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Ask HN: What programming/technical books do you wish existed?
Any experiences where you became unproductive while using a language or technology, wasting time googling, reading multiple blog posts on the topic, trying to fill in the blanks?
- afarrell 12y agoI have yet to see a good long detailed but highly readable guide to writing documentation, especially one that explained how to test it for understandability.
- theblueadept 12y agoYou'd think/hope that a guide for that topic would be highly readable.
- afarrell 12y agoI've seen lots of style guides, but most of them act like writing documentation and editing it are the same process. And so they will give advice on what not to do like "eliminate unnecessary words", but none on how to actually begin explaining the structure of a new codebase or an old one.
- cottonseed 12y agoI'm reminded of this MathOverflow thread: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53036/books-you-would-like-to-read-if-somebody-would-just-write-them http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53036/books-you-would-like... I couldn't find an analogous StackExchange thread. If you start one, please follow up here.
- V-2 12y agoI think it would get closed quickly. It would be an "idea box" type of question and they are frowned upon on Programmers StackExchange, because there is no right answer.
- cottonseed 12y agoThat's too bad. The big-list questions on MO are some of my favorite.
- ufmace 12y agoI'd like to see more guides for how to get started with a particular language for someone who is already an experienced developer in another language. It seems to be true for pretty much every language that most of the guides for learning them are written for novice developers, and most of the rest are in-depth description and discussion on how tricky parts of the language work. Especially something with good background information, like how the language and ecosystem around it is different from other languages, what the choices are for IDEs and syntax-aware editors and some pros and cons, what the good language-specific resources and references are, the best ways to do debugging and deployment, etc.
- V-2 12y agoYes, exactly. I wrote my comment before I read yours. Repasting it here... I wish there were more books and series like "Language A for language B programmers". Whenever I'm trying to learn a new language, I have to sift through resources and filter out all the fluff which stems from an assumption it is my FIRST programming language and tries to teach me what a for loop is. What's more, one's proficiency in language A can be leveraged by explaining some constructs of language B in terms of concepts that exist in A, pointing out specific traps, caveats, "false friends" etc. I mean something like this: http://appendto.com/2010/10/how-good-c-habits-can-encourage-bad-javascript-habits-part-1/ http://appendto.com/2010/10/how-good-c-habits-can-encourage-... http://blog.boyet.com/blog/javascriptlessons/?p=5 http://blog.boyet.com/blog/javascriptlessons/?p=5 Or this: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/Content/Devs/CsToCpp-ASomewhatShortGuide.pdf http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/Content/Devs/CsToCpp-ASomew... Favorite quote: Templates are sort of like .NET generics except that they aren't. :))
- ufmace 12y agoGood links. I was actually writing a blog post on entry-level Javascript. A lot of that stuff looks relatively high-level, though - interesting, but not something that's very applicable until you've gotten a decent understanding of Javascript basics.
- alok-g 12y agoIndeed. Here is one resource that has helped me though it does not cover everything you have mentioned (which I miss too): http://learnxinyminutes.com/ http://learnxinyminutes.com/ I find python's documentation to be the worst in this regard (I would love to hear that I am wrong) -- I can never get anything to work using just the documentation; I always end up needing stack-overflow or Google searches. More than a book, I would like reduction in fragmentation around programming language tools, libraries and platforms.
- EliRivers 12y agoA decent guide to using perf, with a number of carefully selected use-cases with example commands and outputs. That said, I have Brendan Gregg's "Systems Performance" on my shelf here edging towards the top of the "needing to be read" stack. His flamegraphs were embarrassingly useful and the few examples his webpages give punch well above their weight. Maybe everything I need is in there.
- noblethrasher 12y agoWe have plenty of literature devoted to the topic of building “web-scale” applications. I would love to have books that discuss the tricks that you have at your disposal when you know that your application will never need to accommodate more than, say, 50K users.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- 6d0debc071 12y ago> Any experiences where you became unproductive while using a language or technology, wasting time googling, reading multiple blog posts on the topic, trying to fill in the blanks? Yes, when trying to bridge between first learning to program the little text applications and trying to program something more useful was the worst time for that. I'd like to see more guides bridging the beginner stuff; Land of Lisp, for example; and the more complex stuff; such as creating a GUI, talking to other devices connected to the computer, calling foriegn functions, and so on. There seems to be remarkably little out there that takes someone from... toys... to actually having something useful which they can put in the hands of someone else. Or that tells you how to learn to learn that stuff for yourself. I suspect we lose a fair number of potential programmers to that sort of thing – running through the beginner stuff and then having no idea where to take it next.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- alok-g 12y agoI would love to see books on programming language tools around a specific language including IDEs, debuggers and editors, build systems, profilers, commonly available libraries, etc. This would ideally cover all of this from a practical standpoint, showing how to build a real-life application using the tools, etc. Having started programming at an early age, I get stuck more often at the tools and best practices when learning a new language than the language itself. This is especially true given the unspoken idiosyncrasies that seem to come along with all of it.
- logn 12y agoIt took me about three days of little sleep to set up an SMTP relay. I had some pretty specific and odd requirements and never really configured email servers before, but still, I think email administration is a skill that isn't really covered well by good sources.
- tkxxx7 12y agohow to meteor.js LOL
- projectramo 12y agoHow about a Python in Finance book? The selection out there is so poor (see Amazon reviews) that the best book is Wes McKinney on Pandas (not really focused on Finance, but more of a data science book). It doesn't even have to be super advanced: just cover time series, volatility/GARCH, black-scholes, and maybe some bond stuff. Just do it well!
- auganov 12y agoPerhaps not a book, but a comprehensive language-agnostic resource on functional programming patterns would be nice.