Books

What books should every programmer read?

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I was expecting just lots of ESR being ESR (which is also fine), but it has a load of good advice.

The Pragmatic Programmer

>>221 no

Very inspirational.

It's nice to flip through this every now and then, full of "aha!" information that you should already know but can't think of off the top of your head.

Made me realize how great programmers can be similar and dissimilar. Also, a really interesting chapter with Haskell's creator.

Worth reading and doing the exercises. It kind of gives you a deeper knowledge of the ideas that >>212 talks about. Computers aren't magic. Deep down, there actually is a way that they all work.

>>230 Simon Peyton-Jones is my role model in life.

>>229 This book is so relaxingly down-to-earth, man, it takes like a negative metal effort to read, but holy shit it's oooooold-school… Dat section about refactoring out gotos, like, wow… Also not a book but I think every person who deals with dynamic languages should read pdf related.

web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf Slightly off-topic, but this book is a nice reminder that the beloved Unix tradition has a long and rich history of epic fucking suckage, the part about the X window system is brutal and absolutely hilarious, and the chapter about Usenet is eerily reminicient of everyone's favourite anonymous bulletin board, which shall remain unnamed.

>>237 anon, silly you, you can say lainchan here

>>237 Nice book.

>>231 K&R was good, although I got more out of it when I read it after learning C from another book and playing with it for some months.

>>237 The "terminal I/O is a two directional byte stream" paradigm ended up allowing Unix to move seamlessly into arbitrarily resizable X terminal emulators, and telnet and SSH, without having to rewrite every application or even ncurses to be network-aware.

>>573 The stream paradigm is probably the coolest thing to come from UNIX, to be honest.

>>586 This, and something about regular expressions. Mastering Regular Expressions might be too in-depth, but the average internet tutorial isn't in-depth enough.

>>586 Rob "OOP sucks so I'm brigning back everybody to ad-hoc polymorphism by upcasts because parametric typing is too complicated for me" Pike

>>598 Well, good thing in this book he just teaches you about UNIX, so that doesn't matter.

>>601 "everything is a buffer containing ASCII: the book"

In my opinion, at least. Even a seasoned C programmer can learn a lot and have fun doing it.

http://www.aosabook.org/en/ghc.html

>>222 But why not?

Well, maybe not all CS people, but those who want to enter the workforce.

>>538 >Agile >clean code pick one

>>631 >http://www.aosabook.org/en/ghc.html That's really interesting.

>>666 nice get also, here's some more stuff about functional language design implementation details while we're at it. https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/pt03.html

Too big to post the pdf. ftp://amet13.name/literature/eng/administration/Linux%20Programming%20Interface%20-%20M.Kerris.pdf

Has anyone read this? Dennis Ritchie said it was his favorite programming-related book, but I can't find a pdf on them internets anywhere…

>>684 how does it compare to Advanced programming in the UNIX environment? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8215565/books/Advanced%20Programming%20in%20the%20UNIX%20Envinronment%2C%202013.pdf

http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ http://libgen.org/get?md5=e6b84561fc8716c46c61bd43a207bc0b Lisp In Small Pieces There should probably be some stuff in there on APL and pure FP

>>212 I have a strange distrust of programming books which incorporate good, modern design

>>712 I just ordered it for 20 bucks. Should be here by the end of the week. I'll let you know how it is.

>>841 Groovy.

>>839 (a) It's not a programming book. (b) This is one of the best damn books ever.

>>839 This one is not one to pass up on. Don't let that… prejudice? tell you otherwise.Grandpa

>>194 These guys knew how to pick a cover. I want this more than any other ITT. (Already have Free as in Freedom and CODE)

>>841 >>843 So I got the book in today. Bought it used and it's in remarkable shape for a paper-back book printed in 1974. No markings or tearing, though the outsides of the pages are a little yellowed. It's 8 chapers and 244 pages long. Haven't read it yet, but after reading the introduction and skimming a little it seems to have a light sarcastic tone throughout regarding software development projects. Besides scanning each individual page, is there a way to turn this book into a digital format? I'd like to release a pdf so others can enjoy it too.

>>944 Inside

>>945 Back

>>944 I'm jelly of the Go gopher.

>>945 That's absolutely beautiful.

>>944 >>945 >>946 Thanks, mate. Would you kindly scan all the pages into a pdf for the internets?

>>978 I'll have to find a scanner first, but when I do I'll post it here and throw some torrents up I'm sure.

hosting a few http://f.uubmub.com/books/

Has anyone ever read "Accelerated C++"? Obviously not something everyone should read but I didn't want to make a thread just for one book. I am planning on reading it after working with C for almost a year.

