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Comment by maayank | Hacker News Reader

What are some 'must have' (and 'must read' ;) ) O'Reilly books for programmers and entrepreneurs?

You might like to read my book, The Geek Atlas, which contains many places related to the history of computing.

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do

Already have it and already visited the place in Ireland and many of the places in England based on it :-) Visiting Bletchley Park was a true formative experience for me and Alexander Fleming's lab also really hit a chord with me, recalling me reading and learning about him in my childhood. Thank you for a great book and guide (and the science explanations inside are very nice as well) :-)

In my last trip to Germany I truly enjoyed Konrad Zuse Museum[1] in Hünfeld. Many descriptions are in German, but I can truly recommend it, especially if you're with a German speaker (but even without, there are models and artifacts). Not many people (me included) know about the dawn of computer science behind Britain and the US, so it was very interesting and refreshing.

[1] http://www.zuse-museum-huenfeld.de/

edited for more information.

Thanks for the nice review.

I really must visit the Zuse museum. When I was working in Munich I saw some of his hardware in the Deutsches Museum. Very interesting.

Depends on what you're into, but from the database angle:

Learning SQL is a really excellent intro, and probably covers the majority of what your average developer is going to ever need to know about SQL ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596520847.do )

SQL and Relational Theory gives you more background on relational theory - basically gives a more academic background for existing practitioners of SQL. Date is pretty dry author with a few hangups, but it's largely good solid stuff ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022879.do )

Oracle Essentials is a good solid introduction to Oracle, and gives a useful bit of background on how database management systems work ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596514549.do )

For other subjects:

Code Complete needs little introduction ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780735619678.do )

I've only just started reading Version Control with Git, but it seems pretty good so far, and is well-reviewed ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596520137.do )

Since you seem to know your database books, is there anything you can tell me about Date's latest, "Database Design and Relational Theory"[1]?

[1]: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025276.do

I've not read the book so can't comment on it specifically, but I can tell you about Date, who is an eminent author in the field. His 'An Introduction to Database Systems' is perhaps the best book to read if you want to get an idea of how DBMSs work internally. Anyway:

- He really dislikes SQL (His books often use Tutorial D, which is a language Date created to represent what a good relational query language would look like).

- He really hates the use of null values.

- He's of an academic bent - dryish, but still perfectly readable.

- I would say that he tends to gloss over performance issues that get in the way of ideal database schema design, viewing them as implementation issues (which is true, but in reality, all DBMS products have weaknesses, and at some point you'll probably have to make compromises in your schema design).

With this said, I would read his book. He'll tell you the best way to do things, if you ignore performance. This puts you in a good position to start out from a pure, ideal implementation from which you can compromise when you have to. I much prefer this to a less-educated ad-hoc approach.

I don’t know about must-read ones, but here are a few No Starch and O’Reilly titles that stand out from a quick look at my library:

No Starch, Eloquent JavaScript. A Modern Introduction to Programming: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781593272821.do

No Starch, The Book of CSS3: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781593272869.do

O’Reilly, bash Cookbook: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596526788.do

O’Reilly, CSS: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596802455.do

O’Reilly, JavaScript: The Good Parts: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do

O’Reilly, Mastering Regular Expressions, 3rd Edition: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596528126.do

O’Reilly, The Art of SEO, 2nd Edition: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920019091.do

I've heard nothing but good things about Javascript: The Good Parts, so I'm picking up a copy.

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