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

Cool, thanks for the details.

First, the good news:
You might already realize it, but this is a tremendous field to be in. The opportunity is absolutely massive. To put it simply, I’ll say that the world (companies, institutions, and soon, individuals) are currently generating more data than we can analyze. And year-over-year we’re generating data at a faster rate.

People who are excellent at analyzing data will have lots of high-salary, high-benefit opportunities (as it is, if you have the right skill set, it’s common to get contacted by Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon; these companies all need skilled analytics workers).

Now, the challenge:
Learning analytics is hard.

Game plan:

Short Term:

In the short term you should focus on data visualization and “visual communication.” This means, communicating with charts, graphs, and images in place of excessive words. I won’t go into the details, but the human mind is wired for visual inputs. We don’t process spreadsheets, tables, and prose that well. However, our brains are sort of wired for visual inputs. The phrase “a picture speaks a thousand words” is fairly accurate.

I agree that “storytelling” is necessary, but I sometimes dislike it because I think it confuses what we’re actually doing. Let me unpack that term a little: storytelling actually means 1. finding valuable insights, 2. communicating valuable insights.

In the early stages of your career, the easiest way to find insights and communicate them is with visualization. (note that machine learning is also awesome for finding insightful information; it will be extremely difficult to teach yourself ML though, so hold off on that until you can take a class and have a mentor at work.)

That said, here’s what you should focus on:

1. Master the “Big 3” visualizations, with all their variations
i. Bar Chart
ii. Line Chart
iii. Scatterplot

What’s important is not just being able to do them, but being able to create them fast, accurately, and knowing when to use them. 80%+ of all reporting can be done with these 3 charts and their variants.

2. Learn conceptually how each visualization functions as a tool: when to use them, why, how they are best implemented, etc.
Nathan Yao’s Data Points is pretty good for this
Stephen Few’s books are also informative, but I like his material less than Yao’s.

3. Upgrade your tools
If you want to really develop in this career path, you have to move beyond Excel. Excel is great for quick-and-dirty tasks, but for a true analytics professional, it’s not a primary tool. (It doesn’t scale well at all, it’s functionality is limited, it’s more error prone, difficult to automate.)

Here are my two favorite tools, which I highly recommend. These are the tools that I wish I knew when I started:

Tableau, R

i. Tableau
Pros:
Great for rapidly creating lots of visualizations (simple charts and graphs, as well as some exotic ones).
Great for creating dashboards (you need to have Tableau Server for this). Dashboards can take some work off of your plate if you learn to automate the process and can convince your business partners to accept an online dashboard instead of a weekly/monthly/quarterly powerpoint.

Cons:
Automation can be difficult.
Tableau is bad at data wrangling. I really dislike doing any sort of data cleaning, merging, transformation in Tableau. Tableau just isn’t great at those tasks.

ii. R
Pros: Free and highly functional for data analytics. It’s very functionality is centered around analyzing data.
Cons: The learning curve is a bit steep. It takes time.


4. Master Presentation Design
Because your deliverables are mostly PowerPoint presentations (PPTs), you should really learn slide design. Honestly, if you do this right, you’ll be ahead of most analysts; most presentations are not well designed.

i. Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds

ii. Clear and to the Point, by Stephen Kosslyn





In the medium to long term, you’ll need to learn “data wrangling” (gathering, combining, re-shaping data).
I’d highly recommend learning SQL and R’s “plyr” package.


If you’re serious about analytics, you should start reading my blog. I’m writing about how to learn analytics step-by-step, and I’ll eventually cover all of these above topics (data visualization, R, Tableau, data wrangling, presentation design).

Also, if you have specific questions, stop by the blog and contact me on the “Contact” page.

All the best,

sharpsightlabs.com

...continued...

