Recommended Reading List for Developers [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Recommended Reading List for Developers [pdf]

noggin.intel.com

161 pointsnkurz60 comments

I know people say this all the time, but I nearly did not click the link, because it said scribd.

It turns out it's a pdf served at this address, along with another link to scribd in the brackets:

https://noggin.intel.com/sites/default/files/Intel-Recommend...

"I think the title should read [pdf] and [scribd]"

I'll bite - what's wrong with scribd ? (besides the fact you might "stumble" upon documents you're not supposed to read)

It's still very slow. They have improved in this regard, but the original performance was so bad that saying that is not a compliment. There's a pdf viewer built in to firefox now, which in my opinion is superior. With noscript, the text is not formatted correctly. With noscript off there's a banner across the screen, "download full view" etc. This banner is rendered correctly in chromium but not my version of iceweasel, where it is about an inch down from the address bar and obscures the text. Pages after the first one don't appear until some time after scrolling down. Finally scribd want me to sign in to download a pdf. I'm not sure what you mean by "stumble across documents I'm not supposed to read".

The last time I've checked, the worst thing was that it demands money once the document is old enough(!) Then, it required from you to have an account just to download the document. Finally, it didn't work without Javascript. For me, instead of adding value, it reduces it, so I decided to avoid it to save my time.

I know Scribd is a Y Combinator's company.

Not just Javascript but Javascript from about a dozen different hosts last time I tried it and quite a few of them seemed to be required. I avoid it too.

> I'll bite - what's wrong with scribd ?

For a platform that is supposed to enable the user to read documents online, it fails by not enabling the user to, you know, read documents online. Oh, sure, sometimes I might get lucky and be able to read the first 4 of 37 slides without the application stopping to respond or crashing my tab.

JavaScript, holds PDFs hostage, adds zero value (my browser can display PDFs just fine, thank you very much), operates a business based on copyright violation.

It used to have a really obnoxious and entirely useless UI around the actual document. But recently links to scribd point to plain PDF so I made my peace with it.

I think moving the scribd link to the right of the source domain might help. Something like this:

http://i.imgur.com/PAElgoK.png

http://i.imgur.com/GPa0DS8.png (Standard browser zoom level)

That makes it a bit more clear that it's a different source for the same document.

I agree that that would be way better.

Isn't this done automatically with all submitted PDFs? At least I seem to recall that there is some integration between HN and Scribd (YC '06 incidentally, which might explain it), but there's nothing in the FAQ or anything.

An alternative is Google Viewer: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https://noggin.intel.com/...

It reminds me of the blog post: "A Complete Understanding is No Longer Possible" [http://prog21.dadgum.com/129.html]

I think we now have to settle for "a pretty good understanding of a lot of things, just never the things you immediately need."

This is why I still like old Unix systems (early BSD/v7 etc). It is possible to get a complete understanding of the system in a relatively short amount of time and they're still pretty productive.

xv6 reflects this from an educational perspective: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2012/xv6.html

Reading the link felt like watching a movie that gets interesting and stops midway. I wanted a bit more, i hope the author expands on the article & turns it into a longform one.

I am slightly disappointed by the list - for example C# threading is a book from 2003 and .NET has evolved a lot since then (Task, async, etc.). There are other, more recent books that represent current state of art in C#. Perhaps the reading list shouldnt state the year for which it is intended for?

The more current one is a free web resource http://www.albahari.com/threading/. You maybe come across that already. I like it.

Thank you so much for that link! I didn't know this site yet.

Concurrent Programming on Windows by J. Duffy is a great place to start, followed by the latests edition of In Depth or Nutshell..

What's everyone's recommended readings? I'm halfway through thinking forth at the moment and want to keep the ball rolling!

I'm reading Programming in Scala. The free online, out of date but good enough to help you decide to go further or not first edition. I have the scala repl open alongside. Never programmed in Scala, don't know that I ever will, but it's interesting. http://www.artima.com/pins1ed/

I'm also re-reading Niven's Ringworld series, as a bridgehead to the rest of his Known Space material; I've never gone beyond Ringworld before. I'm in the third book at the moment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space

What's everyone's recommended readings? I'm halfway through thinking forth at the moment and want to keep the ball rolling!

Not so much hardcore technology stuff, but here's a reading list I put together a while back, aimed at IT executives, CIOs, etc.

http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/05/10-essential-reads-for-c...

http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2013/05/essential-reading-for-it...

Not on that list (I had not read it at the time), but one I'd highly recommend is Eric Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth. http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Wealth-Remaking-Economics/d...

Very cool. Not a topic I'd usually peruse so I appreciate the suggestions!

http://www.offete.com/files/zeneForth.htm

For a beginner's introduction to C++, I really liked Koenig and Moo's Accelerated C++. It's from 2000, I don't know if there's a newer edition.

Speaking of Koenig, I also like his C Traps and Pitfalls (1989).

Sedgewick's Algorithms is excellent. My copy is 30 years old, but I know there are newer editions. I believe it's multi-volume now.

I liked two by Richard Stevens: Unix Network Programming and Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment.

And I like Bentley's Programming Pearls.

These are all old, but I'm old. :-)

Addenda: I've really liked everything I've read by Brian Kernighan. K&R is my favorite programming book bar none.

Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences by Bevington and Robinson. Very approachable introduction.

div grad curl and all that by Schey. Read it before taking Fields, instead of after like I did.