Need a list of the greatest books on C of all time, preferably including C99/C11 and GNU/GCC features.

>>2445 21st Century C, from O'Reilly. (there's a new edition coming out next month) C A Modern Approach. On top of the classics, this should cover most of what you need.

>>2446 Thanks. I've also been looking for books that depict modern C.

>>2445

>>190 Concerning C++, what is your opinion on >The C++ Programming Language and >Programming - Principles and Practice using C++ Especially in comparison with the often recommended "C++ Primer".

Definitely this.

>>669 Any feedback about this book? I think about buying a hard copy of it. I'm not a CS student nor did I ever program anything relevant but I already have a basic grasp of the language and would like to master it to… well, code stuffs

>>2466 Don't even bother. The most advanced thing you can do with C++ is template metaprogramming, but it's hardly used in actual code and is implemented better in other langs like Lisp and D.

>>2892 You can read it online for free, so you can check it out yourself. I've read maybe half of it, it's mostly about how can one use it in real life, using the Core libraries. It's nice and there are lots of examples. I doubt there are any other similar books for OCaml so if you are serious about the language you should definitely read it.

>>2895 Oh, and it's about the language and libraries, so if you want to learn how to program (algorithms and stuff), it probably won't help.

>>2896 Thanks. I started to take a look at it, and yeah, it doesn't seems targeted at beginners, so I think I will use something like "OCaml from the Very Beginning" or this one alongside : http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/index.html I don't know about the translation but back in the days I learned a lot about ocaml with this book. It can be read online or downloaded as a pdf file. Still not a book targeted at total beginners in programming though.

I was wondering, is there any good book that covers lisp and AI?

>>2931 I like you. I've always considered software development a metaphysical activity.

>>2934 I like you to. Take the snake by its head and the tail is covered.

>>2936 What do you think of >>1594 ? >API design is a metaphysical exercise. >We attempt to capture the very essence of the world and represent it as code. >In order to capture that essence, one should be mentally fluent in the disciplines that underlie the problem domain. >How can we pass knowledge on to the computer if we don't have the knowledge in the first place? >Computers require mathematical precision, general notions and ideas are not enough. >Our API reflects our understanding of the problem domain. >The less we understand about it, the more paralyzed we are, and the more tempting it is to take the easy way out and just hack it up. >The problem domain itself might be a hack.

>>2939 Not torturing physical body and mind is part of problem domain. (deleted wall of text, this gets too much complicated for plain text discussion)

>>237 Any more programmer "culture" books like this out there? Can be from any era. Although it's outdated I can relate to the anecdotes in this book and that era and some of the examples even still work.

>>3003 Better than it sounds, and it is not using "hacker" in the infosec sense. Has a lot of fascinating stories from the 50s, 60s MIT culture.

i have "C Programming: A Modern Approach 2nd edition". it was a pretty nice book, whatever it's worth coming from a /g/tard

This shows how to apply math to reason about algorithms and create bug free code. Very good, even outside of prolog. Edsger Dijkstra's "a discipline of programming" feels like the SICP of structured programming too. Both great books!

>>2466 C++ pls don't anon. stay away for your own good.

>>3908 The array reasoning stuff in there is particularly nice.

The first is a rather invaluable book for Common Lispers. You can find it in a different form in the Hyperspec, but I prefer going through the book, as it seems to be easier, at least for me. You can't keep all of Common Lisp in your head, so you'll find yourself coming back to it rather frequently. Unfortunately, my physical copy is damaged, so I've been reading most of it online. I'll probably just order a new copy and hope for the best. Hyperspec: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/index.htm CLtL 2: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/cltl2.html The second and third are books by Ted Nelson of Project Xanadu fame. I haven't read either of these yet, but I plan to order copies when I can, perhaps near the holidays, as they seem to be hard to get and not completely available online. Furthermore, the third is actually dos-a-dos binding, which is sure to be interesting to read and own in a physical collection. http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/LiteraryMachines.html http://hyperland.com/LibPage

>>194 There's a free ebook related to this, though they use the context of game and game tools programing. http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html

This thread was supposed to be about essential books for programmers, not just 'good enough' whose covers you can post without any explanations. Bad thread.

>>3915 Keep in mind that CLTL2 was published mid-ANSI specification, so there are some things that don't represent most Common Lisp implementations.

>>839 For a damn good reason. You never know when it's gonna be some hippy web dev soykaf.

