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If you're interested in the actual hacking (err ... cracking) side of things ... Web Application Hacker's Handbook came highly recommended by my SANS instructor. http://www.bestwebbuys.com/The_Web_Application_Hacker's_Handbook-ISBN_9780470170779.html?isrc=b-search

Speaking of Edward Tufte, check out 'The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching out Corrupts Within' for an excellent critique on the misuse of PowerPoint and a primer on the best way to use this tool.

Firstly templates. They are just void pointers with type safety.

This is thoroughly wrong it's hard to keep my reply polite. You'd be roughly correct about the generic support in Java, but about C++ templates, your statement is completely, totally and thoroughly wrong. I can't do anything approaching justice to the subject here, but I'd recommend reading Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexrandescu, to at least start getting a clue about how much more there really is to templates. You might also want to look at the source code to The boost library for more along the same general line (e.g. take a look at boost Lambda, which is quite different from anything you can do with void pointers.

The thing is, in practice the overhead of the type checking is superfluous as very few bugs are down to bad casts in functionally similar C code.

Sorry, but no. The type-checking is done at compile time, so it doesn't impose any overhead (at runtime -- in theory it makes for slightly longer compile times, but in practice the difference is rarely noticeable.

And while I'm considering performance, despite another poster claiming it's a linker issue, vtable lookups do impact performance regardless of whether you blame the linker or the compiler. The language requiring something like vtable support is the real culprit, excacerbated by the debatable way that C++ handles method resolution. In Java, if I call List.get() on an object that is actually an ArrayList, I get the ArrayList version of the method - the most derived one - not the List implementation. In C++, I get the List implementation (this ignores the fact that List is an interface in Java, but you should get the gist of what I'm saying). In practice, the C++ way of doing this is counter intuitive, despite the fact that the C++ way seems more logical from a syntax point of view.

The performance of a virtual function in C++ (at least with most recent compilers I've tested) is essentially the same as the switch statement or pointer to a function you'd have to use to get the same functionality in C. The problem arises primarily from the fact that people often use virtual functions where they're not really suitable.

The differences between C++ and Java tend to get sufficiently religious quickly enough that I'll stay away from discussing that, at least for now.

As for the inlining of sorting code, in a test I just ran the sorting function was inlined in a C example just like the use of std::sort() you described.

I specifically talked about using qsort. Obviously, you're not doing that. It's nearly always true that more specialized code can be more efficient than more generalized code. The trick is to write generalized code that retains close to the efficiency of the more specialized code -- and C++ does a better job of that than C does.

The difference is that my sort resulted in far less assembler instructions than the C++ std::sort() one, although I did have to spend an extra couple of minutes copying the sort code from a Sedgewick book.

Counting assembly instructions gave a useful of speed in the days of 68Ks and 8088s. Those days are long gone. Given that it came from a Sedgewick book, your code may easily be substantially slower ( I'm not a fan of Sedgewick).

Finally, the iostream library. I spent part of this afternoon refactoring a loop that was proving to be a bottleneck in some C++ code. It relied on ostringstream to turn an unsigned integer into a string, and then passed the std::string representation to be add

Yup, that described by your clarification has certainly never been done before .

I always select my textbooks at

http://www.bestwebbuys.com/

They factor in shipping and tax, and tell you who's got it for the cheapest and how long it will take to get to you.

This guy owns Earthlink. Or at least his company does.

These guys are sort of a consolidator of other sites. I use them for books - enter an ISBN and they'll tell you the price with and without shipping at several dozen online stores. Very handy. They also list prices on electronics, music, movies, and bikes(??).

I am a cheap college student, so I haven't bought books in over two years. However, when I did buy books, I found bestbookbuys.com to be an excellent place to get books since it searches other sites online and finds the best deals. I buy my $150 engineering books there for $50 in excellent condition. You can also buy non-school books there as well.

For my computer accessories, I use Tiger Direct, and subscribe so I get the email deals. I bought my Logitech wireless mouse for $5 there.

My family buys their desktop computers at ibuypower.com, although I prefer to buy my laptops on Tigerdirect. Ibuypower has some awesome desktop deals.

Occasionally, I like to check Dealtime, although I have never purchased anything there. It occasionally gives me an idea of the going market price for things.

was Calculator's Cunning by Karl Menninger.

I believe it's out of print now, but was an excellent text, covering all of the tricks.

If you search bestwebbuys you can see that it is for sale used.

For some reason, I never seem to get useful results with froogle.