> Test plans - When you apply for QA roles, you'll almost certainly be asked "how would you test ____?". The correct answer is to be methodical. Don't just spew out a stream of test cases as you brainstorm them. Understand the different scopes (unit, functional, integration, maybe end-to-end) and what the goals of each is, and how they differ. Understand that there are different areas of testing like boundary, happy path, special cases (null, " ", 0, -1), exceptions, localization, security, deployment/rollback, code coverage, user-acceptance, a/b, black box vs white box, load/performance/stress/scalability, resiliency, etc. Test various attributes at the intersection of a compenent and a capability (borrowed from the book How Google Tests Software), and I believe you can see a video that goes into this called The 10 Minute Test Plan. Understand how tests fit into your branching strategy - when to run bvts vs integration vs regression tests.

> Test methodologies - Understand the tools that make you an efficient tester. These include data driven tests, oracles, all-pairs / equivalency class, mocking & injection, profiling, debugging, logging, model-based, emulators, harnesses (like JUnit), fuzzing, dependency injection, etc.

> Test frameworks - Knowing all the tests you need to write is good, but then you have to write them. Don't do all of them from scratch. Think of it as a system that needs to be architected so that test cases are simple to write, and new functionality is easy to implement tests for. I can't recommend any books for this because it's something I learned from my peers.

> Test tools - Selenium / WebDriver for web ui, Fiddler for web services (or sites), JUnit/TestNG, JMeter (I have to admit, I don't know this one), integration tools like Jenkins, Github/Stash, git/svn.

> System design - As you're entry-level, this may not be a huge focus in an interview, but know how to sensibly design a system. Know which classes should be used and how they interact with each other. Keep in mind that the system may evolve in the future.

> Whiteboarding - Practice solving problems on a whiteboard. The process is more than just writing the solution, though. This is the process I follow (based loosely on the book Programming Interviews Exposed):

• Clarify the problem - resolve any ambiguities, determine behaviors for special cases (throw an exception vs return null?). Look for gotchas (like if you're doing some string manipulation with overlaps)
  
• Give a couple test cases to demonstrate your understanding of the problem, to make you think of other special cases, and because they want someone who's test-focused if you go into QA. Give a happy path scenario and a couple negative or special cases
  
• Propose a solution - do this verbally, and give its runtime complexity (and less importantly, its memory usage). If the runtime complexity is bad (polynomial, exponential), then say so and think of a better solution (there will almost certainly be one)
  
• Implement the solution - verbalize your thought process while doing so. If you don't know something, say so. The interviewer will likely help you out without penalty. Listen very carefully for clues, because the interviewer will be giving them. Really understand everything the interviewer says, and understand his motivation for saying it. If you see potential bugs, say so ("I want to be careful that I don't go out-of-bounds in the last iteration of this loop").
  
• Debug the solution - walk through it as if you're a debugger, using the happy path test case that you made earlier. Oftentimes, the interviewer will give you a test case with the problem. Use it - he probably selected it for a reason (the numbers are in an interesting order that will find the most bugs, for example).
  
• Test the solution - Add to the handful of tests you gave earlier. Think about the different types of tests, and if they apply.
  
  Resources:-
  
  > Learning to test:
  
  
• How Google Tests Software
  
• Guice, and another
  
• Google Test Automation Conference
  
• Netflix's Simian Army
  
• Google Testing Blog
  
• Hermetic testing
  
• The Art of Software Testing (I've only skimmed it)
  
  > Learning to interview:
  
  
• Programming Interviews Exposed
  
• Programming Pearls
  
  > Learning to program:
  
  
• Design Patterns (I'm embarrassed that I don't have more recommendations for this...)
  