>>3930 Sweet fuarrrking books soykaflord

>>3943 Yes. I forgot to mention that. I asked around and you can get simple lists of corrections. Paul Graham's annotations: https://www.cs.northwestern.edu/academics/courses/325/readings/graham/graham-notes.html Converting CLtL2 to ANSI CL: https://web.archive.org/web/20130807175341/http://bc.tech.coop/cltl2-ansi.htm

uubmub.com/books

>>3909 Programming newb here, what's wrong with C++ besides being a total mindfuarrrk? I thought it was the standard language for game design because of portability and general purpose programming.

>>3970 The syntax is pretty soykaf and there are many quirks for which you should always watch out. However, there's nothing wrong if you use it correctly. Read a book like C++ Primer, watch a few keynots on C++11 and C++14 and you'll be fine.

>>3971 Thanks for clarifying

>>3973 Surely, C++ is really powerful and can be used very efficiently, specially in areas such as gamedev where performance is critical. But by using it you run the risk of shooting your own foot. When actually developing a large system, you should restrain the C++ to the actual product development, and use python or (better yet) Common lisp for design and prototyping (though not for actual benchmarking)

>>2466 I read that book, but about 4 chapters are impossible to do on Linux.

>>3975 Or just write the damn thing in Common Lisp.

>>3978 Or C + Guile.

very good book to understand threading, multiprocessing, mutual exclusion, memory allocation etc.

>>3975 Hm, I kind of disagree. Design and prototype in the language you want to use, otherwise it becomes a silly translating chore to use your prototype, and depending on what languages you're going to/from the prototype may be written much differently. If you can't think clearly enough in a language to prototype, then that's a good sign you shouldn't be writing in it. You may lose more time to debugging, of course, but that will get you a head start on debugging the exact problems you will run into when making the software. You obviously want to write/draw out a basic program structure ahead of time rather than blindly charging ahead. Not a C++ programmer, I just think it's silly to prototype in any language other than the one you want to use.

>>4137 >Hm, I kind of disagree. Design and prototype in the language you want to use, otherwise it becomes a silly translating chore to use your prototype, and depending on what languages you're going to/from the prototype may be written much differently. But the prototype shouldn't evolve into your actual program - the prototype is just that: a hastily-written hacked-together rough demonstration of what you want, so you can see if it works out or not. Armed with that knowledge you then go ahead and write a decent program.

>>4138 Sounds like a waste of time for me. What is the purpose of writing such demonstrative prototype and then rewrite it from scratch? because python / common lisp / whatever is easier? Right, but rewriting from these languages to C / C++ takes a lot of time and IMO writing in "harder" language from beginning would be faster.

>>4139 You rewrite the prototype anyway, the source language is irrelevant in how long that takes.

>>4140 Why start over when you can refactor?

>>4144 The idea of a prototype is to just get a rough idea of what things are like, you don't write them nicely, or in a way that's conducive to further development, you write them quickly.

>>4145 Yeah, but why start over when you can refactor?

>>4134 http://uubmub.com/books/linux/linux-system-programming.v2.pdf

Masters of DOOM. Because it gives you that thrill of being a programmer solving amazing problems and having fun. also id software was awesome

Are there any outstanding books on Smalltalk?

>>4775 You could try Squeak by Example.

Does anyone have a pdf of "Schemer's Guide" 2nd ed?

>>2466 Of the 3 the only one I have read is The C++ Programming Language. Reading it and doing the exercises really made me as C++ developer. If you're serious about the language (e.g. trying to get a job) then it is definitely worth reading. Make sure you read more advanced C++ books as well such as Effective C++ which gets into things like virtual constructors and multiple dispatch. I'm surprised no one has mentioned this book yet: Programming Pearls. The thing I liked most about it is it is incredibly down to earth and practical. Everything is put in terms of how you would use it and why. There is math but it's math applied to real world problems. It's a nice break from many of the abstract academic books you find around.

>>201 Never got the hype for this. Anywho back on topic, this entire sequence of books.

>>5619 >>201 >Never got the hype for this. Before I read Learn you a Haskell for Great Good the closest I came to functional programming was playing around with Boost Lambda, Bind, Spirit, Phoenix etc. I guess that experience gave me a clue that there was this whole other side to programming that I never knew existed and didn't really understand. More or less at that point LYAHFGG completely blew my mind away (Quick Sort in less than 10 lines of code. So beautiful). My day job is still C and C++ but I get so much more out of it now. Maybe you're just not ready for it yet. Or maybe you already know all about FP and it's not really news to you. This book was a big deal for me at least.

>>5624 >Quick Sort in less than 10 lines of code. So beautiful It's not *actually* QuickSort, because Haskell lists are linked lists. To do it in-place on an array is uglier.

