Ask Yc: What is a Good Book to Read Before Learning a Programming Language? | Hacker News Reader

Ask Yc: What is a Good Book to Read Before Learning a Programming Language?

5 pointsmannylee114 comments

I have dabbled in server side Programming Languages here and there, but I would now like to thoroughly learn a new language. Before I do that,what would be a good book to read?

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You need to tell us which language you want to learn. Otherwise it's like saying "I want to learn sports" -- amateur curling and professional football are very different sports. Windows programmers, Mac/iPhone programmers, server-side programmers, Javascript programmers, enterprise Java programmers, and Linux kernel hackers need to focus on different things.

In the absence of details, all we can recommend is basic mental conditioning for programmers. A standard piece of advice is "SICP". Another is "K&R". Eric Raymond's essay on "How to Become a Hacker" is a little dated and a little opinionated, but worth reading. "Learn emacs" (or, to be fair to vi and Textmate, "learn a decent text editor") is a piece of advice that I'm glad I followed.

You cannot go wrong by learning the basics of databases and web application architecture. The architecture of web apps is more important than the choice of server-side language. If it weren't so dated I'd recommend Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing. For a more up-to-date version of that, you might try the required texts for this MIT course: http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/one-term-web

I would like to learn Erlang, but am looking for a general Computer Science/Programming book. A book that will explain some of the fundamentals behind computer programming no matter what the language.

It's essential that you complete Isaac Asimov's I, Robot for a thorough understanding of how badly things can get out of control.

I think maybe you've just seen the movie, and been misled into thinking you know what Asimov's robot stories were about. I, Robot the book, has no bad consequences (likewise almost all of the other Robot novels...excepting the bit with the mind-reading robot and the 0th law leading to interesting results for planet earth...but it was still all for the good of mankind). The robots were all basically the good guys.

oh yeah I forgot about the part where there was absolutely no conflict in any of the novels

I'm not sure I understand how the existence of conflict has anything to do with my statement. You said, "how badly things can get out of control", and my recollection of the robot novels (and I, Robot, in particular) pretty much universally includes a few humans getting out of control and robots helping other humans put things right again. I don't see how your comment (either of them, actually) makes sense in that context.

Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

A great book for a good read - thoroughly recommended on principal but I think this specific request calls for something a bit more fundamental to the task of acquiring that programming language.

Well, if the 'specific request' had been in any way shape or form 'specific', maybe. It wasn't, so I recommended something that's a great hacker book in any case:-)

I just plowed through the first 113 pages of "Anathem", a great read so far. I think this is a good book to read before programming to understand the downsides to the "syntactic" machines.

I hope this helps

Try "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan & Pike (you can download it here: http://truly-free.org/e/n/Kernighan,%20B.W.%20&%20Pike,%...).

Read http://norvig.com/21-days.html .

spend $12 at Amazon on a copy of Charles Petzold's book, Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

It will all begin to make sense as you will have a thorough understanding of what is going on at the lowest level. You will never regret acquiring that knowledge.

Design Patterns

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