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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?"
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.
Beep beep.
It's called "Hide The Fact You're On AOL By Using A Free Webmail Service." I just wrote it.
Alternative to Amazon I have some computer related eigenpolls.
Agile Software Development Books
Best Practices for Software Development
Favorit websites
Spam Fighting Software
other books related eigenpoll are:
Alternative Science Books
Real Estate Investment books
Books on Accelerated Learning Techniques
Books for Automatic Trading Systems
I flipped through a bit and couldn't find what criteria they used to decide which were the best books. Out of the top 10 only 2 have any customer reviews. Is this a bestseller list, or just which publisher(s) paid the most to be on it?
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.
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.
If you're including "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Strategy Guide" as a computing book, "101 Tips for Winning At Monopoly" in the list for Business/Management.
Games are cool, but they're not computing.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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!
Have a Happy.
I find it disturbing that #5 was the GTA: San Andreas strategy guide. Is the selection of computer and internet books so meager, that a strategy guide makes the top ten. I think that choice really shows the lack of serious consideration on this list. I can understand that Amazon is trying to appeal to a large audience and not the computer power user, but there are better choices even for the casual user other game strategy guides.
-- Wolfpup
"A man whose circumstances went beyond his control." -- Styx
Linux Server Hacks, Knoppix Hacks, and Network Security Hacks.
Meh.
That the Grand Theft Auto Guide is getting it's due. I don't know what I would've done without it.
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:I don't need a signature.
"The spreadsheet is the software tool that turns everyone into a hacker"
Riiiiiight...
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.
/ qid=1101219728/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/102-0124431- 0374516/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007922
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
Best career book you can buy
Monstar L
Expert One-on-One J2EE Development without EJB by Rod Johnson, Juergen Hoeller.
This is an excellent book with great advice about many aspects of software development. As the title suggests, it describes how EJB is not necessary for most J2EE projects, and offers alternative solutions to many of the problems EJB's solve. It does center around the Spring framework, as the authors are the creators of that framework, but it does give other technologies a fair chance.
I've personally found the strategies and technologies discussed in this book to be very useful. My new projects are developed in a manner largely based on this book and they've been pretty successful so far.
-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
IMHO
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!
.. didn't make it.
.. highly recommended, even if it isn't current!
Okay, maybe C is passé (I personally don't think so), but this book gives a lot of great insight into this wonderful language
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
You need to add "LIMIT 10" to the end of your sql statement.
Meh.
Actually excel does qualify as a hacker tool is the most correct sense of the word because it allows people with little or no programming experience to quickly hack together small timesaving data manipulation programs. The no of corporate depts alone I have seen where they all have their own little excel apps to this that and the other is staggering. I hate having to clean up all the data islands but I have to admit excel is great tool for these people.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
"Write Great Code: Understanding the Machine"
Unbelievably interesting book. the premise being that the current generation of coders is among the first who were not *required* to learn Assembly Language, thus do not truly understand what is going on under the hood. Because of this, they are unable to create "great" code in high-level languages because they simply don't understand the inherent costs of various routines.
One of the secondary premises focuses on the fact that, while hardware power is advancing at Moore's Law pace, software is requiring more power at nearly the same rate, many times for no reason other than the developer(s) not knowing how to write truly efficient code.
"All that glitters is not gold"
\documentclass{slashdot}
\usepackage{url}
\title{Re:'LaTeX companion' should definitely be on the l}
\author{Anonymous Coward}
\begin{Document}
No, this formatting would be a testament to its teaching prowess. Except, I didn't use a book. I've pieced together my knowledge from various sites. \url{http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/} was helpful, but now I wish I had just bought a book. Seriously, don't try to tackle \LaTeX{} without a good book.
\end{document}
http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ruby/index.h tml
Agile Artisans
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/-/067
As for the top books on Amazon.. I'm not sure many self-respecting developers would have many of them...
Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition by David Pogue is an excellent book for Mac OS X users, both new and pro.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
These lists are cobbled up to unload excess inventory on easily duped consumers. Come on folks, this is Retailing 101.
"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!
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
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Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche