(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best personal computer books

The codebase in my current project (OpenGL, C++) compiles and runs on Windows 7, Linux, Apple OS X and iOS. Use the boost libraries quite a lot, amongst other things to abstract many platform-specific details such as threads. There are also a lot of other useful libraries in boost (some which I use quite a bit are bind, function, string algorithms, regex, shared pointers, etc). Couldn't achieve this with Obj-C. Don't really use the math libraries in boost - there are libraries that are more suitable for linear algebra required in games, such as GLM. GLM is excellent aswell. If you are interested in setting up a cross platform codebase like this, I can warmly recommend the books iPhone 3D Programming and OpenGL Superbible 5th edition. Both these books are GREAT! The author of iPhone 3D programming doesn't seem to like Obj-C too much, so he jumps to C++ the first chance he gets. So don't get these books if you want to learn Obj-C.

Here's my list of the classics:

General Computing

• But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone
  
  
• The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
  
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
  
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  
  Computer Science
  
  
• The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science
  
  
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, 2nd Edition (aka The Dragon Book)
  
  
• The Art of Computer Programming
  
  
• Algorithms, 4th Edition
  
  
• Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition (aka CLRS)
  
  
• Essential Algorithms: A Practical Approach to Computer Algorithms Using Python and C#, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Grokking Algorithms: An Illustrated Guide for Programmers and Other Curious People
  
  
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition (aka SICP, available for free on the MIT website)
  
  
• Discrete Mathematics with Applications, 4th Edition
  
  Software Development
  
  
• Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann
  
  
• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (aka The Gang of Four)
  
  
• Think Like a Programmer: An Introduction to Creative Problem Solving
  
  
• The Pragmatic Programmer: your journey to mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd Edition
  
  
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
  
  
• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, 2nd Edition
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things
  
  
• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
  
  
• Programming Pearls, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual
  
  
• Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams
  
  
• Hacker's Delight, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 3rd Edition
  
  Case Studies
  
  
• The Soul of a New Machine
  
  
• Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
  
  
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
  
  
• Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
  
  
• Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, 3rd Edition
  
  Employment
  
  
• Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions, 6th Edition
  
  
• The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide: How to Learn Programming Languages Quickly, Ace Your Programming Interview, and Land Your Software Developer Dream Job
  
  
• The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally
  
  
• The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
  
  Language-Specific
  
  C
  
  
• The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition
  
  Python
  
  
• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
  
  
• Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science, 3rd Edition
  
  
• Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways to Write Better Python
  
  C#
  
  
• The C# Player's Guide, 3rd Edition
  
  C++
  
  
• The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition
  
  
• Starting Out with C++: from Control Structures to Objects, 9th Edition
  
  Java
  
  
• Introduction to Java Programming and Data Structures: Comprehensive Version, 11th Edition
  
  
• [Java: A Beginner's Guide](https://www.amazon.com/Java-Beginners-Seventh-Herbert-Schildt/dp/1259589315/, 7th Edition)
  
  
• Java: The Complete Reference, 11th Edition
  
  
• Core Java Volume I - Fundamentals, 11th Edition
  
  
• Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6th Edition
  
  
• Effective Java, 3rd Edition
  
  Linux Shell Scripts
  
  
• The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Wicked Cool Shell Scripts: 101 Scripts for Linux, OS X, and UNIX Systems, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible
  
  
• Mastering Linux Shell Scripting
  
  Web Development
  
  
• Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics, 5th Edition
  
  
• Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming, 3rd Edition (also available for free on the author's website)
  
  
• JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development
  
  
• HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites
  
  
• You Don't Know JS: Up & Going
  
  Ruby and Rails
  
  
• Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Web Development with Rails, 4th Edition (Note: this book is somewhat out of date compared to the live version on the author's website.)
  
