Some people have had great success with these, and they don't (have to) depend on management approval, just motivated learners.
I've been part of a couple of these, we tried "Programming Windows" by Petzold (this was 1994), and SICP more recently. With the right group of people, you can learn a lot and do some cool stuff.
Agreed. There is a point when programming together (or in meetings) where I get claustrophobic. And there's also a point alone where I get stuck. I think people need doses of both. As ever, 'in all things moderation'.
Learning from your team seems to be fundamental. I don't have the book handy to say which one, but there's a chapter in 'The Psychology of Computer Programming' by Gerald Weinberg that describes what works and doesn't work about the idea of a 'Unix room'. He doesn't use that phrase, but he does describe the collaborations. I think, in some sense, this is one of the things XP tries to create through pair programming.
IT Conversations has a bunch of interesting IT audio content. Well, interesting if you want to listen to people like Bruce Schneier, Tim O'Reilly, Joe Trippi, Philip Greenspun and Steve McConnell.
There are people besides Gates who might disagree with your opinion of goto. Read what Steve McConell has to say in his -balanced- portrait of goto: http://www.stevemcconnell.com/ccgoto.htm
Notice that one of goto's defenders (for appropriate circumstances) is none other than Don Knuth.
I generally avoid goto like the plauge... but sometimes it's the right tool for the job.
but 'From Serf to Surfer: Becoming a Network Consultant' by Matthew Strebe gives the same sort of advice on the same topic in great depth. Highly recommended if you want more information. Also recommended 'The Secrets of Consulting' by Gerald Weinberg, great for understanding pricing and the value of your time among many other things.
I was self-employeed for 1.5 years after the internet consultancy I worked for folded... I made as much money and had more free time (some of it spent biting my nails about when the next gig would start). In my experience the advice in the articles and these books is pretty solid.
Tell you what... give me an address (at NASA) that's received checks that were cashed, and I'll send $100 myself. And ask others to do the same. Pretty soon we'd have a revolution.
Re:Practical Applications
on
Effective Java
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
My rule of thumb for Windows database applications is that if it can be done in Visual Basic, it's faster to do it in VB than most anything else. This held through VB6. So if it's productive work you're after, why switch?
I would say that if you're sticking with Windows and want to learn a Java-like language, C# or -even- VB.NET would be your best choices. C# has a lot in common with Java, and VB.NET has a lot in common with C#. And they'll both work better than any Java alternative, you can bet Microsoft will see to that.
All my friends who learned to program computers (ok, Windows) in the 90's think it strange that I keep one or more command prompts open to get work done. Besides having 'grown up' with prompts, my argument is that the core of programming is algebra+logic, and text makes a pretty good notation for both of those things... it's a much better graphical notation than anything developed in the last 40 years. So it's heartening to see even MS come back around to the way things were.
Re:I wonder how much of this is quality . . .
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 1
RE: 2) My impression is that obsessive Star Wars or Star Trek fanboyism fills a niche that has nothing to do with that fulfilled by reading Lucifer's Hammer or Foundation. Star Wars, especially. It's about familiarity and shared experience.
Having seen Star Wars 17 times the summer it arrived, and having read Asimov (Foundation), Niven and Pournelle (Lucifer's Hammer), Clarke, Heinlein and dozens of others extensively as a teenager, I feel equipped to say that there IS (or at least can be) a link between the two. I don't analyze this much, but I think there is a yearning for an adventurous, dangerous, romantic world in which one can be brave and save the day... and movies and literature help to fill the gap between that world and the one we live in for those who feel that gap most significantly - very often teenage boys who aren't accepted in other peer groups. I'm willing to bet Micheal Vick didn't spend much time reading science fiction as a teenager.
I forget who said it, but I think it's true: "If buildings were built like computer programs, the first woodpecker who came along would bring down civilization." At least XP is designed to get people to talk to each other, a step forward fro some organizations I've been in.
... great, classic, book on how to think about problem-solving.
'Godel, Escher, Bach', Douglas Hofstader - for melting down, spinning around and reshaping your mind.
'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs' - Abelson and Sussman - read the negative reviews at Amazon to realize how sophisticated a book this is. I found it my senior year in Computer Science and realized I'd hardly learned a thing yet. Deep stuff.
'The Pragmatic Programmer', Thomas and Hunt - wish I'd had it at the start of my career, it'd be even more fun, profitable and far less painful.
