Brushing Up
I think I’m going to start going through Joel Sposky’s software text reading list. I’ve already got Code on order.
Anything else you guys would recommend? Remember, the only “programming” that most aeros does in school is some crappy FORTRAN hacking [hey, NASA still uses it], so …
That’s a really good list of books. The Mythical Man-Month book is a must-read and I have a copy of the Rapid Development book and like that book a lot, too, but both of those books are for large-scale development. I’m assuming that nothing you are going to be doing will be on a team of 100 people
The K&R book is absolutely essential if you plan to do any desktop software development. No C programmer worth their salt should be without it.
…and of course, if there’s any language you want to learn, I highly recommend the O’Reilly series.
May 20th, 2005 at 12:53Well, you know what my project thoughts are, Jeff.
I’ve got a few O’Reilly texts, but I always come up to the realization that I’m really baseless for programming concepts that I should know but don’t, so I end up aping things. That’s not really good practice. :sigh:
May 20th, 2005 at 12:58Do you have any good books on Object Oriented Programming? I’ll have to see what I have a home…. I seem to remember the one that I had in my OOP class was really good.
May 20th, 2005 at 13:08No, not really. I’ll look to you and Spencer for recommendations [as well as to Rick and John Wilson].
May 20th, 2005 at 13:10One that is on the list that I can vouch for (as can Jonathan) is Code Complete. I don’t know that it would work for a beginning programmer though.
If at some point you guys come across a good, introductory C++/OOP book, let me know. I’ve got a few co-workers that are just now transitioning into the C++ world. I leared in in college and relied almost completely on lecture.
May 20th, 2005 at 13:24There’s the Knuth “Art of Computer Programming” books that are meant to be quite good. Pricey, but when are computer books ever cheap?
May 20th, 2005 at 21:30Mythical Man Month is a must-read if you’re involved in a multi-man project.
Most of what I learned was from lecture, co-op, and a few school projects. One of the best lecture series I have ever had was actually in my undergrad intro to databases which walked us from requirements through forming an entity-relationship diagram, mapping that into a relational schema, and then normalizing the schema. I’ve used his methodology many times for both database and OO software design. If you’re interested, I could reproduce it.
Other than that, I stick to documentation and code examples. Java has the best documentation in the business. Apache also has some really good documentation. O’Reilly has a number of good “… By Example” books. There’s any number of good patterns books out there.
The K&R Book is essential for C. I kinda feel the same way about Barnestroup’s C++ book, but some people “boo, hiss” at it. The best thing for Java would probably be the tutorials linked off of java.sun.com.
I’m not certain why Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is listed… it’s not specifically oriented towards software… but then again, it’s a broadly applicable book and in any event, I highly recommend it.
May 20th, 2005 at 23:25I’ve already got a great database design text, Spencer, although one reason to go back to school would be to consider a class on set theory. [Maybe I'll be able to sneak that in my EM work. Dunno.]
Brad: thanks for the Knuth pointer. I’ve read about John’s perusal of it, and I know several MSMS alumni who are also great fans of Knuth.
May 21st, 2005 at 11:33Virtual Bookshelf Meme
Dangit, I’ve been tagged by Spencer for one of these foofy meme things. This time, the theme is books, which is something I don’t have a handle on nearly as well as I might, say, my music collection. [No worries: once I finish moving int…
June 5th, 2005 at 12:24Update on Brushing Up
I’ve been chugging through Charles Petzold’s Code, as I said I would, and I’m reallyenjoying it. This should be required reading at MSMS.
July 18th, 2005 at 11:44If everything else on Joel Spolsky’s software reading list is this good … man. …
Code
As I’ve discussed a couple times, I’ve been reading Charles Petzold’s Code I finished just now, and so I’d like to share some scattered thoughts:
Petzold builds slowly but swiftly, if that makes any sense. He divides the…
August 28th, 2005 at 21:22