Amazon's Best Computer Books of 2004

theodp writes "Amazon.com's Editors have announced their selections for the Best Books of 2004 in the Computers and Internet category. Their favorite book of the year? Excel Hacks, which edged out Head First Servlets & JSP (#3), a Grand Theft Auto Strategy Guide (#5) and The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit (#8). Can Slashdot readers offer some more inspired choices?"

Comments

Best computer book of the year - 1979

[Realistic_Dragon]

Valves - why they are better than transistors.
Transistors - why they are better than valves.
The Transputer - computing the future in paralell.
Pong - strategy guide.

And the number one computing book of 1979.

Miss DEC - the pagent.

Re:Best computer book of the year - 1979

[Jorkapp]

Best magazines of 1979:

* Circuit diagrams - Schematics that leave nothing to the imagination! (With included 3 page fold out)

* Computing Enthusiast - How to build a computer with only $165,348! Step by step guide included.

* Electronics and more - The latest Gaming machine - now with a CRT display! Wow! (Included Tic-Tac-Toe Punch-card game)

I've got one for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "Hide The Fact You're On AOL By Using A Free Webmail Service." I just wrote it.

Oh christ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are barely "Computer Books" Those are more acuratly described as "Books for idiots with an attention span of 5 seconds flat"

I was expecting to see real books on that list. Things like C Unleashed perhaps. Not that cornicopia of crap.

Re:Oh christ..

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Those are barely "Computer Books" Those are more acuratly

I missed the second half of your post. Theres a lot going on here with all the... ooh shiny

Best computer book ever

[91degrees]

They didn't mention The story about ping Clearly the best introduction to this network test tool.

Just look at the reviews, especially the one from John E. Fracisco.

Re:Best computer book ever

[alptraum]

Oh dear, slashdot will serious disrupt the Amazon review system, for the Fracisco comment mentioned above:

6963 of 7162 people found the following review helpful.

Re:How did they choose?

[mwood]

Probably by running a quick query:

SELECT quantityonhand FROM booksinwarehouse SORTED BY quantityonhand DESCENDING

and taking the first ten rows.

(Yes, I typed that off the top of my head, and I don't wallow in SQL 8x5 every week.)

Thank goodness...

[eeg3]

That the Grand Theft Auto Guide is getting it's due. I don't know what I would've done without it.

how about us dummies?

[koi88]

I don't buy no book that doesn't have "for dummies" in the title.
So I wanna preorder

• Excel Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools for dummies
• The World's 20 Greatest Unsolved Problems for dummies

But really interesting sounds No. 4:

• On Intelligence for dummies

Quote from "Excel Hacks" review...

[beeglebug]

"The spreadsheet is the software tool that turns everyone into a hacker"

Riiiiiight...

I have a $20 suggestion

[antifoidulus]

Best career book you can buy

Re:How did they choose?

[wwwojtek]

(Yes, I typed that off the top of my head, and I don't wallow in SQL 8x5 every week.)

Sure you don't. I ran your query and here is what I got
1032423
323234
323321
34422
32425
23443
23323
23421
10008
8777
not very interesting, isn't it?

LIMIT

[ylikone]

You need to add "LIMIT 10" to the end of your sql statement.

Re:How did they choose?

[redivider]

SELECT nerds FROM slashdot_comments WHERE takes_a_joke='way too seriously'

Actually it is interesting

[scovetta]

1032423
323234
323321
34422
32425
23443
2332 3 <--- they need a new
23421 <--- database engine
10008
8777