'Code Complete', McConnell - The bible of 'how to code it'.
'Software Project Survival Guide', McConnell - got me through my first independent project, with plenty of room for growth. Great book for a newly appointed project manager. Helps developers (and everyone else) figure out if their project is going gold or down the tubes pretty accurately.
'The Mythical Man Month' - Fredrick Brooks. Should be read regularly by anyone who manages software professionals. It's an interview question I ask any hiring manager. Ones who care about the field say 'Yes'.
'Programming Pearls' (any edition), Jon Bentley - Great fun, great exercises, great quotes. When you start feeling like programming is drudgery, a great tonic to renew your appreciation. Full of little techniques and large wisdom.
'Programmers At Work' - Interviews with 1985's leading lights of the software development industry. Great inspiration, now with historical relevance.
'The C Programming Language' - my vote for the most influential computer book ever(Hello?), and full of worthwhile knowledge. Anything Kernighan's involved in is worth picking up, an author who really cares about writing well.
I once wrote a little program that extracted per-store files from a mainframe and deposited them on a LAN for transmission to the stores during nightly polling. One thing I didn't check for was behavior when disk space was exhausted on the LAN. What happened was that 0-byte files were created, but the data appends failed. When the dozen or so per-store files were downloaded to the stores and out to the POS terminals, they replaced the formerly good files, and when the terminals rebooted they nastily crashed, neatly mangling operations at the stores and in IT that morning while we scrambled for solutions.
Of course, we modded the program so it would warn and page when LAN space was reaching its limit. And they bought a bigger hard drive and we never had that problem again.
So, remember to check for space before you write those files.
I've thought about this as I tend to be an itenerant tech worker and often wish I had a file/email/contact I left on a machine somewhere else.
So what I want is 'all my data centrally stored, in a place I trust, that I can access from whatever browser I happen to be at'.
The hard part is 'a place I trust'. If I had one, arranging for my apps to write to it - native formats or XML or something, and arranging to read from it later would follow. There are enough browser plug-ins for desktop apps that this would be workable.
I'm not aware of any ISP building around this - 'here's 20 Gig of space, look we've collected all the plug-ins you could want for Excel/Palm desktop/etc... and you can trust us even more than your Mom and we can prove it', but if you're interested and I'm interested, maybe there's a business here.
It's not a marketing organization, it's Bell Labs Research... the same guys who named an older OS 'Unix' as a pun on Multics. If somebody happens to find their stuff useful, that's great, but that's not really why they do it or name it. Personally, I'm grateful for what they've put together over the years, it's even helped pay the bills, so go easy on them will you?
There's no way to build a non-ActiveX DLL with VB. This is considered a feature rather than a bug by MS. I've used VB nearly every day for the last four years (I'm not necessarily proud of that!). Once we did a project where a non-ActiveX component called our VB ActiveX DLL, it was a pain and a hassle to build the necessary wrappers for calling in to the ActiveX world. If you email me, I might be able to dig up an example. If performance isn't enormously critical, you might try the UNIX idea of building VB modules that do what you want based on command line parms and calling them that way. It's old-fashioned, but it will be quicker to develop and much less heartache, trust me please.
And will there be a reprint? Do you think the relative difficulty of finding a book made Forth less accesible, or the relative difficulty of Forth made publishing less attractive?
'Starting Forth' was great, though I read it before I had a computer to hack on (circa 1979 or '80).
Re:As with the parent, so with the child.
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 2, Funny
True...
and the Code Red Resource Kit, the Code Red SDK, 'Programming Code Red', 'Inside Code Red', and, through IDG, 'Code Red for Dummies'!
Engaging writing for a crucial story.
on
Breaking Windows
·
· Score: 1
I stayed up until 4am one morning finishing the book. Whatever you think of the author's conclusion's (I for the most part agree), it's a good read, and a story worth knowing if you're reading this on a computer screen. You are, aren't you?
As with the parent, so with the child.
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 5, Funny
It usually takes Microsoft 3 releases to get it right.
So, when can we expect Code Red.Net?
... is the name of the Firesign Theatre album I listened to hundreds of times, featuring Mr. George Tirebiter as a key character. Maybe Mr. Richards listened one too many times, or assumed more people had heard of it than actually did. His practice was foul, but more people should hear the record. Highly recommended.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people have had great success with these, and they don't (have to) depend on management approval, just motivated learners.
