[Phpwm] (Computer Science) Reading Material

[Stephen Parkes]

On 6/21/06, pete graham <petegraham1 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On the subject of general security I remember "Secrets and Lies: Digital
> Security in a Networked World" by Bruce Schneier being quite entertaining so
> will recommend this.
>

In a similar vein to this is "The Cookoos Egg" by Cliff Stoll, a
classic tale of chasing a rogue hacker.

>From a developers prospective I think the best general book I have
ever read on Software Dev techniques is "Code Complete" by Steve
McConnell.  In fact I would go so far as to recommend the whole of the
MS Press Developer best practises series
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/books/developer/bestpractices/default.asp
if a jugganaut of a company like MS can produce software that for the
main part works imagine what it can do for your development :)  This
is coming from someone that owns zero MS software so isn't blighted by
MS blindness.

for entertainment the print version of the jargon file, the New Hacker
Dictionary, is always good for a laugh.

The majority of specific technology based books go obsolete quickly
these days the exceptions like K&R are classics and are treated as
such so I would avoid language or technology based stuff unless you
want to refer to a classic version of a language or want a cannonical
source.  Other than KandR I would list Guy Steeles books on Lisp,
Richard Stevens books on interprocess communications and Tanenbaum's
OS Books (latest Minix book is excellent if you want to develop your
own OS) in this category, excellent but not a necasary read these
days.

I second Davids choice of the Pragmatic Programmer, while I don't
subscribe to it entirely like some people it is another of those books
that changes the way you think about development and that's got to be
good for your own development.

Elliots choice of Hackers is also an excellent read it sort of peters
out towards the end until the Stallman bits but the first third of the
book is absolutely brilliant, it's nice to know that the people
considered gods of development where once pranksters writing games and
systems tools for fun.

If you enjoy Phils suggestion of the bind book I have a few sendmail
config files you might enjoy ;)

sparkes
-- 
Steve 'sparkes' Parkes - tshirts http://nerd.ws - code http://zx-81.com
   Autistic LUG http://autisticlug.org - blog http://sp.arkes.co.uk