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Comment by nikcub | Hacker News Reader

I always had an idea of a 'for programmers' series of books for those who know how to program in one language (say, C++, Java or PHP) and wish to pick up a new language

eg. 'python for programmers' would not need the first half of it dedicated to explaining strings, loops etc. and could get straight into it from a programmers perspective - a bit like K&R. You could then dedicate more content to explaining philosophy, design decisions, internals, history, politics (learn all the in-jokes ;)), etc.

this would also be a good format to learn new paradigms, eg. 'functional programming in scheme, for programmers'

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Indeed, I currently get turned off by most books I pick up, simply because they start out on a too basic general level.

If you however dig a little deeper you can usually find stuff that isn't too tutorialish. Like http://www.c-faq.com/top.html which has been an extremely solid resource for me.

I'm hoping to make this book ramp up faster than LPTHW, since I'm assuming people have either read that book or know one programming language already. However, I'm also a big proponent of practicing the syntax even if you think you're an expert already. It just makes things way easier later on.

how about 'if you are proficient at another language, feel free to skip to chapter x'? and put the generalized stuff at that point

If you really are that proficient, you should be able to figure out what you can skip.

I'm not so sure about that. The devil's in the details - you might think you know something well enough to skip it, but get caught out later.

Sometimes due to language discrepancies, skills don't transfer and there is no easy "feel free to skip to chapter x".

For example, a conversant Python programmer's idea of string, and strings in C are 2 different things. A conversant C programmers idea of looping is different from idiomatic looping in Racket(and other lisps).

actually you are right, it completely doesn't work in that example

Moving from Python to C is a very good move. It allows you to go from programming to inner workings, everyone should have a solid knowledge of C since it give you the tools to identify and correlate aspects of other languages to reality.

I don't understand what "practicing the syntax" means (language barrier?), but I'm not suggesting that I've stopped learning, which I never will.

Different people learn differently. Some people don't like to practice the trivial practice stuff, and prefer to breeze through the beginning, read through new material, and then take on some real project.

Rich Hickey, recently in an interview, said he doesn't do programming exercises - he is not interested in programs which don't make the computer do something useful, interesting, or both.

I, for one, type the trivial examples. Or else, I simply forget how to use them. For example, you have list comprehensions in Python, Racket, F# and if you ask me to do a list comprehension right now without looking up the reference, the only one I will get right is Python. I recently started learning F# and didn't type much code; so the concept is known, but since I didn't practice the syntax, I will have to learn it again.

That's what he means by practicing syntax.

Got it.

I wouldn't however say that the complexities of C is it's syntax (unless you're playing around with macros : ) ). But I guess the concept can be applied broadly, like remembering functions, headers and other language specifics.

Personally, I hope that this book will work for people who don't already know a programming language. C seems like a great first language to learn if only because (if taught well) it exposes a large number of the underlying details of how programs actually run on a system.

"eg. 'python for programmers' would not need the first half of it dedicated to explaining strings, loops etc."

Mark Pilgrim's http://diveintopython.org/ is what you describe.

While not a book, the Ruby website does have a "Ruby from Other Languages" page that seems similar to what you describe.

> this would also be a good format to learn new paradigms

Or you could have books dedicated to a paradigm, such as functional programming, and have examples in many languages that all serve to drive home a specific point (this is how you make something tail-recursive, perhaps), pointing out how each language is both similar and different.

"The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan and Pike is somewhat close to what I want, but is not it.

I know what you mean, it took me multiple books and articles to pick up functional programming. 'Seven Languages in Seven Weeks' was a good book - as is the K&P book you mention, but something complete that can teach an existing non-func programmer from the ground up, possibly using multiple languages, would be great

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