  
• The Well Grounded Rubyist, 3rd Edition
  
  
• Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby: An Agile Primer
  
  
• Agile Web Development with Rails 5.1
  
  
• Programming Ruby 1.9 & 2.0: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, 4th Edition
  
  
• Eloquent Ruby
  
  Assembly
  
  
• Assembly Language for x86 Processors, 8th Edition

If you need some help understanding components, I wrote a pretty in depth guide and have put it online for everyone to read. You can find it for free on Scribd, Amazon and iTunes.

I realize that it is quite a lengthy read, but if you pick out certain sections that you want to understand better than it can be a very useful guide. Good luck!

If you are a visual learner then I would strongly recommend to go with Angela Yu's Flutter Bootcamp course, it's amazingly well made even if you are beginner.
If you want to dive more deeper then you should definitely buy Maximilian's Udemy Course, it's very detailed and you will learn a lot.

If you like book then there is Practical Flutter by Frank (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1484249712/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_X9XEDbM8H4CG9 ) which is available right now. It is project based and quite good.

And not to forget flutter official documentation.

But if you really want to master Flutter then there is no other substitute other than choosing your own project and building it while going through stack of documentation, Stackoverflow answers and blog posts.

Good luck, Flutter is awesome.

Co-Founder of 1SRC here....

I would recommend a late model Vx ultra slim on 3.5 with the original full size pocketable palm keyboard that was directly sold by palm if you are just getting started.

They are very very affordable and even slightly expandable. They are also fashionable and small enough to fit in a shirt pocket or purse.

Make sure you get the wired version of the keyboard and software to go with it.

Then head over to the mega dump (do a search here) and load it up.

The best thing about this setup is it won't irritate your check book and the V series unit alone on 3.5 is air gaped so you wont have to worry about anyone stealing your data. Then you can update it to 4.1 when YOU feel you are ready to take that step.

This is the best way to start, get a toe hold, and start moving forward.

Try and stay away from color devices for a while if you can.

This is also the same setup many resident doctors used at many major university medical centers throughout massachusetts for two decades.

I would also recommend this book by David Pogue

https://www.amazon.com/PalmPilot-Ultimate-Guide-Mastering-Organizers/dp/1565926005

Don't be afraid to buy parts "piecemeal" either. If you look around you can save even more money by purchasing the Vx unit separate from the dock (or you can get a travel cable instead of a dock to boot).

Enjoy your new years anna!

The best resource I've found is the Mac SysAdmins Slack group. Unfortunately, information is very sparse on MDM best practices. Everything is tied to Jamf, which is fine, but a lot of people (myself included) are using other MDM solutions because they better suit our needs. For example: We're a cloud based company. Everything is in Gsuite, and we're using a cloud-based IM solution (think Okta / Jumpcloud). The solution we chose isn't Jamf.

A book is coming out next year that seems vendor netural. I highly recommend you buy it. https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Device-Management-Managing-AppleTVs/dp/1484253876

If you're interested in learning about the software and tools the people you'll be helping might be using, or should be using, it seems like the book "Mac at Work" by Sparks would be worthwhile. I haven't read it, but his podcast is very good. A link to the book is here.

As for a general crash course, it seems like the linked thing will be pretty good.

Also, if she wants something a little more in depth, I recommend David Pogue's "Switching to the Mac". It has a lot of valuable info for a switcher, some people like to have a book to reference, and he is an amusing writer. :)

You can pick it up used for under $10 on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Switching-Mac-Missing-Mountain-Edition/dp/1449330290

Case in point, here's a promotional poster for Amiga 1000.

Even the official reference manuals had a vaporwave feel to them. Here's another variant. And another

The Amiga World logo also stands out to me as a good example; especially as they changed colours on it all the time and often used suitable pastels

An image used in ads for Brilliance for the Amiga just because I like it

Title screen designs alluding to the same style as the manuals

And images like this (demo image for ProPaint I think)

It was probably a printer error, did you get this copy for free or via some non-retail channel?

I know one of the authors and he is the main dev behind bonescript, the TI project leader, and co-founder of the BeagleBone Foundation. I would definitely trust this book, it should be fairly comprehensive.

