead of writing this I really should do them then.

Hrrmm...

February 3, 2011

The Little Things in Life

It's the little things in life that makes it extra special. Sometimes it's the luxury of coffee together with the morning paper and other times it's just a small simple smile from a random stranger, kid or dog. Today when I got this bad headache I got saved by a two hour nap and my Programming in Ada book. It was quite a pleasure to just read it and not worrying about anything else. I even think my headache disappeared a while there.

And if that wasn't enough, my long lost Modern Perl is finally here! I've skimmed a little and boy I think I'm going to like this one. I'm soon up to two digits with my programming books and I really do like them. Even if I'm not doing anything in that particular language it's still fun to just read about. There's always something you'll learn and even if not I still find it soothing.

Reading books, threads, blog posts or random forum rants/wars about programming is sometimes coffee for my brain (I don't actually drink coffee or anything with caffeine. I'm almost feeling like an endangered programming species).

If the book is actually worth reading we'll see and I'll report back when I've gone through it.