I suppose it's probably because I'm usually looking for books or something where I can do better with a specialized search like bestwebbuys

I highly recommend his book "Greetings, Carbon Based Bipeds", which is a collection of his various writings. Very entertaining reading, especially when you consider the timeframe when some of them were written. (1934-1998) You can pick it up for next to nothing .

Nigger is Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy's ornate, lively monograph on what he calls the "paradigmatic" racial slur in the English language.
I'll admit to feeling relieved to know that Randall Kennedy is black.

For anyone who's read it, is this book similar to Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister's Peopleware? I really appreciated their keen understanding of the development process in that book and I'm always looking for additional books along those lines. (See also these quotes from some of the authors and this Joel on Software review to get a feel for the book.)

Interesting idea, but it sounds like the book is typical of Clarke's more recent books - poor...

It's depressing to watch the quality of work decline like Clark's has over the recent past.

Actually, there are at least 8 online stores that have it cheaper (shipping included).

I usually pull up bestbookbuys.com to see about the best prices. This book shows up for $23.90 at half.com...

Check your link again. The first book on your list is not the book we're talking about. The book we're talking about is the fourth down the page you linked to.

Here is another list of all its prices. Barnes and Noble seems to be the better deal if you want it new and Half.com seems to be the better deal if you're willing to get it used.

Before the morons start quoting prices from B&N vs. Amazon, let's remember there are more than those two online. Try shopping at AddAll. It's a shopping bot for books. Prices: Overstock: $21.99, BooksAMillion: $27.44, Amazon: $27.93. Switching to BestBookBuys we get BookPool at $22.50, along with (click for the results, see Amazon in 5th place!: results. And finally, we go to BookPool with a price of $22.50. Now, can we quit using B&N and Amazon ONLY? Jeez. http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/search?isrc=b-hom e-search&q=1590592344&t=ISBN&x=16&y=13

...why does anyone look at Amazon and one other store? You'd think there are two book stores online. Try looking here: For a full readout of BestBookBuys' listing on this book (specifically)

There are three good urls for book shopping:

BookPool, AddAll, BestBookBuys. Why not let bots do your shopping? And if you like the newer bots, check out Froogle.Google

Before you shop for BN online, you might want to take a gander at this link: Tell us how you really feel!

I haven't heard of David Pogue in years... I have always liked his writings. He use to write on the last page of MacWorld every month, but got replaced by some other (not as good) guy.

Anyone ever read Hard Drive by Pogue?

Dr. Forrester seems to have a (disappointingly) poor understanding of ecology (in the natural and artificial world). Every benefit has a cost associated with it. When there is selective pressure, organisms capable of coping with the selective pressure gracefully will thrive, and those that can't won't. This however doesn't mean that the ability to cope with that selective pressure is universally good; advantage is determined by the environment.

A real life example: livestock are given antibiotics in their feed, because it makes them grow bigger, faster. Why? Because in such a (antibiotic rich) situation where the challenge presented to their bodies by bacteria are diminished, they can spend less resources on their immune system, and therefore more resources on growing bigger faster.

This is not to say that feeding antibiotics to livestock is a good thing for society. It isn't, and for a very similar reason. Frequent use of antibiotics selects for antibiotic resistant bacteria - in an antibiotic rich environment, resistant bacteria thrive, and non-resistant bacteria die. However, just like everything else, there is a cost to antibiotic resistance. In an antibiotic-free environment, non-resistant bacteria have an advantage, and they will outcompete their resistant bretheren. Whereas the presence of antibiotics selects for resistant bacteria, the absence of antibiotics selects for antibiotic susceptible bacteria. When you get a life threatening infection, I assure you, you would prefer that the bacteria inside you did not previously reside in an antibiotic rich environment.

Given that we live in a world where there is crime, it is a good thing that we spend a lot of money on government organizations that fight crime, but if we lived in a crime-free world, it would be silly to spend any money on policing, and we would be better off spending it on something else (or reducing taxes accordingly). Dr. Forrester's argument is in essence a tautology, it boils down to "Given the way things are, its good that things are the way they are." In biology, as in computers, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Because there are virus writters, we spend money on virus-scanners, and time disinfecting computers. In a virus rich environment, it is good that there are virus-scanners, but if no one wrote viruses (because everyone was thoughtful), we could spend our money and time otherwise.

This said, I should point out that pathogens (biological, computer, or societal - e.g. criminals) are essentially inevitable. Selection rules. If there is a way to leach off the system, there is probably a selective advantage in doing it, and something with figure out how to do it. Giving credit where credit is due, these arguments are derived, however distantly, from The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

Or, check it out at BestBookBuys (think of it as PriceGrabber/PriceWatch for books). There, you can see that Buy.com has an even better price ($21.27 shipped).

