Books

[OneSadCookie]

The poll about Amazon reminded me that we haven't had a thread about programming books for a while :D . Personally, I don't usually buy computer books. I find most of them useless. That said, there are two I thoroughly recommend:

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201633612/macgamedesigner/) (Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides)
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201485672/macgamedesigner/) (Fowler)

Incidentally, I notice Amazon has a special deal if you buy both at once at the moment...

So, what about you? Do you find books useful when learning about computer stuff? Which books do you recommend?

[Johan]

I find books very useful, however I don't usually buy them, I just get a cup of coffe at borders and sit there for five hours reading every thing a can ;). Some of the ones that I do have bought and can recommend are:

Exceptional C++ (Sutter)
Game Programming Gems I (Various)
Realistic Raytracing (Shirley)
Realistic Image Sythesis using Photon Maps (Jensen)

.johan

[Nimrod]

I've been thinking about getting Design Patterns. Out of the books I've bought, the most useful ones are:
the OpenGL red book
Realtime Rendering (there's a new edition coming out soon)
Effective C++ (although that was over my head at times)
Being self-taught, I think reading books is a good thing, just because you pick up bad habits when you don't have formal teaching, and now and then you read something in a book which is very simple, and say "I didn't know that!" Reading others' source code is useful, but should be backed up with a few good books, IMO.

[Carlos Camacho]

I sometimes get books for review. It is always tough finding the right person. So if you are good at writing, send me a note when I announce I have a new book for review.

I might be the opposite to the posts here... I buy books like crazy and then they sit on my shelf un-read because I lack time. I'm nuts, I know. Anyone need "Zen and the Art of Resource Editing?) :p

In general, my advice is - Get a program on a specific software program is bad. Like when I bought the Photoshop Bible. As soon as the new version hits, you regret it.

But some books are timeless, like some theory on 3d graphics (not OpenGL stuff.)

Speaking of which 1.4 has been given the thumbs up, so how long until we have that version on our OS and in the books at the stores?

Last note... I noticed a big increase in Mac programming books in Japan. (I posted this before.) I have also seen some great game dev books but they were for DirectX and in Japanese. :confused:

Cheers

[ibullard]

The Pragmatic Programmer, from journeyman to master
by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

This book is probably the best book in my collection (I call it a collection because, like Carlos, I buy an obscene amount of books). I cannot recommended it enough.


Effective C++
More Effective C++
both by Scott Meyers

These books filled in the gaps of knowledge about C++ for me. I still reference them regularly.


Large Scale C++ Design by John Lakos

I'm still reading this one but so far it's already worth the price. Don't be fooled by the title, it should read "C++ Design".

[Carlos Camacho]

I was thinking, in order to help our site, I would like to have alist of books for general programming C,C++, Algorithms, methods in programming, etc...

Some have already commented on must buy books. Please continue this thread and I would like a volunteer to compile a list: Books name, Amazon link, and the reason posted here why it is must buy.

This info we can put into our FAQ because people ALWAYS ask, "Which books should I buy?"

Thanks,

[ylaporte]

I personnally own a copy of design patterns by the gang of four... It is a good book, the idea is simple and well explained but it is more usefull as a reference book. The best use for this book is to bring a team on the same level and most importantly to give them a common language to talk about higher order structures of a program. Patterns are easy to undrerstand, just a chapter of explanations in the book, the rest of the book is just a list of basic patterns.

Anyway, it is a good book but not the best.

I have never read this particular book on Fowler but I have other books from teh same guy including UML distilled which is th eonly really really usefull book I have read about UML. Anyway refactoring is a great tool and I recommed it the most. Knowing that Fowler wrote a book about it is great news for me and I'll probably buy it for myself.

Fowler is good no nonsense and keeps things in perspective and shows you how something is usefull in a real world situations. I just like this guy's writing.

So, in conclusion, I'd recommend to go with Fowler's book on refactoring. In my opinion, refactoring is something I use more often than patterns and so far I always liked Fowler's books.