I've been part of a couple of these, we tried "Programming Windows" by Petzold (this was 1994), and SICP more recently. With the right group of people, you can learn a lot and do some cool stuff.
Agreed. There is a point when programming together (or in meetings) where I get claustrophobic. And there's also a point alone where I get stuck. I think people need doses of both. As ever, 'in all things moderation'.
Learning from your team seems to be fundamental. I don't have the book handy to say which one, but there's a chapter in 'The Psychology of Computer Programming' by Gerald Weinberg that describes what works and doesn't work about the idea of a 'Unix room'. He doesn't use that phrase, but he does describe the collaborations. I think, in some sense, this is one of the things XP tries to create through pair programming.
IT Conversations has a bunch of interesting IT audio content. Well, interesting if you want to listen to people like Bruce Schneier, Tim O'Reilly, Joe Trippi, Philip Greenspun and Steve McConnell.
There are people besides Gates who might disagree with your opinion of goto. Read what Steve McConell has to say in his -balanced- portrait of goto: http://www.stevemcconnell.com/ccgoto.htm
Notice that one of goto's defenders (for appropriate circumstances) is none other than Don Knuth.
I generally avoid goto like the plauge... but sometimes it's the right tool for the job.
but 'From Serf to Surfer: Becoming a Network Consultant' by Matthew Strebe gives the same sort of advice on the same topic in great depth. Highly recommended if you want more information. Also recommended 'The Secrets of Consulting' by Gerald Weinberg, great for understanding pricing and the value of your time among many other things.
I was self-employeed for 1.5 years after the internet consultancy I worked for folded... I made as much money and had more free time (some of it spent biting my nails about when the next gig would start). In my experience the advice in the articles and these books is pretty solid.
Tell you what... give me an address (at NASA) that's received checks that were cashed, and I'll send $100 myself. And ask others to do the same. Pretty soon we'd have a revolution.
My rule of thumb for Windows database applications is that if it can be done in Visual Basic, it's faster to do it in VB than most anything else. This held through VB6. So if it's productive work you're after, why switch?
I would say that if you're sticking with Windows and want to learn a Java-like language, C# or -even- VB.NET would be your best choices. C# has a lot in common with Java, and VB.NET has a lot in common with C#. And they'll both work better than any Java alternative, you can bet Microsoft will see to that.
But then I'd say 'why not learn Python?'
All my friends who learned to program computers (ok, Windows) in the 90's think it strange that I keep one or more command prompts open to get work done. Besides having 'grown up' with prompts, my argument is that the core of programming is algebra+logic, and text makes a pretty good notation for both of those things... it's a much better graphical notation than anything developed in the last 40 years. So it's heartening to see even MS come back around to the way things were.
RE: 2) My impression is that obsessive Star Wars or Star Trek fanboyism fills a niche that has nothing to do with that fulfilled by reading Lucifer's Hammer or Foundation. Star Wars, especially. It's about familiarity and shared experience.
Having seen Star Wars 17 times the summer it arrived, and having read Asimov (Foundation), Niven and Pournelle (Lucifer's Hammer), Clarke, Heinlein and dozens of others extensively as a teenager, I feel equipped to say that there IS (or at least can be) a link between the two. I don't analyze this much, but I think there is a yearning for an adventurous, dangerous, romantic world in which one can be brave and save the day... and movies and literature help to fill the gap between that world and the one we live in for those who feel that gap most significantly - very often teenage boys who aren't accepted in other peer groups. I'm willing to bet Micheal Vick didn't spend much time reading science fiction as a teenager.
I forget who said it, but I think it's true: "If buildings were built like computer programs, the first woodpecker who came along would bring down civilization." At least XP is designed to get people to talk to each other, a step forward fro some organizations I've been in.
... great, classic, book on how to think about problem-solving.
'Godel, Escher, Bach', Douglas Hofstader - for melting down, spinning around and reshaping your mind.
'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs' - Abelson and Sussman - read the negative reviews at Amazon to realize how sophisticated a book this is. I found it my senior year in Computer Science and realized I'd hardly learned a thing yet. Deep stuff.
'The Pragmatic Programmer', Thomas and Hunt - wish I'd had it at the start of my career, it'd be even more fun, profitable and far less painful.
