Slashdot Mirror
General IT Books?
Torulf would like to start an ongoing discussion on books that anyone in the IT field would benefit in having in their library: "Here's a topic that might generate some interesting discussions. I'm a student trying to get general knowledge of the IT business. The question here is about what is regarded 'basic knowledge' and where to find it. As we all know (I hope), a lot of knowledge can really only be learned through experience. In many cases, however, a read through the theory will save you a lot of time. As books are also easier to look up than experience, below is a suggestion of a reading list that might give a decent general knowledge in the field. Please fill out the gaps with what you think is required
knowledge for anyone working in the industry. Mostly this is about a general overview of the
different areas of the IT industry, but if you have suggestions of good material for becoming an expert in some particular field, by all means, share your knowledge." Torulf has compiled a fairly long list of books, below, however your own suggestions are always welcome.
For any non-trivial task, it is suggested that you design before you code. User Interfaces:
A lot of programmers are more than clueless in this area. These at least won't hurt: Graphics:
Some general knowledge about graphics. Business/Management:
Here's something about management and financing. I don't really know about a good reference for marketing applied to the IT industry. This is the area where the average geek is even more ignorant than concerning UI. Security:
Alright, this list should be a lot longer. Misc.
And last some stuff that didn't fit in any of the categories above.
"To start off the discussion, here are a few suggestions as to likely candidates. The
books are linked to Amazon since they can provide a fairly quick and complete description of the books online.
Programming:
Learning a few languages certainly won't hurt. Here are some suggestions:
- The C programming language
- The C++ programming language
- Programming Perl
- Programming Python
- A Book about Java
- A Book on SQL
- A Book about Functional languages (LISP, ML, etc.)
For any non-trivial task, it is suggested that you design before you code. User Interfaces:
A lot of programmers are more than clueless in this area. These at least won't hurt: Graphics:
Some general knowledge about graphics. Business/Management:
Here's something about management and financing. I don't really know about a good reference for marketing applied to the IT industry. This is the area where the average geek is even more ignorant than concerning UI. Security:
Alright, this list should be a lot longer. Misc.
And last some stuff that didn't fit in any of the categories above.
- Modern Operating Systems
- Computer Networks
- A few operating systems
- A book about markup languages, ie HTML, XML, DHTML, etc
- A book about Algorithms and Data Structures in general
- At least some basic knowledge about Hardware
- Wireless systems seem to be growing. It might pay off to learn something about Symbian, J2ME etc."
Now that's a start to a comprehensive IT Library if I've ever seen one. How do you all feel about this list (if not the specific selections, then at least the material being covered)? If you were to make changes or additions, what would they be?
Let me paraphrase. "Hello I'm a student looking to backpack a shitload of amazon affiliate links onto some story that I can dupe a slashdot editor into posting. That way I get a potential 500k people making me some beer money at amazon"
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
those are mostly ALL technician books... you need project planning and project management books... group dynamics.. you need to understand IT involved a lot of people communicating with each other... ITs are not always engineers who couldn't get an engineering job... they're really just IT
There are two ways to advertise:
1. You can put annoying pop-up in-your-face advertisements for unrelated products like Viagra and penis enlargements all over.
2. You can integrate advertising with content such that you increase sales for a particular company while still providing meaningful content that your users want to read.
We will dispense with the concept that advertising shouldn't be necessary, because we are all aware that for the present time, bandwidth and hardware require money, and it has to come from somewhere.
I for one, prefer the second method. Google is a perfect example of this. You search for particular topics, and sponsored sites are placed above your search. They aren't annoying banners, simply sponsored suggestions of "If you're looking for that, you might want to buy this." That's as close to everybody-wins advertising as advertising can get.
I do appreciate when people doing this form of advertising mark their advertising as such, just like google makes a small note to the side that labels it a sponsored link. I notice the links in this article to amazon have a referral number, which means someone is making a 15% referral fee on any purchase from those links. That makes it advertising, which is perfectly fine, but there should be a small note at the end of the article saying this.