>>190 All these books i cant read

>>5634 >It's not *actually* QuickSort, because Haskell lists are linked lists. To do it in-place on an array is uglier. Where did you hear quicksort must be an in place sort?

>>5640 where did you hear haskell isn't soykaf? the haskell quicksort has the wrong algorithmic complexity, it performs worse than O(n log n), so it's not quicksort - it's soykafsort.

>>221 Sitting on my desk right now, it's a pretty nice set.

>>5644 Are you talking about this? That's definitely O(n log n) in time. qsort [] = [] qsort (x:xs) = let (ys, zs) = partition (< x) xs in qsort ys ++ x : qsort zs where

>>5644 >the haskell quicksort has the wrong algorithmic complexity, it performs worse than O(n log n), so it's not quicksort - it's soykafsort. >big O notation Big O notation measures the growth of steps required, not the growth of time required. See the graph that plots access time against size of a linked list? It's a log graph. That's O(√N). http://www.ilikebigbits.com/blog/2014/4/21/the-myth-of-ram-part-i

>>5653 >partition Wow, that makes more sense than two list comprehensions.

Is it recommended to read a programming book before a language book? Something to get you in the mindset of programming? A theoretical foundation to it? I am looking for something like this.

>>5660 *for beginners, btw

im sure this is wasted on you guys but https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2h0j2/real_quicksort_in_haskell

https://wiki.haskell.org/Introduction/Direct_Translation

how about a list of essential papers published by computer scientists

>>6039 http://paperswelove.org

Are there any good references for how Windows works? I know a great deal about Linux architecture but I realized recently I know next to nothing about the NT or DOS internals, despite using it for the better part of two decades before switching to Linux.

To get a perspective on sane, powerful OOP: The Art of the Metaobject Protocol Object Oriented Programming: The CLOS Perspective Though, if you end up having to go back to something like Python or Java, you'll want to kill yourself.

>>4134 I'm kinda new to programming, I learnt python and had good experience solving problems both in and out of class, and doing small programs such as games and such, and now I'm learning C. I'm also a linux user and I've played around with configs and such things. Is this book for me, if my objective is to better understand my system? If not, what skills should I improve or what should I learn before reading it?

Just got these in today. Both are pretty good. The Windows Internals one is scratching an itch to learn about Windows guts I've had for a while.

>>4775 Kent Beck's book on Smalltalk patterns is a must read even if you never use Smalltalk

>>194 While it does help to have a common terminology for program constructs, reading about design patterns too early does more harm than good. Software is not "made of" design patterns, patterns are something to ease communication between programmers. Beginners often misunderstand this. Just like you don't approach the task of writing a movie script with: "Gee, what tropes should I use in this one?" Also, these design patterns are biased towards Java-like languages. Some of them make no sense in another language.

>>836 gr8 b8 m8

Is scip still worth a read today? I'm looking to improve the way I think about programming and algorithms, far too often i feel like I'm writing through trial and error. I'd also lap recite an opportunity to get back Into Lisp.

>>6633 Yes, it's definitely worth a read, and it will be for quite some time. The basic idea of SICP is that of stratified design so it should help with your specific problem.

>>6634 Thanks, I read through the start this morning, while it's all been covering things I already know, it's amazingly well written and quite interesting.

>>6359 Thanks, it was very good.

Not sure if everyone needs to read it, but this is probably one of the most entertaining programming related things I've read.

>>7044 this is an interesting read. shame about what happened to why. here's another excellent Ruby book if your into that sort of thing.

>>3922 Underrated book, got it in print because it's handy to have as a reference. This truly is what every game programmer should read.

Hackers Delight is a good book, it covers some of the fun parts of programming. But there is quite a lot of math in it. But nevertheless it is a good one.

>>3922 How does one wget a book like this? I've found lots of books in this online format but couldn't download them appropriately.

>>7073 $ wget -mk -w 20 http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html That should work in theory

>>7073 For the ones that get actually published i would recommend getting an epub version instead, but >>7074 works.

>>7074 Wouldn't that download the "about" page and all the links on it? That was my problem with wget, I'll see if I find a nice UI or a wrapper for it. >>7075 Sure, happens that this particular one is paywalled.

>>7077 >paywalled Topkek as they say. Though let it be said that i encourage you paying if you enjoy it.

>>7077 >I'll see if I find a nice UI or a wrapper for it. I understand that a good UI will go miles, but dependence on a UI for ease of use is a poor idea IMO.

>>7079 Thanks, did you h4x the site or was it available somewhere else? Because I've been lost since libgen had to shut down. >>7098 I think a good non-CLI UI should be possible, but I haven't checked the ones available. A program providing wget integration with a web browser so you can choose what links to follow would be great for this ad-hoc downloads.