BestBookBuys shows buy.com selling it for $27.60.

Has got to be the Core Java Series. Between the fundamentals and the advanced books, I haven't found anything as complete and as clear as this.

Has got to be the Core Java Series. Between the fundamentals and the advanced books, I haven't found anything as complete and as clear as this.

Interesting that you should mention Engel. The introduction to his book Origami From Angelfish To Zen deals with the mathematical aspects of origami, including its fractal aspects.

This site is great for comparing book prices. It even figures shipping for total cost.

A search for The Java Developers Almanac v1.4 by ISBN shows that there are several shops (including my favorite, BookPool) with lower prices then Amazon.

A search for The Java Developers Almanac v1.4 by ISBN shows that there are several shops (including my favorite, BookPool) with lower prices then Amazon.

Have a look at Best Book Buys. They've got pricing for most books both new and used. Searching for Design Patterns currently shows a book for $35 used and $45 new.

There are several book price comparing services, I like this one: www.bestwebbuys.com

I have read (Stephen L. Carter, Integrity), and agree with, the following definition of Integrity:

Acting with integrity consists of

1. Thoughtful consideration of what is right.
2. Doing what is right.
3. Openly declaring the reasons why doing the action was right.

Do you believe you acted with integrity when committing those acts you were convicted of? If so, why? If not, where did you fall short?

[A note to potential critics: Just because someone acts with integrity doesn't mean what they did was right. It simply means that they were intentional and thoughtful enough about their action that discussion of the act and the reasons for it can help to elevate the awareness of others to the issues the action was meant to address. It also means that they were probably acting at least partially without self-interest.]

A Practical Guide to Linux by Mark G. Sobell

half.com - $23.00
bookpool.com - $24.50
Barnes and Noble ... $31.96

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Everybody knows that the only place to find book prices is bestwebbuys.com.

Compare:

Bookpool $21.50
Vs.
Amazon $24.49

It is priced comparably to Amazon at BooksAMillion.

"Best Web Buys" provides price comparisons for books and music.

(Yes, I'm that guy... The one that replies to his own post... )

here is a link for the book for $36.00 shipped.

Note to new slashdotters: Slashdot puts spaces in the links, so just 'right click' and 'copy link location' then paste it in your URL bar and remove any spaces.

It's always seemed funny to me how the technologists take this field, which is tied irrevocably to philosophy, and ignore everything the philosophers say about it. For example, has there ever been a good refutation of Searle's Chinese Room argument?

oh no, there's quite a bit of foundational inquiry going on in the field. but there is also a growing awareness that the analytic tools we've inherited from our logicist and mathematician forefathers are really rather inadequate in reasoning about human behavior.

intelligence, as it turns out, isn't really very amenable to analysis from the traditional analytic stance. this is where the many paradoxes of logical representation come into play (the frame problem, the symbol grounding problem, searlean chinese room (which is a very subtle process/result argument veiled behind a rather crude part/whole paradox), and so on). these problems often stem directly from the philosophical tools used to talk about intelligence - and most spectacularly, from the analytic assumptions about the mind and the world.

it turns out to be much easier to analyze intelligent action using an existential stance. there is an increasing push within ai to draw from the hermeneutic analysis of heidegger and merlau-ponty in order to analyze intelligence not in terms of abstract information processing, but in terms of properties of existence in particular contexts. this approach is especially strong in the subfields of computer vision, robotics, and game ai - these are the areas that actually have to deal with humans in human environments, and coping in the everyday world turns out to be surprisingly harder than most abstract cogitation.

i will not repeat the argumentation here - see: hubert dreyfus, what computers still can't do (a bit dated by today's standards, but begun the critique of the analytic tradition in ai), philip agre, computation and human experience, and brian cantwell smith, on the origin of objects. they're wonderful expositions of where ai is headed philosophically.

but from this vantage point of view, the problems such as the chinese room argument appear completely defanged - like medieval angels-on-a-pinhead arguments stemming from an ill-suited theory of the world. :)

It's always seemed funny to me how the technologists take this field, which is tied irrevocably to philosophy, and ignore everything the philosophers say about it. For example, has there ever been a good refutation of Searle's Chinese Room argument?

oh no, there's quite a bit of foundational inquiry going on in the field. but there is also a growing awareness that the analytic tools we've inherited from our logicist and mathematician forefathers are really rather inadequate in reasoning about human behavior.

intelligence, as it turns out, isn't really very amenable to analysis from the traditional analytic stance. this is where the many paradoxes of logical representation come into play (the frame problem, the symbol grounding problem, searlean chinese room (which is a very subtle process/result argument veiled behind a rather crude part/whole paradox), and so on). these problems often stem directly from the philosophical tools used to talk about intelligence - and most spectacularly, from the analytic assumptions about the mind and the world.

it turns out to be much easier to analyze intelligent action using an existential stance. there is an increasing push within ai to draw from the hermeneutic analysis of heidegger and merlau-ponty in order to analyze intelligence not in terms of abstract information processing, but in terms of properties of existence in particular contexts. this approach is especially strong in the subfields of computer vision, robotics, and game ai - these are the areas that actually have to deal with humans in human environments, and coping in the everyday world turns out to be surprisingly harder than most abstract cogitation.

i will not repeat the argumentation here - see: hubert dreyfus, what computers still can't do (a bit dated by today's standards, but begun the critique of the analytic tradition in ai), philip agre, computation and human experience, and brian cantwell smith, on the origin of objects. they're wonderful expositions of where ai is headed philosophically.

but from this vantage point of view, the problems such as the chinese room argument appear completely defanged - like medieval angels-on-a-pinhead arguments stemming from an ill-suited theory of the world. :)

It's always seemed funny to me how the technologists take this field, which is tied irrevocably to philosophy, and ignore everything the philosophers say about it. For example, has there ever been a good refutation of Searle's Chinese Room argument?

oh no, there's quite a bit of foundational inquiry going on in the field. but there is also a growing awareness that the analytic tools we've inherited from our logicist and mathematician forefathers are really rather inadequate in reasoning about human behavior.

intelligence, as it turns out, isn't really very amenable to analysis from the traditional analytic stance. this is where the many paradoxes of logical representation come into play (the frame problem, the symbol grounding problem, searlean chinese room (which is a very subtle process/result argument veiled behind a rather crude part/whole paradox), and so on). these problems often stem directly from the philosophical tools used to talk about intelligence - and most spectacularly, from the analytic assumptions about the mind and the world.

it turns out to be much easier to analyze intelligent action using an existential stance. there is an increasing push within ai to draw from the hermeneutic analysis of heidegger and merlau-ponty in order to analyze intelligence not in terms of abstract information processing, but in terms of properties of existence in particular contexts. this approach is especially strong in the subfields of computer vision, robotics, and game ai - these are the areas that actually have to deal with humans in human environments, and coping in the everyday world turns out to be surprisingly harder than most abstract cogitation.

i will not repeat the argumentation here - see: hubert dreyfus, what computers still can't do (a bit dated by today's standards, but begun the critique of the analytic tradition in ai), philip agre, computation and human experience, and brian cantwell smith, on the origin of objects. they're wonderful expositions of where ai is headed philosophically.

but from this vantage point of view, the problems such as the chinese room argument appear completely defanged - like medieval angels-on-a-pinhead arguments stemming from an ill-suited theory of the world. :)

For those not aware, "still-pumped-from-using-the-mouse" is an allusion to Scott Adams' Dilbert book "Still Pumped From Using The Mouse". It's a compilation of the strips from 12/14/92 - 9/27/93, and you can actually get it used for about $0.75 + s/h.

C++ may not be "timeless," but it's here now, and will be here for many years. Besides, improving yourself in one language helps reveal patterns and designs in other languages. C++ will be influencing language design for a long time.

So, here are a few C++ oriented books that I'm very fond of. All of them helped me improve as a programmer, not just in C++.

If you're working in C++, you probably want The Design and Evolution of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup. If you're a C programmer considering C++, you need this book. It really helps get your mind wrapped around the language. C++ may be a mess, but at least you'll understand why it's a mess, and why it really couldn't have succeeded any other way. By understanding why C++ is C++ (and not, say, Java or C#), you'll write faster, cleaner C++. Even if you don't see C++ as the future, armed with the knowledge in this book you can better judge other languages.

For useful ways to improve your coding right away, I'm fond of Steve Maguire's Writing Solid Code and Scott Meyer's pair Effective C++ and More Effective C++ . Both will give you little improvements that will improve your code tomorrow, next year, and in five years. Parts of all of these books apply to any language. (My copy of Effective C++ is going on 10 years old, and I still find it helpful to reread occasionally.)

C++ may not be "timeless," but it's here now, and will be here for many years. Besides, improving yourself in one language helps reveal patterns and designs in other languages. C++ will be influencing language design for a long time.

So, here are a few C++ oriented books that I'm very fond of. All of them helped me improve as a programmer, not just in C++.

