Slashdot Mirror
What Good Technical Books Adorn Your Library?
bluefoxlucid asks: "Lately I've been looking into technical books, and have come to the conclusion that there are a lot of useful books out there containing information that could be useful to me. To my alarm, I've found that many of these titles are not in my local public library! This requires action; I must build my own library, and actually use that bookshelf in my room! But, without a way to sample the books, how should I know which to buy? What (mainly non-fiction) recommendations would you make for anyone who would fall into the Slashdot audience to read?"
"Here I present a list of books I have and am looking into buying, with ISBN for each as well; in case anyone wants to know anything about a particular title, the objects I own are accompanied by a '*' while those on order stand next to a '#'. I haven't read all those I own; particularly, I skimmed Silence on the Wire and only read a chapter of Game Design: Secrets of the Sages. These range from
Hobby. These books have hobbyist value, giving tips for making useful things out of other less useful things. These range from ballistics to shoving a survival kit in a watch. Nothing on rail guns, gauss guns, sonic canons, particle accelerators, magnetic drive launchers, ionic wind engines, or any of the other nifty electromagnetic projects you can create; maybe in the future I'll find something.
Computers, Hacking, Security. These books give technical puzzles or information for programmers and security experts. These include an outdated Assembly book and a Game Design book, just because I had them and programmers and game designers may find use for this information. I should probably find a more up-to-date Assembly book that can be used with gas on Linux.
Mathematics. These books are mathematics related. Actually there's only one here, I was going to throw it in the above section and label it 'Technical' but the Psychology and Neuroscience stuff below is also 'Technical.'
Psychology and Neuroscience. These pieces are interesting because they explain the brain and learning, and how to use yours better. They may possibly have been more amusing if written by Q; the authors don't appear to want to remind you that you're primitive beings that can only expand your realm of thinking for fractions of a second at a time. Sadly, they were written by sane individuals and not alien beings who happen to be egomaniacs.
Humor and Nonsense. Funny stuff only a nerd could enjoy... but you know, if there's ever a Class 4 zombie invasion, you'll be ready. None of this stuff is useful, unless your brain is burning out and you need something to distract you while it relaxes and repairs itself; what better way than to read up on how to enter a burning building or choke a man with your bare thighs?
That's it for my list. Surprised? Not only is it short but I actually own only a few of the items that have caught my eye! And yes, all of the humor is from ThinkGeek; that's where I found Hacking: The Art of Exploitation in the first place, which started all this. With the exception of Mind Hacks and The Zombie Survival Guide, none of the '*' and '#' items were found in a library search. I searched on some of the others as well, with no good results. Some of this stuff is in the Library of Congress; but a good number of the ones I searched for weren't.
This leaves my options for discovering new and interesting reads pretty limited—I can buy the books, or harass Slashdot and see if any of you actually have something useful. Rather than try to tailor your responses to me, just go wild; I'm sure anyone in any other technical field besides just programming would appreciate knowing about little gems they'll not find in a library anywhere."
Hobby. These books have hobbyist value, giving tips for making useful things out of other less useful things. These range from ballistics to shoving a survival kit in a watch. Nothing on rail guns, gauss guns, sonic canons, particle accelerators, magnetic drive launchers, ionic wind engines, or any of the other nifty electromagnetic projects you can create; maybe in the future I'll find something.
- The Art of the Catapult (ISBN 1556525265)
- Backyard Ballistics (ISBN 1556523750)
- Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks (ISBN 0596003145)
- Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things (ISBN 0740738593)#
- Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things (ISBN 0740754963)#
- The Unofficial MacGyver How-to Handbook: Revised 2nd Edition (ISBN 1887641475)
Computers, Hacking, Security. These books give technical puzzles or information for programmers and security experts. These include an outdated Assembly book and a Game Design book, just because I had them and programmers and game designers may find use for this information. I should probably find a more up-to-date Assembly book that can be used with gas on Linux.
- 1337 h4x0r h4ndb00k (ISBN 0672327279)
- The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element Of Security (ISBN 076454280X)
- The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers (ISBN 0764569597)
- Assembler Inside and Out (ISBN 0078818427)*
- Game Design: Secrets of the Sages (ISBN 1575952572)*
- Hacker's Delight (ISBN 0201914654)
- Hacking: The Art of Exploitation (ISBN 1593270070)*
- Programming Challenges (ISBN 0387001638)
- Puzzles for Hackers (ISBN 1931769451)#
- Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering (ISBN 0764574817)
- Silence on the Wire (ISBN 1593270461)*
Mathematics. These books are mathematics related. Actually there's only one here, I was going to throw it in the above section and label it 'Technical' but the Psychology and Neuroscience stuff below is also 'Technical.'