  > Miscellaneous
  
  
• Meetup
  
• Inventing on Principle
  
  > What sort of skills should I really hone? I realize I gave you a ton of stuff in this post, so here's a shorter list:
  
  

1. Read How Google Tests Software
   
2. Understand dependency injection
   
3. Understand unit, functional (use hermetic environments), and integration testing
   
4. Understand mocking (Mockito's a good one for java)
   
   > Examples of projects that make you look valuable
   
   

• Refactoring product code to be Guice-friendly
  
• Tool to profile method calls simply by adding annotations
  
• Tool to automate bug filing/updating/closing - assign to the right person, re-activate when they repro, give good steps, close when they're fixed and don't repro
  
• Tool to automatically quarantine flaky tests that aren't caused by product bugs
  
• Aggregation of distributed logs into central, indexed location (I didn't write the solution, just did the work to integrate an existing one (Logstash/Kibana))
  
• Automatically display the picture of the team member who checks in code with the highest coverage (I didn't do this, just something cool I read about)
  
• Tool that logs messages with contextual information, so for example you can see all messages associated with user 123
  
• Tool that captures inter-server traffic, associated with the user-request
  
• Tool that provides metadata about test cases in your web proxy
  

I would recommend these books:

Java for Dummies
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
Effective Java, 2nd Edition

Java for Dummies will get you started, but it's by no means sufficient for someone looking for a career in Java. The second book covers general programming practices, which is also suitable for beginners, and is also the most important book in the list. The final book is what you should read once you have a good foothold in Java - it will teach you how to do Java right.

Also worth noting is that you should not constrain yourself to Java if you want to be an effective programmer. It's good to start with, but be sure to explore other programming languages and paradigms:

• Dynamic, interpreted languages, like Python and Ruby
  
• Lower-level languages like C/C++. Doing your own memory management is definitely a change of pace from Java's garbage collection ;)
  
• Functional programming, with Lisp or Haskell

To be honest, I was terrible when it came to reading books. The only one I remember being useful was https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-Jon-Bentley/dp/8177588583. Hopefully other people will have better suggestions for you.

As for online resources, if you are just looking to be exposed to more information, online courses are probably the way to go. I haven't tried Coursera personally, but I have heard good things about them from others. Princeton puts some free courses on there (like https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=sedgewick&languages=en).

If you are looking for information related to a specific problem, Google is probably your best bet, and it sounds like you're already doing that. Probably all of the technical knowledge I've learned in the last year has come from me starting a new task, realizing I don't know enough, and then Googling to see what other people have done. It's amazing how much you can get away with not knowing if you are just willing to go and ask other people instead of diving right in. I personally think that's where a lot of newer programmers get into trouble. They start writing a solution without researching what others have done and run into the same pitfalls. Good luck!

Some context, I've been living in this house for about 3 years now, my girlfriend and i moved in to take care of the owner of the house. Turns out that he was a big lisp / scheme hacker back in the 80s-90s and had developed a lot of cutting edge tech in his hay day. Anyway, these books have been hiding in his library downstairs...

It was like finding a bunch of hidden magical scrolls of lost knowledge :)

edit: I will compile a list of the books later. I'm out doing 4th of July things.

update: List of books

• Lisp: Style and Design by Molly M. Miller and Eric Benson
  ISBN: 1-55558-044-0
  
  
• Common Lisp The Language Second Edition by Guy L. Steele
  ISBN: 1-55558-042-4
  
  
• The Little LISPer Trade Edition by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
  ISBN: 0-262-56038-0
  
  
• Common LISPcraft by Robert Wilensky
  ISBN: 0-393-95544-3
  
  
• Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp by Sonya E. Keene
  ISBN: 0-201-17589-4
  
  
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman w/Julie Sussman
  ISBN: 0-07-000-422-6
  
  
• ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham
  ISBN: 0-13-370875-6
  
  
• Programming Paradigms in LISP by Rajeev Sangal
  ISBN: 0-07-054666-5
  
  
• The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Gregor Kiczales, Jim des Rivieres, and Daniel G. Bobrow
  ISBN: 0-262-11158-6
  
  
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig
  ISBN: 1-55860-191-0
  
  
• Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel
  ISBN: 1-59059-239-5
  
  
• Common Lisp The Language by Guy L. Steele
  ISBN: 0-932376-41-X
  
  
• Anatomy of Lisp by John Allen
  ISBN: 0-07-001115-X
  
  
• Lisp Objects, and Symbolic Programming by Robert R. Kessler
  ISBN: 0-673-39773-4
  