Looks like C++ got a bit of an upgrade in the canon...

The Programming Language Bjarne Stroustrup

ISBN 9780321563842

Besides the update on the official book, Bjarne has written a new one that teaches how to write modern and secure C++, instead of using the unsafe C underpinnings.

A Tour of C++

ISBN-10: 0321958314 ISBN-13: 978-0321958310

http://www.stroustrup.com/Tour.html

Planning to switch from c to c++; I'm really exited to read this.

@commenter: The word switch doesn't have to rely on relevance between subjects it is referring to. It has more to do with the speed of changing the direction.

i suggest you phrase it 'planning to learn c++' - there's hardly any switching from C if you plan to write modern C++, because there's hardly any C in it.

That has been my problem with C++. When I took my classes that used it[1], the ink was still wet on the original standard. After that, I spent years writing real-time C, with the occasional foray into "C with classes" territory. I can't seem to shake that foundation and "learn" C++ again.

[1] I'm an EE/borderline CompE so I only had three.

I got into C++ around 1993, after a brief contact with C, comming from Z80, 68000, Turbo Basic/Turbo Pascal.

C++ gave me a stronger type system and the abstraction capabilities to write safe code, namespaces as poor man module system.

Given what I was already used to from former languages, I never liked pure C. Did used it lots of times when requested to do so, though.

I laughed. Glad somebody else noticed that.

Are there any other recommended reading lists? (For example for web development/windows programming etc.)

I am certain you will find any number of lists, narrow and broad, on Reddit, GoodReads, LibraryThing, O'Reilly (blog posts), Amazon listmania, StackOverflow, HN etc.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-content-search/results/re...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=reddit+web+programming

Some stackoverflow tags have a really good info tab, e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/tags/scala/info

Others, not so much: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/web/info

Hacker News: https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22reading+lis...

There are some good books in there for embedded/firmware engineers. "Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software" and "Multi-Core Embedded Systems" look interesting.

Hennessy and Patterson is in its 5th edition. That makes me feel old. I can only vouch for earlier editions, but this is a good book.

(I'm only familiar with the 1st and 2nd editions of this book, and of the two, I greatly prefer the 1st. The 2nd has a lot more information (and of course is somewhat more up-to-date), but that only seems to hide the more significant information. More complete is not always better.)

On page 4: > The Programming Language, 4th Edition > Bjarne Stroustrup

I guess they love C++ if it's the programming language!

Am I to presume that this list carries as much validity as most other "recommended reading" lists?

/which is to say, books which most working in the field didn't read to get into the field, don't read during the actual job, and probably aren't going to read except maybe as a reference chapter here or there?

Yes. I looked at the software dev list; I only skimmed it, but none that I saw were books I read, or books I'd care to read, despite being in the field for 4 years now, and being a fairly passionate learner in terms of new techniques, technologies, languages, and methodologies.

EDIT: Correction; I see Code Complete.

With only four years' experience I'd expect you to know little about any of the fields on this list. I'm surprised you found nothing of interest, unless you are only focused on web stuff.

I assume these are intended specifically for Intel employees (i.e., targeting technologies and areas they have internally), rather than for any positions located elsewhere. And there, possibly meant more as a reference than a teaching tool.

No reading on Bluetooth Low Energy?

A surprisingly low-quality, diluted, conformist list of mostly boring and outdated books. You can't expect much innovation to come from a team reading this. I scanned through the list 3 times looking for something of value, but nothing caught my eye. Disappointed by Intel.

What would you recommend instead?

See, that's part of the problem. It's not at all clear what this list aimed to accomplish, which explains the low quality of the result. You want me to recommend a book? Sure. Read Hemingway.

Reminds me of my response when someone on the street with a clipboard says "Can I give you some literature?" I'll sometimes answer "Sure, do you have any Steinbeck?"

Define low-quality, boring and outdated in this context, and provide alternatives.

I am waiting.

Keep waiting.

Well, Java Concurrency in Practice certainly isn't low quality but it is boring and outdated. An alternative would be Clojure For the Brave And True :)

Java may be outdated, but "Java Concurrency in Practice" is not outdated if you're one of the millions of Java programmers still working in that language.

Well, yeah. My point, made somewhat tongue in cheek, was that you can avoid all of the horror stories of Java concurrency by switching to Clojure.

Only if you think Clojure is the natural progression of Java. This seems like a minority view though.

The point is to get the reader ahead of the curve! It's not really Java they're suggesting you learn: it's concurrency. Once you learn concurrency in one language, much of your understanding carries forward to other languages.

Intel has told us multicore is the future. They're trying to get you ready for it. Less certain is whether Java or Clojure will be the new cool thing.

Android books from 2012 for one. Alternative would be recent Linux for Embedded Systems or anything else besides teaching you ICS API

That's not on Amazon. Do you mean "Building Embedded Linux Systems"? Or, are you referring to a self-published (or not yet published) book?

Only Android Book I would get is "The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development[1]" as it comes with continuous updates. It's also by one of the most knowledgeable app developers in the Android Community. It's worth it alone for how much he cares about backporting within the book and not just supporting the latest versions of Android.

Android development has not drastically changed since ICS, but there's enough that changes still that I would be reluctant to waste money on a book that does not update regularly.

[1] http://commonsware.com/Android/

Code Complete is a great book.

Sorry bro, not everyone is beasting out JavaScript.

"Conformist"? Is this high school or something?

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