Technical books for the BART ride
July 8, 2017 8:10 PM Subscribe
I am on the hunt for a good CS related book I can read on the BART ride without needing to crack open a computer to do the exercises.
I have read quite a few non fiction and fiction books but miss books that are in my field. I tried the SICP but it was hard to get a lot out of it without writing the code itself. Last time I enjoyed a book in this domain on the BART was the Heads First Design Patterns where the code was simple enough to focus on the prose instead.
I have read quite a few non fiction and fiction books but miss books that are in my field. I tried the SICP but it was hard to get a lot out of it without writing the code itself. Last time I enjoyed a book in this domain on the BART was the Heads First Design Patterns where the code was simple enough to focus on the prose instead.
Mythical Man Month if you haven't yet.
posted by rhizome at 8:51 PM on July 8, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 8:51 PM on July 8, 2017 [5 favorites]
Don't forget that we live in the future and you have a computer in your pocket. A casual search for 'programming' in the Google play store turned up a ton of free apps (most focused on particular languages, but a bunch of algorithm/general CS stuff too) and 'programming environment' brought up a bunch of terminal emulators, compilers, and the like. I can't imagine that the iphone market is any different.
Ooh, Khan Academy has an app...
posted by sexyrobot at 9:06 PM on July 8, 2017
Ooh, Khan Academy has an app...
posted by sexyrobot at 9:06 PM on July 8, 2017
It depends on how technical you want it to be. Popularish non-fiction books about CS/development related fields are easier to read on trains but I still gain understanding and perspective on from books like The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. I think things like Masters of Doom, Fire in the Valley, and Revolution in the Valley are fairly similar in spirit. Nuggets(?) of wisdom with general inspiration/and knowledge of what game before.
Some real CS theory from Knuth that's smaller bites/fewer thesis level exercises at the end of each section are like Digital Typography by Knuth and Selected Papers on Computer Science by Knuth.
And more stepping a bit further afield, even if you don't write Forth, learning a bit and reading Thinking Forth is worthwhile if you're fairly experienced. If not, start with Starting Forth or similar. The mindset of how to develop with Forth is still very different than most things out there. Compiler Construction by Niklaus Wirth is somewhat similar since his approach is different than what most main stream people do.
posted by skynxnex at 9:35 PM on July 8, 2017 [2 favorites]
Some real CS theory from Knuth that's smaller bites/fewer thesis level exercises at the end of each section are like Digital Typography by Knuth and Selected Papers on Computer Science by Knuth.
And more stepping a bit further afield, even if you don't write Forth, learning a bit and reading Thinking Forth is worthwhile if you're fairly experienced. If not, start with Starting Forth or similar. The mindset of how to develop with Forth is still very different than most things out there. Compiler Construction by Niklaus Wirth is somewhat similar since his approach is different than what most main stream people do.
posted by skynxnex at 9:35 PM on July 8, 2017 [2 favorites]
If you read The Mythical Man Month, you may also enjoy Fred Brooks's The Design of Design.
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:48 PM on July 8, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:48 PM on July 8, 2017 [1 favorite]
"The Leprechauns of Software Engineering" is pretty good but is ebook only I think?
If you can do exercises on paper there's a lot of mathier CS topics that might be interesting.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:50 AM on July 9, 2017
If you can do exercises on paper there's a lot of mathier CS topics that might be interesting.
posted by vogon_poet at 6:50 AM on July 9, 2017
Definitely The Art of Computer Programming Vol 1., or Purely Functional Data Structures.
Just kidding.
Fourthing or fifthing The Mythical Man Month.
posted by iffthen at 12:41 AM on July 10, 2017
Just kidding.
Fourthing or fifthing The Mythical Man Month.
posted by iffthen at 12:41 AM on July 10, 2017
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(though as a first order approximation, maybe The Little Schemer?)
posted by batter_my_heart at 8:20 PM on July 8, 2017 [1 favorite]