  
• Performance and Evaluation of Lisp Systems by Richard P. Gabriel
  ISBN: 0-262-07093-6
  
  
• A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp by Deborah G. Tatar
  ISBN: 0-932376-87-8
  
  
• Understanding CLOS The Common Lisp Object System by Jo A. Lawless and Molly M. Miller
  ISBN: 0-13-717232-X
  
  
• The Common Lisp Companion by Tim D. Koschmann
  ISBN: 0-417-50308-8
  
  
• Symbolic Computing with Lisp and Prolog by Robert A. Mueller and Rex L. Page
  ISBN: 0-471-60771-1
  
  
• Scheme and the Art of Programming by George Springer and Daniel P. Friedman
  ISBN: 0-262-19288-8
  
  
• Programming In Scheme by Michael Eisenberg
  ISBN: 0-262-55017-2
  
  
• The Schematics of Computation by Vincent S. Manis and James J. Little
  ISBN: 0-13-834284-9
  
  
• The Joy of Clojure by Michael Fogus and Chris Houser
  ISBN: 1-935182-64-1
  
  
• Clojure For The Brave and True by Daniel Higginbotham
  ISBN: 978-1-59327-591-4
  
  
  
  

Awesome!! I'd say going to school for it is a great start!

I'd make sure to get involved with any construction specific student orgs. Alot of them are affiliated with professional orgs like the AGC, ABC and NAHB. On top of that, any more experience or internships you can get will do you well!

Here's a $15 textbook from Amazon. It's a great read, not your typical dry learning. Construction Management JumpStart: The Best First Step Toward a Career in Construction Management https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470609990/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_tU5MAb2GW7Z3F

Also try to kinda get an idea of what sector you'd want to lean towards. Some schools make you specialize in home building, commercial, or heavy civil.

The challenge is learning the structure, logic, and capabilities of the language. This book is a good starting point. (There are also similar free PDFs online.) The book is accompanied by a package with a bunch of sample data sets ("UsingR"). It will give you a feel for the language. Once you have that, really the best thing to do is play around with it--find sample data sets and see what it's capable of. The Intro to R manual, and the package manuals, will then begin to make more sense and you'll be able to dive in pretty quickly. Again, the best thing is to experiment.

And as for multilevel modeling, the package I usually come across is lme4. There are others, as well.

ok so at school we worked with Big Java . Good book for beginners but it doesn't seem as comprehensive. Thinking in Java is the best book in my opinion, it is covers an insane amount of topics, but it is more of a challenge in case you have a short attention span (it tends to be more serious than the others, rendering it more boring in return).
Now in case you want something more playful Head First Java is a fun one, it uses pictures , and jokes and uses day to day examples in order to make things stick better to your brain. In case you find that kind of stuff better, than it is recommended, but it does cover less than both of the predecessors.

For later inquires, you can check out the books on this list

Here's an "Intro to Tableau" Evernote link that has the detail below, but this is what I've put together for our teams when new folks join and want to know more about it.

http://www.evernote.com/l/AKBV30_85-ZEFbF0lNaDxgSMuG9Mq0xpmUM/

What is Tableau?

• What Tableau IS and IS NOT - Interworks/Dan Murry - Blog post - [2p]
  
• A New Approach to Business Intelligence: Rapid-fire BI - Tableau - [Whitepaper - 15p]
  
• What is Tableau - Quora - Forum - [12a]
  
• What is Tableau - Yusheng Huang - Video - [2:26]
  
• Tableau Software Overview - Tableau Software - Video - [2:20]
  
  
  Where do I get it?
  
  
• Desktop latest version - Download Page - Tableau
  
• Previous versions - Download Page - Tableau
  
• Tableau Public - Tableau
  
• Pricing overview - Tableau
  
  Now that I have it, how do I use it?
  
  
• Tableau Starter Kit - Tableau
  
• Tableau Training Videos - Tableau
  
• Data Analysis Fundamentals with Tableau - Pluralsight
  
• Big Data Analytics with Tableau - Pluralsight
  
• Enterprise Business Intelligence with Tableau Server - Pluralsight
  
• Data Visualizations Using Tableau Public - Pluralsight
  
• Data Science and Analytics in Context - edX
  
  
  How do I become involved?
  