However I would also highly recommend Derek Molloy's Book.
https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-BeagleBone-Techniques-Building-Embedded/dp/1118935128/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
He provides a lot of additional content through his youtube channel and website.
http://derekmolloy.ie/

>As a layman, do you have a way that I may be able to use as far as learning some of these things? How do I begin? What is a good source?

Help with learning computers?

If you want to learn about computers I'd recommend this book. They use it in my college's equivalent of computer 101. Very accessible, easy to understand.

It's long as it's comprehensive, but you don't need to read it all cover to cover! When you see a section on like, how does hard drives or optical drives work with their explanations you can just skip that section if you're not interested. You could come back to it later if you want or read it then and there if you're curious. I will say as a bit of a tech person the exact way an optical disc is read or how platter drives read data has never come up. [Other than a brief why platter "spinny" hard drives are risker and slower than solid state hard drives.]

This edition is from 2012. Info still good although the sections talking about 'cutting edge' tech is not as cutting anymore, but that wouldn't matter for your purposes. 8-10$ for the book including SH.
https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Computers-Today-Tomorrow-Comprehensive/dp/1133190243/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=

This edition is from 2014. The cutting edge sections are more cutting edge than 2012, but it still doesn't matter too heavily for your purposes. About $25 w/SH included.
https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Computers-Today-Tomorrow-Comprehensive/dp/1285767276/

>Not my fault you don't understand basic definitions.

I've been programming since 1980. That was the year I wrote my first sprite editor. The next year, when I was eleven, I was working with a custom memcopy routine that I wrote in assembly language, then called machine language. My parents wouldn't buy me an assembler because it cost $150 or so, so I acquired this book, learned 6502 machine language, and taught myself.

How about you?

You're sitting there at the other end of the line telling me what's what about graphics.

>Even if you can use textures in a 2d game it is not all that common.

You're someone who doesn't know what he's talking about, telling someone who does know what he's talking about how it is.

No animosity or anything like that intended. You just don't know what you're talking about, and you've been mis-educated into believing that every opinion has equal merit. It's indeed not your fault.

I wish you a good day and the best of luck with whatever project you're working on.

Did I mention that I wrote my own assembler 30 years ago?

I wrote parts of it in assembler. How did I do that, you ask, with no assembler? Well, by writing it on paper and manually translating the opcodes into hex from a table. 30 years later I still remember some of the hex values of the opcodes. A lot of people did this and it was actually more common than it sounds.

Before my sprite editor, I had to make sprites by filling them in on 8x8 squares on graph paper. Then translating the bit patterns into octal, or I should say hex. This was how it was done back then.

You kids seriously have no clue how easy you have things. Seriously.

This book is really a great resource.

I had my Mom read it and my co-worker and it helped them both out a lot. I wish something like it was around when I made the change years ago now.

CBT Nuggets has lots of networking related training videos, CompTIA Net+ to the advanced Cisco stuff. DNS specifically is something I've been searching for also, the best I've found is a book called "DNS on Windows Server 2003" and I did contact the author on Twitter and asked if there would be a new version, he replied he had not thought about it but would ask the coauthor, never heard back.

​

DNS is also covered a lightly in Active Directory and Windows Server Fundamentals type videos. Microsoft Virtual Academy covers a few minutes on DNS in this module under "Name Resolution"

This Udemy course might be worth it also.

please tell me there isn't rally an IPad for dummies book... I need to have some faith in humanity

Edit: Dear God!!!! 2 things 1....
http://www.amazon.com/iPad-Dummies-Computers-Edward-Baig/dp/0470580275

and 2..

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm81l4MGrm1qz4eyeo1_500.png

https://github.com/kivy/kivy is going strong. I ported a web app to a native 2button + list android app in 245 lines of code with flask and requests.

You can also use jnius to autoclass in any android java library. Kivy is well worth a try. A lot has happened in the last year.


There is actually a fresh book released a few days ago I'm looking to buy:
https://www.amazon.com/Building-Android-Python-Using-Studio/dp/1484250303

Awesome! What books are you using? I really like C# primer Plus so far.

Thanks for the quick reply :) I will try to give it a read.