'Code Complete', McConnell - The bible of 'how to code it'.
'Software Project Survival Guide', McConnell - got me through my first independent project, with plenty of room for growth. Great book for a newly appointed project manager. Helps developers (and everyone else) figure out if their project is going gold or down the tubes pretty accurately.
'The Mythical Man Month' - Fredrick Brooks. Should be read regularly by anyone who manages software professionals. It's an interview question I ask any hiring manager. Ones who care about the field say 'Yes'.
'Programming Pearls' (any edition), Jon Bentley - Great fun, great exercises, great quotes. When you start feeling like programming is drudgery, a great tonic to renew your appreciation. Full of little techniques and large wisdom.
'Programmers At Work' - Interviews with 1985's leading lights of the software development industry. Great inspiration, now with historical relevance.
'The C Programming Language' - my vote for the most influential computer book ever(Hello?), and full of worthwhile knowledge. Anything Kernighan's involved in is worth picking up, an author who really cares about writing well.
If you compare Episode II to other 4th sequels (Think Rocky 5 and Police Academy 5), it doesn't seem so bad.
I once wrote a little program that extracted per-store files from a mainframe and deposited them on a LAN for transmission to the stores during nightly polling. One thing I didn't check for was behavior when disk space was exhausted on the LAN. What happened was that 0-byte files were created, but the data appends failed. When the dozen or so per-store files were downloaded to the stores and out to the POS terminals, they replaced the formerly good files, and when the terminals rebooted they nastily crashed, neatly mangling operations at the stores and in IT that morning while we scrambled for solutions.
Of course, we modded the program so it would warn and page when LAN space was reaching its limit. And they bought a bigger hard drive and we never had that problem again.
So, remember to check for space before you write those files.
I've thought about this as I tend to be an itenerant tech worker and often wish I had a file/email/contact I left on a machine somewhere else.
So what I want is 'all my data centrally stored, in a place I trust, that I can access from whatever browser I happen to be at'.
The hard part is 'a place I trust'. If I had one, arranging for my apps to write to it - native formats or XML or something, and arranging to read from it later would follow.
There are enough browser plug-ins for desktop apps that this would be workable.
I'm not aware of any ISP building around this - 'here's 20 Gig of space, look we've collected all the plug-ins you could want for Excel/Palm desktop/etc... and you can trust us even more than your Mom and we can prove it', but if you're interested and I'm interested, maybe there's a business here.
Um,
It's not a marketing organization, it's Bell Labs Research... the same guys who named an older OS 'Unix' as a pun on Multics. If somebody happens to find their stuff useful, that's great, but that's not really why they do it or name it. Personally, I'm grateful for what they've put together over the years, it's even helped pay the bills, so go easy on them will you?
... will the vows also be posted? :)
There's no way to build a non-ActiveX DLL with VB. This is considered a feature rather than a bug by MS. I've used VB nearly every day for the last four years (I'm not necessarily proud of that!). Once we did a project where a non-ActiveX component called our VB ActiveX DLL, it was a pain and a hassle to build the necessary wrappers for calling in to the ActiveX world. If you email me, I might be able to dig up an example. If performance isn't enormously critical, you might try the UNIX idea of building VB modules that do what you want based on command line parms and calling them that way. It's old-fashioned, but it will be quicker to develop and much less heartache, trust me please.
And will there be a reprint? Do you think the relative difficulty of finding a book made Forth less accesible, or the relative difficulty of Forth made publishing less attractive?
'Starting Forth' was great, though I read it before I had a computer to hack on (circa 1979 or '80).
True... and the Code Red Resource Kit, the Code Red SDK, 'Programming Code Red', 'Inside Code Red', and, through IDG, 'Code Red for Dummies'!
I stayed up until 4am one morning finishing the book. Whatever you think of the author's conclusion's (I for the most part agree), it's a good read, and a story worth knowing if you're reading this on a computer screen. You are, aren't you?
It usually takes Microsoft 3 releases to get it right. So, when can we expect Code Red .Net?
... is the name of the Firesign Theatre album I listened to hundreds of times, featuring Mr. George Tirebiter as a key character. Maybe Mr. Richards listened one too many times, or assumed more people had heard of it than actually did. His practice was foul, but more people should hear the record. Highly recommended.