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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?"

12 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Simplebits by ViceClown · · Score: 3, Informative

    Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook by Dan Cederholm Great book about designing web sites using proper xhtml and web standards. Great examples and practicle recipes!

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    Have a Happy.
  2. Any of the Orielly "Hacks" books are cool by ylikone · · Score: 5, Informative
    I own the following, and I find them great:

    Linux Server Hacks, Knoppix Hacks, and Network Security Hacks.

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    Meh.
  3. Mono by JanneM · · Score: 3, Informative

    I really liked Edd Dumbbill's book on Mono - clear, concise and with no filler. It's sad that those traits are so unusual in most technical publishing.

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007922/ qid=1101219728/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-0124431- 0374516/

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    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  4. 'LaTeX Companion' should definitely be on the list by sombragris · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oh well, resubmitted with proper formatting...

    Frank Mittelbach, Michel Goossens et al., The LaTeX Companion, 2nd edition.

    This book, launched in June 2004, is a major rewrite of the old book and for every LaTeX user its worth its price in gold. I have a dog-eared copy at my desk and I can attest to it.

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    -- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
  5. My two picks for this year by mrmargolis · · Score: 3, Informative

    -Programming Ruby the second edition. An excellent book for an excellent language. The second edition is packed full of useful advice and has a huge number of pages devoted to the standard library. I have both the PDF and the actual book. I like the PDF a bit more because it is easily searchable and has some color to it.
    -The updated Code Complete. All around good update of a great book.

    I am not Dave Thomas, Andy Hunt or Mr. McConnell

  6. I can't believe "Deep C Secrets" ... by torpor · · Score: 3, Informative

    .. didn't make it.

    Okay, maybe C is passé (I personally don't think so), but this book gives a lot of great insight into this wonderful language .. highly recommended, even if it isn't current!

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    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  7. Re:Programming Ruby by jarich · · Score: 3, Informative
    Second edition was released this year...

    http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/index.h tml

  8. Advanced PHP Programming by 21chrisp · · Score: 3, Informative


    I recently picked up Advanced PHP Programming by George Schlossnagle just the other day and (although I haven't had a chance to dig deeply into it) am very impressed with the content. Unlike so many PHP books, it shows some of the best methods for large scale PHP designs. It covers all of the new features of PHP 5 and explains other advanced topics , such as caching. I was already doing many of these things, but just seeing a different perspective opened a world of possibilities to me (and pointed out where my methodology could use improvement). I'm sure there will be much more to learn as I work through it.

    Here's a link:
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0672 325616/qid=1101225806/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-7967 212-9844018?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

    As for the top books on Amazon.. I'm not sure many self-respecting developers would have many of them...

  9. Nice tip, wrongly used (bad link) by z1d0v · · Score: 3, Informative
    The ISBN of "Amazon Hacks" is 0596005423, so the link is, in fact, http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0596005423 . The last digit was wrong...

  10. Refactoring to Patterns by DrEasy · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Refactoring to Patterns" gotta be my favorite software book of the year (assuming it was indeed published in 2004). Finally someone who makes the connection between test-driven development and design patterns!

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    "In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
  11. Re:"Write Great Code: Understanding the Machine" by Welpa · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm not sure that knowing assembly helps you to write good code -- at least that's what my friends who are reasearchers in compiler optimisation tell me.

    Compilers these days are pretty smart. In fact, it seems like they do a better job on optimising code than people think. For example, I remember that the profs at uni used to teach us that binary shifting by one to the left was **way** more efficient than simply multiplying by 2. Indeed, this was true in 1997 (when I was an undergrad). However, with the current compilers, this 1337 trick actually produces slower code. I'm sure that the situation is similar for other such simpleminded tricks.

    Another problem is that hardware tricks are inherently targeted to a single machine -- making the code less portable. If one writes trick-free code then the compilers can optimise it as suitable for each architecture.