Just to be sure these are the books you suggested:

• Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, A System of Patterns
  
• Component Based Development for enterprise level applications

If you want an overview from a business sense, this book might be helpful: http://www.amazon.com/The-Business-iPhone-iPad-Development/dp/1430233001/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1346362562&sr=8-4&keywords=iphone+app+development

If you want to actually learn I would recommend one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=iphone+app+development

http://www.amazon.com/iPhone-Application-Development-For-Dummies/dp/1118091345/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1346362562&sr=8-3&keywords=iphone+app+development

http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iOS-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430236051/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1346362562&sr=8-7&keywords=iphone+app+development

> Second, you don't have books or toolchain to make "native" software. Third, you don't even know what books or toolchain are required.

I don't know if the situation was quite as terrible as you seem to imply. There were quite a few hobbyist magazines, that back in that day went into some great depth on how to program the machines. Until the late 80's, Byte magazine even included articles describing how to build hardware, up to and including full computers and co-processor boards. There were also a large number of technical reference books commonly available at bookstores.

It's worth noting that all of these were very commonly available at mass market bookstores. (At least the bookstores I went to in Houston.)

http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-64-Programmers-Reference-Guide/dp/0672220563

http://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Commodore-64C-Sheldon-Leemon/dp/0874550823/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213025886&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Atari-Ian-Chadwick/dp/0874550041/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213025986&sr=1-1

On the Apple ][, this book originally came with the machine, and covered everything from unpacking the box, to a firmware listing, to a schematic and pinouts.

http://apple2history.org/museum/books_manuals/a2refmanorig.html

Regarding toolchain availablity, Apple machines came with a BASIC that loaded on startup and a built in assembly language monitor (call -151, IIRC). On the C64, Jim Butterfield had a nice monitor that was also commonly available. IBM machines came with a complete BIOS listing and pinouts of all major ports, including the expansion slots.


And, while Google wasn't around, BBS's were around, and they tended to be more specialzed to computer hobbyists than 'the Internet', so search was less important.

Get really familiar with the MVC pattern if you haven't already. It's fundamental in iOS programming. Aside from that, I learned it mostly from a For Dummies book I got at a bookstore. It made a simple app, and I followed along and then made my own using what I learned there. I look at Stack Overflow and the Apple Docs a lot too.

Likewise, but on an Apple ][+. These were invaluable:

Apple Machine Language for Beginners

Apple Machine Language

But mostly this was absolutely required!

What’s Where in the Apple

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Machine-Language-Don-Inman/dp/0835902307/

And they do mean "machine language". They don't even get into assembly until the second half of the book. Before that, it's looking up opcodes in the back of the book and how to calculate your jumps.

Although many C64 machines continue to work flawlessly, there is a probability that the original hardware will fail. So, when you buy a machine, make sure it actually works and that all the keys on the keyboard work well.

Eventually chips may fail. The usual suspects are the two CIA chips, the PLA chip, memory chips and perhaps even the SID (sound) and VIC (video) chips. You'll have to replace them if they fail. Note that Commodore produced cost reduced main boards towards the end of the C64's lifespan, which are not 100% the same as the ones that came before.

C64 reloaded is a C64 board you can buy which allows you to insert legacy c64 chips in a new main board.

Ultimate64 is an FPGA based 'implementation' of the original c64 hardware. Doesn't need any legacy hardware, but is a full working C64

1541Ultimate is a 1541 disk drive and tape emulator that slots into your C64 (much like the sd2iec)

Ray Carlsen is a great resource for hardware related things.

The original PSU has a tendency to fail. Failure of the PSU can fry chips in your C64. There are modern PSU's to prevent that from happening, or you can get a 'power saver' which serves the purpose of protecting your c64 from PSU failures.

Mapping the c64 Learn this and you know everything there is to know about your C64 hardware. It's a lot to take in.

Mapping the C64 the book This books is also essential, together with Commodore's "Programmer's reference guide"

Programmer's Reference Guide You need this

Welcome to the world of C64, have a nice journey.