I think, based on the books I have ordered for my office over the past 2 years, that greater value is had in teaching broader skills that are not nailed down to a particular language or technology since they tend to become out of date so quickly.
My thinking is that a good programmer can program in (almost) any language, so there's more help to students to become better programmers than simply more knowledgeable C# or Java programmers.
Some of the excellent books I've read include Dreaming in Code (providing a great understanding of why software development is hard, as well as providing an insight to the IT "heroes" that we should know about, i.e. Donald Knuth, Guido Rossum, Mitch Kapor, etc.), Code Complete (great all-round software development) and Joel on Software (for an assortment of IT-related discussion including a look at unicode).
These books are fun to read and very interesting although Code Complete IS somewhat more technical and serious than the other two.
I wish we had gone through such books when I was at school, but perhaps they would have been over my head at the time. I hope this helps, but use it or don't use it as you will:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I think, based on the books I have ordered for my office over the past 2 years, that greater value is had in teaching broader skills that are not nailed down to a particular language or technology since they tend to become out of date so quickly. My thinking is that a good programmer can program in (almost) any language, so there's more help to students to become better programmers than simply more knowledgeable C# or Java programmers. Some of the excellent books I've read include Dreaming in Code (providing a great understanding of why software development is hard, as well as providing an insight to the IT "heroes" that we should know about, i.e. Donald Knuth, Guido Rossum, Mitch Kapor, etc.), Code Complete (great all-round software development) and Joel on Software (for an assortment of IT-related discussion including a look at unicode). These books are fun to read and very interesting although Code Complete IS somewhat more technical and serious than the other two. I wish we had gone through such books when I was at school, but perhaps they would have been over my head at the time. I hope this helps, but use it or don't use it as you will :-)