On technology books
Jeff Atwood mad some explicit about technology books here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/do-not-buy-this-book.html. At first I was astonished and strongly disagreed with him. Later I thought about it, digested its meaning and must admit, I agree. So this is a how I will choose which books I will buy or not: Buy Books about architecture, design and techniques – design patterns, dependency injection, test driven development. Interestingly also useful are books of these topics applied to a specific language. Even more interestingly, also useful are books of these topics applied to a specific language you broadly know but don’t use. In particular, you can mix and match books on these topics between Java, C# and ActionScript whether you are a Java, C# or ActionScript programmer. Doing the “translation” (adapting examples to missing language features, etc.) might even help. Books about the fundamentals of a technology you know nothing about. This means that if you have to learn say Silverlight and you are a Java programmer, buy a book about C# and XAML. Do not waste time in buying books containing practical examples like “form validation” or “how to create modal windows” and so on. There’s Google for that. Books about organization and (self-)management practices. From The mythical man month to I.M. Wright’s Hard Code, you can’t go wrong with this kind of books. With “you can’t go wrong” I mean that even if you pick up an obsolete, wrong and heretical book about soft topics you’ll find more food for thought than by buying a “recipe” book [...]
19 Dec