>>7100 >was it available somewhere else Let's just say i know my way around search engines. Books are easy to find when they exist.

>>839 I agree with you but it's because it's not good design. It's "good" design - the sort of crap supported to graphic design blogs enjoyed by people who only picked up the field because they heard it paid well and seemed easier than STEM. Most classic programming books, most books from the 70s in general, had really good design, simple, elegant but provocative and memorable. ie O'reilly's textbooks. People treat them as joke because of the absurd connection, but they're beautiful jokes and respected in design communities with taste. They're definitely going to last for a lot longer than any 'contemporary' style cover.

>>3915 Computer lib is hard to find online? Just look up 'computer lib pdf'. My connection's too slow here to see if they're complete, but I know AAAARG has a definitely full copy. I own the reprint. My friend took his class at chapman and he gave them away, she had no idea who he was and thought he came off as some weird idiot, lol

>>5660 >>5661 I read "How to think like a computer scientist" as my first book, which focuses on Python2. But it talks a lot about "general programming stuff." I thought it was pretty difficult as I had absolutely no programming experience when I read it (I was really young though.) But it's a really good book, there's a new Python3 edition here: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/ I think a book that only has CS theory in it will bore you to death, and it might not teach you that much if you don't know a programming language (so you don't know how to apply the knowledge.) Generally I'd say get a book with pseudocode, but Python is somewhat like executable pseudocode so it fits really well.

>>7136 >I read "How to think like a computer scientist" as my first book the newer version of this (which uses 3) is here: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html

Bump for free-as-in-freedom books

>>7044

>>230 It has a section on Donald Knuth! He dedicated basically his whole life to write his magnum opus "The art of computer programming", which he still hasn't finished yet.

>>7044 beware the array of dwemthy

>>3003 see >>198, which is a pretty good counterpoint to the Unix Hater's Handbook imo.

Starting my sophomore year as a CS major. Which of these books in particular should I purchase and work through this year alongside my coursework? Running Parabola GNU/Linux-libre and most of my experience is in C/C++, if that matters. My primary interest is in systems/systems programming.

>>2931 could you share this book lainon? i cant find it anwhere

only 3 books are really essential: structure and interpretation of computer programs how to design programs concepts, techniques, and models of computer programming you only need to pick one of those three.

part 1

>>8284 Is there a part 2? It seemed like that was implied with your post but you've not posted it.

Was "Introduction to Algorithms" ever posted here?

>>8291 if not, here it is

>>8293 thanks anon!

>>8286 there are a lot of meme books floating around in cs. straight form the recomended readings list for freshman this year

Anything recommended for R?

>>8317 give me a second to switch from my laptop to my tablet, I will dump my collection of R books

>>7065 Going through that at the moment. Here you go lains.

>>8317 Got something just for you here.

>>6422 >Just like you don't approach the task of writing a movie script with: "Gee, what tropes should I use in this one?" Yes you do. http://www.storygrid.com/genres-have-conventions-and-obligatory-scenes/

>>8341 i'm new in the thread and i'm a little confused why this is happening on /lam (rather than /lit) but the storygrid blog seems interesting

>>8314 Anything wrong with the first three? >>8365 Maybe the thread is older than /lit/ and it wasn't moved because it's not about literature.

>>190 >Learning Advanced JavaScript http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/ i'm posting this because it's an online tutorial which links to a book (picture related) which is sadly a bit out of date but i learned JS with it and it was helpful >>8368 >Maybe the thread is older than /lit/ and it wasn't moved because it's not about literature. it's about books every PROGRAMMER should read but the resource ( http://www.storygrid.com/ ) is about writing entertainment books.

>>8382 >Java script ninja But thats a samurai

>>8385 You can see the samurai, but not the ninja, because it's, well, a ninja.

>>8368 >anything wrong with the first three? Don't know about the other two, but Purely Functional Data Structures is an awesome book. Very well written and full of useful insights.

