Tech Book Binge
by Josh Staiger
Books I've bought over the past week:
- Concurrent Programming in Java by Doug Lea
- The Little Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
- The Algorithm Design Manual by Steve S. Skienna
- Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl
- Compilers by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman
- On Writing by Stephen King
Total: $208.92
This is what happens when you mix reading great technical essays with wine and amazon.com a few clicks away.
These are mostly the books from this list that I haven't read yet. Oh boy just wait until I go back and read this other list with a glass of wine in hand. That one's going to hurt the old pocketbook.
Luckily, I've become a true believer in the Mark Cuban philosophy of read as much as you possibly can. One good idea gleaned from a book can potentially pay for itself many times over over the course of a lifetime.
Nine times out of ten you can tell how good a programmer is by looking at what's on his bookshelf (assuming that he actually reads what's on his bookshelf and it's not just there for show). Most programmers don't read books on programming at all. Draw your own conclusions from that.
I've been trying to take up the habit of reading for ~3 hours per day. I think it's easier if you get up early in the morning, read for an hour and a half before work, and then read some more in the evening. This ensures that you've already got some reading in the bag before you tire yourself programming for eight hours straight, and it usually helps with the motivation to keep going in the evening. A nice bonus is that it also gives you something to think about during your morning commute (if you have one).