If you're working in C++, you probably want The Design and Evolution of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup. If you're a C programmer considering C++, you need this book. It really helps get your mind wrapped around the language. C++ may be a mess, but at least you'll understand why it's a mess, and why it really couldn't have succeeded any other way. By understanding why C++ is C++ (and not, say, Java or C#), you'll write faster, cleaner C++. Even if you don't see C++ as the future, armed with the knowledge in this book you can better judge other languages.

For useful ways to improve your coding right away, I'm fond of Steve Maguire's Writing Solid Code and Scott Meyer's pair Effective C++ and More Effective C++ . Both will give you little improvements that will improve your code tomorrow, next year, and in five years. Parts of all of these books apply to any language. (My copy of Effective C++ is going on 10 years old, and I still find it helpful to reread occasionally.)

C++ may not be "timeless," but it's here now, and will be here for many years. Besides, improving yourself in one language helps reveal patterns and designs in other languages. C++ will be influencing language design for a long time.

So, here are a few C++ oriented books that I'm very fond of. All of them helped me improve as a programmer, not just in C++.

If you're working in C++, you probably want The Design and Evolution of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup. If you're a C programmer considering C++, you need this book. It really helps get your mind wrapped around the language. C++ may be a mess, but at least you'll understand why it's a mess, and why it really couldn't have succeeded any other way. By understanding why C++ is C++ (and not, say, Java or C#), you'll write faster, cleaner C++. Even if you don't see C++ as the future, armed with the knowledge in this book you can better judge other languages.

For useful ways to improve your coding right away, I'm fond of Steve Maguire's Writing Solid Code and Scott Meyer's pair Effective C++ and More Effective C++ . Both will give you little improvements that will improve your code tomorrow, next year, and in five years. Parts of all of these books apply to any language. (My copy of Effective C++ is going on 10 years old, and I still find it helpful to reread occasionally.)

C++ may not be "timeless," but it's here now, and will be here for many years. Besides, improving yourself in one language helps reveal patterns and designs in other languages. C++ will be influencing language design for a long time.

So, here are a few C++ oriented books that I'm very fond of. All of them helped me improve as a programmer, not just in C++.

If you're working in C++, you probably want The Design and Evolution of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup. If you're a C programmer considering C++, you need this book. It really helps get your mind wrapped around the language. C++ may be a mess, but at least you'll understand why it's a mess, and why it really couldn't have succeeded any other way. By understanding why C++ is C++ (and not, say, Java or C#), you'll write faster, cleaner C++. Even if you don't see C++ as the future, armed with the knowledge in this book you can better judge other languages.

For useful ways to improve your coding right away, I'm fond of Steve Maguire's Writing Solid Code and Scott Meyer's pair Effective C++ and More Effective C++ . Both will give you little improvements that will improve your code tomorrow, next year, and in five years. Parts of all of these books apply to any language. (My copy of Effective C++ is going on 10 years old, and I still find it helpful to reread occasionally.)

Instead of AddAll, I prefer to use BestBookBuys. Both AddAll and BestBookBuys appear to have similar functionality (for instance, they both identified BookPool as having the lowest price), but I personally prefer the interface on BestBookBuys.

But, I do share your sentiment about Fatbrain. Sure, it used to be independent and cool, but now they're just yet-another subsidiary of Barnes & Noble (bleh!). Besides, Fatbrain also costs $18 more than the lowest AddAll/BestBookBuys price.

Alex Bischoff

First, a personal opinion: I believe that learning how to program is so valuable because through it, one learns problem solving skills.

On that note, if you want to teach programming, here are some ideas. I have use none of these for teaching, but I am intrigued:


Scheme/LISP - I learned Scheme from The Little LISPer (the most recent version is called The Little Schemer ), a great book! I already knew how to program when I learned Scheme, but this might be a good way to learn.

Other resources for learning programming through Scheme (with which I have no experience, but sound interesting):

http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/Teaching/
http://www.cs.rice.edu/CS/PLT/packages/drscheme/
http://www.teach-scheme.org/ (doesn't seem to be working right now)


Starlogo is very cool, you might also want to look at the book Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams by Mitchel Resnick, the creator of StarLogo (in the book he talks about working with kids on StarLogo projects)

I don't even know Python, but I have read several things about using it as a teaching language:

Article at O'Reilly on Python as a first language
Computer Programming for Everybody - a proposal by Guido van Rossum
The Official Python Tutorial
Why Python? - by Eric S. Raymond
Learning to Program - uses Python


I hope this is helpful!!!

Really, it's that good. Even the often-critical Slashdot reviews found it to be "Outstanding". If you have even a passing interest in cryptography, I'd highly recommend picking up this book. Just don't buy it from Amazon, please :).

Alex Bischoff
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