>>8284 >concrete mathematics Haven't personally read it, but its supposed to be a good intro to algorithm writing. probably not meme >The Art of Computer Programming Good algorithm reference. Very well written. Still probably not worth the money considering you can get all most of the info online. not a meme >The Little Schemer and the Seasoned Schemer If the socratic approach works for you, then these two books are as good as a semester introduction to computer science, and will save you time and money not really memes >SICP Good introductory textbook to computer science. Does a good job conveying the mathematical aspect of programming. Requires a background in basic calculus and a pretty decent level of intelligence. meme, but still a good read >The Reasoned Schemer Introduction to logic programming in the spirit of the Little Schemer. Kind of meh. not a meme >Paradigms of AI Haven't read it, but its supposed to be an excellent introduction to AI, as well as an advanced course on Common Lisp and an introduction to Prolog. not a meme >The Art of the Metaobject Protocol Hype. CLOS is cool but doesn't need its own book. obscure meme >Let Over Lambda One of the definitive texts on metaprogramming. Truly a fantastic book, though the author masturbates over Lisp too much not a meme

>>8397 >Paradigms of AI I'm currently reading this one. I'm just starting out but it's pretty good too far. It's kinda dated but still it teaches good programming practice and explains CL pretty well if you already know the basics

>>8397 PAIP is pretty dated on AI, but it's full of incredibly well written programs. It's often recommended when people ask what programs to read.

>>8385 i know, right? i don't even weeb but i know some things about historical warfare i think the cliche picture of ninjas is as wrong as the one "we" have of pirates while the one we have of samurai/ronin is a bit more accurate what i meant to say is that javascript doesn't have many language concepts but those it has you do need to learn if you're going to use JS at all (otherwise you'll suck). Should be extremely easy to find resources to learn online though. You can even scrape it together on S.O.

>>8400 by the way... http://c.1339.cf/vjcaizp.pdf I can't upload it here apparently there's a size limit

>>8407 >Max file size is 35 mb. >42mb slightly too big.

>>8293 legend.

Is SICP worth a read for someone wanting to earn a living in Webdev? I will read it sooner or later at least for fun anyway, but I wondered, in a context where time and money matters, if this was a good idea to spend time trying to read it thoroughly. I want to become a good enough dev to be hired or working on paid projects and contribute to Open Source softwares

>>9089 You're probably better off doing something more webdev specific but SICP is a great read.

>>237 The problem I always had with this book was that they just took potshots from the sidelines, it's easy to criticise, it is much harder to suggest/design/implement something better than what came before

>>9089 no.

https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md

>>9092 >it's easy to criticise, it is much harder to suggest/design/implement something better than what came before There are few things I dislike more than that retort. You don't need to be a chef to tell someone that their cooking is like kicking dead whales down the beach, you just have to have tasted something marginally better. Most of them were using superior systems (e.g. Lisp Machines) that predated the Unix machines that were foisted upon them.

Been looking for pic related for a while. Anyone have any leads?

Are there any books about socket programming that you would recommend reading? I'm asking this because I am programming an irc client for learning purposes.

>>9268 Depends which language. If C, beej.us/guide/bgnet

http://adam.chlipala.net/cpdt/ Very good (and brain-hurting) read, but only if you're into proof assistants (especially Coq). It requires knowledge of Coq. Part II and III are independent and Part III is the easiest.

>>9264 I'll post if I manage to find a PDF or something like that. In the meantime: http://www.scribd.com/doc/25260896/Data-Structures-Algorithms-and-Software-Principles-in-c

>>9268 If you're anal about cross-platform code, I recommend using SDL2 and SDL_net (https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_net/) for sockets. The principles are very similar despite the abstraction, and you get cross-platform code.

>>201 lyahfgg is good, but not the best haskell book I would say. I have gotten a better understanding with Real World Haskell, although I did work through lyahfgg before, so take that as you will.

>>9277 Thanks lainon

>>9279 Agreed. LYAHFGG is a good overview of the language, but doesn't go in depth enough or offer practical examples. Exercises would have been nice aswell.

>>213 Probably the most useful book I own, more of a reference manual for me.

>>9279 >>9287 https://wiki.haskell.org/Typeclassopedia Is a worthy slog. You'll have to read it slowly. Not something for light reading.

>>9275 Thank you!--I had not heard of this one until you dropped it into this part of the Wired.

>>9268 If you want to make a "new" IRC protocol consider ZeroMQ. http://zeromq.org/intro:read-the-manual A zillion bindings--your favorite language is bound to be there.

>>9212 This is a nice recommend, for anyone who gets this, be ready for a "Socratic" question-answer style of book. You don't see this in more recent books.

>>9089 Read the relevant sections AND watch the lectures. It won't help you immediately earn a living in Webdev in any way--but will help you do it better. Think of SICP as the learning of "calculus" before you learn "physics." Wouldn't hurt to do calculus before you start SICP as well. Get books on Ruby on Rails or Node.js or PHP read other people's code until you understand what it means and why they did it wrong. ;)

I'm a lazy fuarrrk and I end up procrastinating a lot unless I have a book near me so I bought SICP, I bought it from the only place witch wasn't 300 bucks in my country but it was the Intructor's manual instead of the standard SICP. Is there any difference between them? It says soykaf like "explain it like this" but other than that the beginning doesn't seems much different.

