Ask HN: Great programming books you read in 2009?
Give me list of top 3 programming books you read in 2009
2 comments
Programming Language Pragmatics by Michael L. Scott: The explanations of many things I'd read in other sources are no less than fantastic, I now understand a bunch of things I had only superficially "got" previously. http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Pragmatics-Third-..., check out the overview and reviews.
Coders at Work by Peter Seibel: By far the best of this type of book (well, not counting the '80s classic Programmers at Work which I haven't read since then), one of the best Lisp authors interviews in depth a lot of really interesting and/or important people, from James Zawinski to Donald Knuth, with Javascript, static FP and PARC people, Guy Steele, Peter Norvig, Ken Thompson, Fran Allen (really important interview which points out how C/C++ to the exclusion of truly high level languages have been a disaster when used beyond their proper niches), etc. All are masters who've gotten their hands dirty, many are theory people as well. http://www.amazon.com/Coders-at-Work-Peter-Seibel/dp/1430219...
Garbage Collection by Jones Lins: Pretty much the only book in the field (except for the forthcoming Advanced Garbage Collection sequel in the middle of this year), covers the territory as of the mid-90s. Much more fun than trying to track down 100 individual papers and trying to make sense of it all. Exposition is clear and you get a real feeling for the subtleties of the field (especially when you try fun things like generational and/or concurrent GC). http://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Collection-Algorithms-Automati...
Coders at Work by Peter Seibel: By far the best of this type of book (well, not counting the '80s classic Programmers at Work which I haven't read since then), one of the best Lisp authors interviews in depth a lot of really interesting and/or important people, from James Zawinski to Donald Knuth, with Javascript, static FP and PARC people, Guy Steele, Peter Norvig, Ken Thompson, Fran Allen (really important interview which points out how C/C++ to the exclusion of truly high level languages have been a disaster when used beyond their proper niches), etc. All are masters who've gotten their hands dirty, many are theory people as well. http://www.amazon.com/Coders-at-Work-Peter-Seibel/dp/1430219...
Garbage Collection by Jones Lins: Pretty much the only book in the field (except for the forthcoming Advanced Garbage Collection sequel in the middle of this year), covers the territory as of the mid-90s. Much more fun than trying to track down 100 individual papers and trying to make sense of it all. Exposition is clear and you get a real feeling for the subtleties of the field (especially when you try fun things like generational and/or concurrent GC). http://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Collection-Algorithms-Automati...
by categories:(definition of "read, past tense": spent at least 45 minutes in Borders flipping thru)
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FP:
-- Cesarini/Thompson, Erlang ; Logan, Merritt, Carlsson, OTP in action
-- Halloway, Clojure (supposedly, besides the Manning MEAP PDF book, another Manning and a Apress book are in preparation)
-- Scala: (all 3 books look pretty good, tho I haven't spent a lot of time digging in, and haven't decided if scala's language syntax is denser than clojure's; Payne/Wampler text freely available online
-- haskell: Real World. content freely available online.
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NoSQL, kvstore, docstore, mapreduce:
-- Hadoop: Oreilly (White) and Apress (Venner) look good at first glance
-- couchdb: freely avail draft by Anderson, Slater Lehnardt
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Messaging queues and brokers: AMQP, rabbit, XMPP, ejabberd:
- no books / drafts, PDF beta books I'm aware of
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FP:
-- Cesarini/Thompson, Erlang ; Logan, Merritt, Carlsson, OTP in action
-- Halloway, Clojure (supposedly, besides the Manning MEAP PDF book, another Manning and a Apress book are in preparation)
-- Scala: (all 3 books look pretty good, tho I haven't spent a lot of time digging in, and haven't decided if scala's language syntax is denser than clojure's; Payne/Wampler text freely available online
-- haskell: Real World. content freely available online.
----------------------------
NoSQL, kvstore, docstore, mapreduce:
-- Hadoop: Oreilly (White) and Apress (Venner) look good at first glance
-- couchdb: freely avail draft by Anderson, Slater Lehnardt
---------------------------------
Messaging queues and brokers: AMQP, rabbit, XMPP, ejabberd:
- no books / drafts, PDF beta books I'm aware of
some metadata: the 3 freely available texts above, and the cheap MEAP/ beta book prepub drafts from Manning, Oreilly and Pragmatic are definitely good things (tho the Manning drafts are really rough).