- Statistics Hacks: Tips & Tools for Measuring the World and Beating the Odds (ISBN 0596101643)
Psychology and Neuroscience. These pieces are interesting because they explain the brain and learning, and how to use yours better. They may possibly have been more amusing if written by Q; the authors don't appear to want to remind you that you're primitive beings that can only expand your realm of thinking for fractions of a second at a time. Sadly, they were written by sane individuals and not alien beings who happen to be egomaniacs.
- Mind Hacks (ISBN 0596007795)#
- Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain (ISBN 0596101538)#
Humor and Nonsense. Funny stuff only a nerd could enjoy... but you know, if there's ever a Class 4 zombie invasion, you'll be ready. None of this stuff is useful, unless your brain is burning out and you need something to distract you while it relaxes and repairs itself; what better way than to read up on how to enter a burning building or choke a man with your bare thighs?
- The Action Hero's Handbook (ISBN 193168605X)
- The Action Heroine's Handbook (ISBN 1931686688)
- Prank University (ISBN 0307338436)
- The Superman Handbook (ISBN 1594741131)
- The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (ISBN 1400049628)*
That's it for my list. Surprised? Not only is it short but I actually own only a few of the items that have caught my eye! And yes, all of the humor is from ThinkGeek; that's where I found Hacking: The Art of Exploitation in the first place, which started all this. With the exception of Mind Hacks and The Zombie Survival Guide, none of the '*' and '#' items were found in a library search. I searched on some of the others as well, with no good results. Some of this stuff is in the Library of Congress; but a good number of the ones I searched for weren't.
This leaves my options for discovering new and interesting reads pretty limited—I can buy the books, or harass Slashdot and see if any of you actually have something useful. Rather than try to tailor your responses to me, just go wild; I'm sure anyone in any other technical field besides just programming would appreciate knowing about little gems they'll not find in a library anywhere."
My favorite is Effective Googling.
Okay, so I made that book up. Anyways, I find myself using hardly any formal reference material at this point (during software development). I used to consult MSDN regularly, and sometimes I still do if Google directs me there.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
can't go too far without mentioning the canonical algorithms textbook --
Don't forget Stein.
On another note, the authors are awesome. I thought I had found a mistake (or inconsistency) in the book's explanation of an algorithm. I sent an email to the bug reporting address. Within a couple of days Dr. Cormen replied and told me that I was wrong :-) I restated my position and tried to explain to him why I thought the explanation in the text was wrong. He spent a couple of days trading emails with me about it and explaining in detail the rationale for the way it was explained in the book. Anyhow, he finally got me straightened out. I was most impressed since that was the first time I had ever received a reply from the author of a text book about a potential problem I had reported. I was even more impressed when he spent quite a bit of his own time to make sure that I properly understood why the text was correct.
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
Since you list humorous books, I'm not sure what your definition of "technical" is. I'll assume you meant "non-fiction". Here's a few titles that are recommended for anyone who has a brain and wants to think hard about the state of the world.
GMD
watch this
- Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools. This book is no joke.
- Numerical Recipes in C has saved me a lot of time over the past few years.
- An Embedded Software Primer. When I had a bug up my ass about creating my own computer, this was a great help.
- I often refer to some second-hand math and english textbooks. They've been invaluable to me, but maybe I'm dumb.
Some advice...I urge you to check into whether or not your library accepts requests if you haven't already.
Also, many academic libraries are open to the public. I actually have a colleague that works in your local library system, If I can find her email address I'll bring this to her attention.
If not that, find out if your library offers interlibrary loan services or check out if there is anything available at open WorldCat. [worldcat.org] Perhaps someplace within reasonable driving distance will have it. (I realize this all assumes you will go to the same lengths I will to not spend a buck)
We (as a profession) really do try to get you everything you need free of charge. Unfortunately, we can't always get every item people want, but letting us know what you'd like helps.I have an old extended ASCII table that I scanned in about a decade ago and reprint on a regular basis. Over the years I've added other stuff to it (hexadecimal conversion tables, colour tables etc).
It's getting a bit less useful in these Unicode days, but it is the longest lived technical document I still use.
Bah. The man fell for the chestnut about neurons not understanding Chinese. He understands physics, not computers, but even so he should have been able to see that trick for what it is.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
The Australian Oxford Dictionary
ISBN: 0195517962
The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
William Strunk Jr., E. B. White, Roger Angell (Foreword)
ISBN: 020530902X
Most of my business communications are written - making these tools essential.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Up until the 4th edition, UNIX In A Nutshell had a very good section on Text Formatting, which had lots of material on troff/nroff, including preprocessors like tbl, pic, and eqn. A lot of that material is hard to find online, especially stuff about the 'me' macro. Every UNIX/Linux geek should know how to use troff (or groff, the GNU version -- about 99% of the troff material in the book is valid for groff). I don't understand why O'Reilly decided to drop that material from the 4th edition. Luckily, I still have my 3rd edition handy for when I need to lookup something for troff (which is often).