>>9292 Yeah, I was disoriented at first. I didn't have any prior knowledge, so I was like "is this the solutions manual"? It's an effective format for me - I wish more books followed it.

>>6160 Don't exactly know what you're looking for but LFS in pretty neat. But it depends on what subsystem you want to learn about.LFS is really generalized.

>>10063 Would LFS be useful if you wanted to work on the Linux kernel?

>>10067 not really.

>>8388

Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA!

>>10092 Why not? It would teach someone what a bare minimum working system looks like.

>>10127 sure. it will give you an understanding of how all the pieces fit together but will not prepare you for kernel development.

Any must reads for infosec or network peeps?

Slightly off-topic, as it's not a programming book, but from what I've read of it thus far, I've found the UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook to be of immense utility in learning the ins and outs of sysadmin-type work. Any recommendations for data compression or shell scripting?

>>10092 What would you recommend then?

>>10136 Well if you know C, try reading robert love linux kernel development.

>>10134 It's only a book in name, but you might find the Unix section of the Grymoire to be useful as a shell scripting resource: http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/

>>227 im almost done with mine and i wish i could wipe my memory and start over. i was halfway through this book when i got to go talk to carmack in person.

>>8382 This is deprecated, but a second edition is coming. This is the best modern JS resource: https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

http://it-ebooks.info/book/341/

Got these two beauties in the mail today <3

>>10352 Jelly :3 That Pierce is expensive af.

>>10353 yeah, I got lucky with it, seems to be used but I don't mind

t. Terry

>>10358 nice >>9275 >It requires knowledge of Coq Do you happen to know of a good introduction? I've been getting into formal methods and static analysis and I would like to try my hand at Coq (no pun intended Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA!

>>10360 wut — well something weird happened there with my post

>>10358 Donald Knuth would agree.

>>10361 pointy nose meme smiley is word filtered

I know Paul Graham can get a lot of hate, but his book Hackers and Painters has some interesting insights on computer life and the industry.

Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA!

>>237 Oh joy! Love the illustrations in it. Reminds me of Phil Foglio. >>10377 Really interesting book, must get it! And fuarrrk this modern society where everything is geared for the lowest common denominator of the latest fad. And who is the ultimate "nerd"? Not some NUUURRRDDD. But the ultimate. A doctor. Med students has to cram tomes upon tomes of for years, and that's only the basics. On the other hand, a good doctor is trained to...no, simply forced to...to give simple answers to simple questions. Because the patients themselves are laymen. The doctor must also be able to put himself in the shoes of the patient. Let's say that a patient has a bad elbow from playing tennis the wrong way. The doctor can't treat the patient as a kid who should stop being a dum-dummy. The doctor must understand that for the patient, having a bad elbow is horrible. And on the other hand, the tennis jock can't blurt out that reading is for fags. At least not to the doctor. The doctor and the patient are different but respectful of each other. And because some techies are simply totally worthless at giving simple answers to simple questions, they are by all rights despised. The other day on that other image board, I asked a simple question about a one-shot solution for coding in C. Should be simple yes? Anonymous image board. If you don't know nor care about the question, don't answer. If you know the answer, answer. Or if you aren't sure about what that Anon asked, ask control questions. Not for that image board. I had to drag the answer of Code::Blocks from them. Just because I think that bashing commands on some terminal isn't coding.

>>212 Why the use of braille on the cover?

>>10511 Some design thing. The letters in both braille and binary. Pretty cool.

>>10511 Braille is discussed in the book as an example. The author would wanted to include it, but it costs too damn much.

>>10510 You don't *need* to get it, his book is just a collection of his online essays. The essay in the picture is here: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

>>10518 BTW another cool thing about Graham is that he's a big Lisp advocate. In fact his wealth comes from his 90s start up that was built on Lisp!

>>10519 And he invented the y-combinator too!

>>10518 Thanks, but I'll probably buy it anyway. >>10519 Cool dude! B-) Maybe I'll look into Lisp after getting the hang of C.

>>10520 That was Curry, mate.

Does anyone know of a good book/resource on Make?

>>10758 The documentation from GNU is fantastic (assuming you use gmake). https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html Something like this is good too when starting out. http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/make/ If you're using gcc make sure to generate dependency files too. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11855386/using-g-with-mmd-in-makefile-to-automatically-generate-dependencies

>>944 It seems like you pay someone to do it for relatively cheap. http://1dollarscan.com/pricing.php (I noticed your post is from 5 months ago. Still there lainon?)

>>3908 Will this be very useful for me if I don't know any math beyond pre-calculus?

>>10770 >The documentation from GNU is fantastic This so much. All of the GNU utilities have great manuals.

>>10826 Probably. It's not so much about math as about programming and writing correct-by-design code. Although, if you want something more 'contemporary', give 'Software Foundations' by Benjamin Pierce a go.

Here's part one of an article series talking about good computer, programming and math books. Dude seems passionate about his books: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-one/ sadly, he's only at part 4 (= 20 titles) and that was quite a while ago. He originally intended to talk about a 100 books

Here's part one of an article series talking about good computer, programming and math books. Dude seems passionate about his books: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-one/ sadly, he's only at part 4 (= 20 titles) and that was quite a while ago. He originally intended to talk about a 100 books

>>10850 (accidentally posted in the wrong thread)

Fuck books in the era of the Internet. Just follow tutorials on various websites and you'd be okay. Also, though there are some good ideas in SCIP, its meme statue made it become a brewing soykaf ecxuse.

>>10991 Tutorials teach tools; books teach ideas.

>>10828 It feels like even the man pages are better. I was reading the man page for wget last night and it was beautiful.

Thougths on this one?

>>11001 I enjoyed both that book and its predecessor. They are valuable for learning both Forth and valuable programming practices. I read the updated version from sourceforge and I hope you will too.

Found this on the Gentoomen library. Most of these look good.

>>11518 >LoL >not PCL >two haskell books trash

>>11531 >my opinion > your opinion You should just go back whence you came.

>>6422 “design patterns” are concepts used by people who can’t learn by any method except memorization, so in place of actual programming ability, they memorize “patterns” and throw each one in sequence at a problem until it works

>>6422 Yeah, they are biased towards object-oriented languages in general. In the GoF book the authors say that if we want to implement the patterns in a non-OO language (e.g. a procedural language) we would need to implement the patterns of "inheritance" or "polymorphism" by ourselves. I'm sure functional languages have their own design patterns, for example. >>11542 You could say the same about algorithms, after all a while, a smart student could eventually "discover" quicksort or red-black trees. The thing is that in every craft one builds on what our predecesors built/discovered. To learn design patterns is just a matter of efficiency when solving common problems. "People who can only learn memorizing" have problems waaaay before reaching design patterns, they cannot understand that a while loop can be applied to iterate a linked-list and not only an array, to give a real example.

>>11551 ** Red-black trees when learning about data-structures, obviously. Forgot to add that.

simply based

>>11542 Design patterns are specific ways of organizing a problem that provides the best abstraction to implementation methodology. Often this isnt' born out of a deficit in something personal to an /individual/ but intead gleaned by experience as generally the bets way to represent a problem. Take the MVC pattern. A common pattern that programmers en masse have learned is a generally efficient and less error prone way of dividing the roles an application has. This way you can swap out the View for another should the medium of expressing information changes (i.e. curses interface vs. GUI vs. Web Page). Instead of involving all 3 at the same time, you avoid tight coupling of code. These are just dead simple programming concepts taught at Comp Sci 101/102 levels. Relegating design patterns as "hurr it's for people who can't program in the first place." completely avoids the massive amount of experience put into patterns in general. They're general solutions to general problems, and it says nothing about programmers as a whole (those who use them). That would a sweeping and erroneous generalization.

>>11798 I actually read this and it was not bad at all. Attached is a great continuation after getting some SQL experience.

Dinosaur book not on the list serious bug needed to be fixd

anyone have literate programming by donald knuth?

>>231 Got this in english and swedish, and... >>2466 ...this one in swedish. (Interesting, but I can't understand why Stroustrup insists on printing his code examples in the same font but bold and italic.

>>227 This always makes Romero seem like such a frumpy little turd in my opinion.

>>10358 Silly man, we all know that god only speaks through randomness.

>>10360 I need some harder coq books. I've already taken too many courses of coq. My knowledge isn't so narrow or tight any more that I can be satisfied by only one.

>>12397 You're asking strangers on the internet to direct you to the hardest coq they can find?

>>12398 That sounds so dirty.

>>10360 >Do you happen to know of a good introduction? Benjamin Pierce's 'Software Foundations' is great: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/sf/current/index.html There's a new text in preparation, too, 'Programs and Proofs: Mechanizing Mathematics with Dependent Types' by Ilya Sergey: http://ilyasergey.net/pnp/ It's decent so far. >>12397 Have you read Coq'Art?

>>12397 >>9275

>>12402 >>12406 >People taking this seriously.