  
• Tableau User Groups - Tableau
  
• Tableau Community Forums - Tableau
  
• /r/tableau - Reddit
  
  
  I want to know more
  
  
• Books
  
  • Tableau Your Data! - Dan Murray
    
  • Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals - Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
    
  • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Edward Tufte
    
  • Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data - Stephen Few
    
  • Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten - Stephen Few
    
    
• Blogs
  
  • VizPainter - IFTTT
    
  • Tableau Viz of the Day - IFTTT
    
  • Vizioneer - IFTTT
    
  • VizCandy - IFTTT
    
  • Tableau Zen - IFTTT
    
  • Tableau Renders - IFTTT
    
  • Tableau Love - IFTTT
    
  • Viz Ninja - IFTTT
    
  • Paint by Numbers - IFTTT
    
  • Jewel Loree - IFTTT
    
  • Jen Underwood - IFTTT (BI)
    
  • datadoodle - IFTTT
    
    
• Podcasts
  
  • Tableau Wanna Be Podcast - Soundcloud iTunes
    
  • Podcast your data - Stitcher iTunes
    
  • Partially Derivative - Stitcher iTunes
    
  • PolicyViz - Stitcher iTunes
    
  • More
    
    
• Job Market
  
  • LinkedIn
    
  • Indeed
    
  • Monster
    
  • SimplyHired
    
    
• Certification
  
  • Tableau
    

Here is an image of something I threw together that could work for presenting data across two distinct groups, as you are describing. It isn't a pie chart, although you could use the same philosophy of creating two colors for your series and using labels to differentiate each of the boys and girls. You could also do an exploded pie, but I'm not a big fan of them (to each his own, though). I based this build off of a blog post on BaconBits, an Excel blog by the author of Excel Dashboards (among other books). The process is a bit cumbersome, but it can create some cool looking chart effects for dashboards. The post explaining the process can is found here. Here is the spreadsheet if you want to explore it. Good luck.

You will find malware to be written in plenty of languages including Visual Basic, c++, C, etc. For C I highly recommend the Ansi C book, It's short, clear and comes with code examples and exercises at the end of each chapter.

Reversing c++ is similar, but there are many nuances to it depending on the compiler used. For c++, and at your level I would recommend the Dietel and Dietel book
http://www.amazon.com/How-Program-6th-Paul-Deitel/dp/0136152503/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267536050&sr=8-2-spell

In terms of assembly, I recommend a few books:
First:
http://www.amazon.com/Assembly-Language-Intel-Based-Computers-Textbook/dp/000501395X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267536245&sr=1-5
Second:
http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Assembly-Language-Programmer/dp/0764579010/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267536245&sr=1-3
and Third:
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/

Good luck.

Maybe this table can help some of you to gauge how worth the bundle is.

| | | Amazon | | | Goodreads | |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|------------------|---------|--------------|-----------|--------------|
| Tier | Title | Kindle Price ($) | Average | # of Ratings | Average | # of Ratings |
| 1 | Painting with Numbers: Presenting Financials and Other Numbers So People Will Understand You | 25.99 | 3.9 | 20 | 4.05 | 40 |
| 1 | Presenting Data: How to Communicate Your Message Effectively | 26.99 | 2.9 | 4 | 4.25 | 8 |
| 1 | Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations | - | 4.0 | 13 | 3.84 | 56 |
| 1 | Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals (Excerpt) | 25.99 | 4.6 | 281 | 4.37 | 1175 |
| 2 | 101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization | 22.99 | 4.2 | 70 | 3.98 | 390 |
| 2 | Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design | 25.99 | 4.3 | 39 | 3.90 | 173 |
| 2 | The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions | 31.71 | 3.8 | 43 | 3.03 | 35 |
| 2 | Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics | 25.99 | 3.9 | 83 | 3.88 | 988 |
| 3 | Data Points: Visualization That Means Something | 25.99 | 3.9 | 34 | 3.87 | 362 |
| 3 | Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling | 19.99 | 4.0 | 38 | 3.79 | 221 |
| 3 | Graph Analysis and Visualization: Discovering Business Opportunity in Linked Data | 40.99 | 4.2 | 3 | 3.59 | 14 |
| 3 | Tableau Your Data!: Fast and Easy Visual Analysis with Tableau Software, 2nd Edition | 39.99 | 4.0 | 66 | 4.14 | 111 |
| 3 | Visualizing Financial Data | 36.99 | 4.7 | 4 | 3.83 | 6 |

I've worked in industry for 14 years, and I've never seen anyone use a graphing calculator. This includes engineers (mechanical, electrical, industrial, chemical), statisticians, and programmers.

The only people I've seen use a hand-held calculator were some older mechanical engineers who used one of the classic HP RPN models, like the 11C or 15C. In general, engineers tend to love the HP RPN calculators, even when they're students. TI calculators are viewed as toys by most of them. For actual computational work they tend to use Matlab.

I don't understand why math departments continue to insist that students use things like the TI-83 or other graphing calculators in lower-division courses. I remember there was a big push for that back in the late '80s/early '90s during the ill-fated "reform calculus" movement in academia. This was before the widespread use of computers that began around '95-96. It's simply outdated. Even worse, it shows how disconnected some math departments have become with what people are actually using these days.

I think graphing calculators are the slide rule of the new millennium. Luckily, some departments and individual instructors have started to realize that and have been getting students more used to using things like Matlab or even Sage. And there has been an increase in the number of stats books that either mention or use R. For example, this introductory stats book which uses R throughout. So the good news is that there is at least the beginning of a movement that recognizes how outdated the graphing calculator approach is.

Not sure what your skill level is, or the application you're using MATLAB for, but here are a few resources:

• Basics: [MATLAB Onramp] (https://matlabacademy.mathworks.com/)
  
  
• Programming: Vanderbilt Introduction to Programming with MATLAB
  
  
• Control Systems: Control Tutorials for MATLAB and Simulink (CTMS)
  
  
  You may want a book as well, I've used MATLAB for Engineers, which has all the basic information you need, programming, plotting, etc.
  
  I would recommend learning to program in the MATLAB environment as it's probably the most useful skill to have, and gives you exposure to the capabilities MATLAB offers. You will learn quickly that MathWorks wants to sell you addons that does the work for you, but if you can program it will save a lot of money.

Effective Java is a great book but has much more advanced topics than you need, or you will understand. Big Java is suited for beginners and I'd rather recommend this.

Also Introduction to programming with Java which is available online for free.

We've been using this: http://www.amazon.com/MATLAB-Engineers-Edition-Holly-Moore/dp/0133485978

When I do use it, it has pretty helpful explanations and examples. It's also pretty easy to skim, which is nice.

I am glad that you are enjoying C++. The initial enthusiasm often comes from the neat tricks that one can do in the language and the sense of power that one gets from knowing the dark corners of the language. However to really understand how to use C++ effectively check out the following two books;

• Scientific and Engineering C++.
  
  
• Multi-Paradigm design for C++.
  
  They are the ones which taught me how to look at C++ i.e. as a set of syntactical constructs which allow you to model problem concepts and how to do it effectively.
  

On Linux I recommend grabbing the latest SBCL. If you really need to stay on Windows, then CLISP is fine.

You can edit code in any text editor, so simply choose your favorite one on any platform. You will find most of the main CL nerds use emacs and SLIME as their "IDE".

As for books, there are no good books on Lisp. I'm serious, every last one of them sucks ass out loud. But here is a list, taken in order from beginner level (that's you) to CHICK MAGNET (that's me).

• Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation
  
• Land of Lisp
  
• Common LISPcraft
  
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming
  
• Object Oriented Programming in Common Lisp
  
• On Lisp
  
• Let Over Lambda
  
• The Art of the Metaobject Protocol
  
  Good luck, it's a good job you're getting started young. But CL will ruin you for other languages FYI.
  

These are the best books that I've used: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Excel-Essential-Skills-Method/dp/1909253065 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Excel-Expert-Skills-Method/dp/1909253073

Completing both will take you from zero to 99th percentile of Excel users in terms of skill.

Excel Bible is worthless for learning - it's basically an Excel bult-in help (which is excellent) turned into an overpriced and cumbersome book.

The Python Phrasebook isn't bad if you have experience with other programming languages, and it's small enough to carry around. Also, Dive Into Python is really good.

If your friend has zero programming experience How to Think Like a Computer Scientist is very good.

I can't tell you anything about Code Avengers, but the Codecademy course, even after the major overhaul they did to improve it, the javascript courses(and a lot of the other courses, but we'll leave those out) are still lacking in my opinion. Some are just soooo awfully written that you're forced to go to the Q&A section to just copy and paste and answer. Even on the courses that were understandable and worked alright, they were monotonous and I also feel that some of the lessons were stretched out for some reason; perhaps for fear that the information wouldn't stick.

However, I don't think that sites like that should necessarily be used for learning; I'd rather point you to books such as this and video tutorials for really learning the language. Sites like codecademy are positively wonderful for review; I doubt there's a more engaging way of reviewing and fine-tuning your mind for programming other than actively using the language, which is what really makes a programmer.

Proof of my account

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Excel-Expert-Skills-Method/dp/1909253073

During my undergrad I had an entire class dedicated to Excel and intro to SAP. We used the textbook cover to cover. It teaches you everything and each lesson covers only 2 pages making it very easy to work through. All the files can be downloaded online for free. Couldn't recommend any higher.

Are you hoping to become a project manager at some point? If you want books that explain more about construction project management there are plenty. I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.ca/Construction-Management-JumpStart-Toward-Career/dp/0470609990/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369525360&sr=1-1&keywords=construction+management

It's a really easy read and doesn't get boring and if you are working with a construction management company it will be VERY applicable. You might even surprise a few people at work.

At this point, just go ahead and look at a few quick tutorials, I highly recommend browsing a quick reference guide (Python Phrasebook is fantastic). You don't need any formal tutorials, you're clearly a seasoned programmer who just needs syntax - the mindset is the same.

This is coming from someone who was in the same boat as you. Get coding! That's the best route to take.

> Sometimes I believe that most books are wastes of paper, because everything relating to programming can be found online.

Although this is true, the problem with online resources is that they tend to be inconsistent. They assume different competency levels, assume familiarity with different concepts, approach problems in different methods, etc. This isn't much of an issue for a veteran programmer, but I think a solid book is great for beginners. Here are two good choices.

First note that Career/Job/Market is quite different from Knowledge/Intellectual satisfaction. So you have to keep "earning money" separate from "gaining knowledge" but do both parallely. If you are one of the lucky few who has both aligned in a particular job, you have got it made. Mostly that is never the case and hence you have to work on your Motivation/Enthusiasm and keep hammering away at the difficult subjects. There are no shortcuts :-)

I prefer Books to the Internet for study since they are more coherent and less distracting, allowing you to focus better on a subject. Unless newer editions are reqd. buy used/older editions to save money and build a large library. So here is a selection from my library (in no particular order);

• Digital Design and Computer Architecture
  
  
• Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits
  
  
• Introduction to Embedded Systems
  
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
  
• The Elements of Computing Systems
  
  
• Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel and Distributed Programming
  
  
• The Practice of Programming
  
  
• The C programming language
  
  
• The C Companion
  
  
• Expert C Programming
  
  
• C Interfaces and Implementation
  
  
• Data Structures and Program Design in C
  
  
• The Unix Programming Environment
  
  
• Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective 3rd edition is 64-bit, 2nd edition is mostly 32-bit and a little 64-bit while 1st edition is all 32-bit.
  
  
• The C++ Programming Language 4th edition
  
  
• Discovering Modern C++
  
  
• C++ Templates: The complete guide
  
  
• Modern C++ design
  
  
• Scientific and Engineering C++
  
  
• Advanced C++ programming styles and idioms
  
  
• Design Patterns
  

If you don't want to do high level assembly and that you want to do in on unix you should try Professional Assembly Language, it's based around gnu tools and it's pretty good. Especially to learn to interface your assembly language with c. After learning that you can use the system call to print stuff to the terminal well you don't really care about reinventing printf, so you can just easily call the c printf function in assembly, which the book does most of the time. And you learn really early how to write a function that can be called from a c program.

Buy a book or books that have been published relatively recently.

I recommend

http://www.amazon.com/CSS-Mastery-Advanced-Standards-Solutions/dp/1590596145/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1218481072&sr=11-1

and

http://www.amazon.com/Professional-JavaScript-Developers-Wrox-Guides/dp/0764579088/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218481458&sr=1-1

There might be better javascript books out there however, as it can get rather quirky. Learning a framework like Jquery is also a plus.

You could also poke around on http://www.crockford.com/

This will be your best bet. It should just ship with a license. :)

http://www.amazon.com/Tableau-Your-Data-Analysis-Software/dp/1118612043

It's designed so you could hand it to someone who's never used excel and to take them up to having a grasp on VBA and some advanced formulas like array formulas. I haven't picked it up in about a year it doesn't sound like it would be a massive learning jump for yourself.

When it comes to charts/reports etc there are actually 2 books that I'm still deciding if I should buy or not. Both have been recomended to myself but I'm waiting until payday before buying them myself so can't testify to how good they actually are.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1118519655/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=26FRQZR9FPSJT&coliid=I2TLB44KQWBWAS

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1118490428/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=26FRQZR9FPSJT&coliid=I3LYA71RKLXI19

Badass Lego guns? I have a modified version of the gun from Forbidden Lego, but that sounds awesome!

Amazon links:

Badass Lego Guns

Forbidden Lego.

I love Coders at Work. Not at autobiography though, but a set of interviews. Very entertaining.

There is also an older book with interviews: Programmers at Work.

Hey, I briefed over some of the comments here, and while I feel a number of them are useful and necessary, I think you need an actual hard copy book to start with, rather than jumping right the hell into the manuals.

The book I started with, with absolute minimal programming experience (just some C++ classes in high school), is Larry Ullman's PHP book. I started on the second edition, and it was everything I needed to get started programming with PHP and making dynamic applications. It should cover basics of MySQL and top the book off with regular expressions, which are absolutely necessary to any serious web developer, and he makes everything feel very accessible.

After some months of that and programming, you would be ready to enhance your skills, and his follow up Advanced PHP book covers a lot of interesting and esoteric areas. It might be more than you need, but it does start off with some practical chapters in OOP and classes.

In-between the two, he wrote a MySQL and PHP combination book that sort of acts as a stepping stone between the beginner's book and the advanced book, and it might actually be the most you need to program in PHP, but I found the Advanced book handy to use, and the first book I linked you was my personal guide and reference for about a year and a half as I grew in my skill set.

If you're on linux I recommend Blum or Irvine if you're on Windows.

Some video tutorials which helped me a lot:
Windows x86 programming
Linux x86 programming

Some more videos if you become really interested here.

I really liked Excel Dashboards and Reports by Michael Alexander and John Walkenbach. I have a little Excel library at my desk and every time I reach for that one I have to track it down because it keeps getting borrowed.

Find a project! LabVIEW's WAY too much to dive into without a specific goal to guide your efforts. I'd recommend (as I always do in these threads) picking up a copy of LabVIEW for Everyone ( https://www.amazon.com/LabVIEW-Everyone-Graphical-Programming-Made/dp/0131856723 ) for a readily accessible reference.

Do yourself a favor and avoid posting on the NI forums (they can be a bit on the snarky side), but definitely use the site as a reference.

Want to build real, functional LEGO guns? Check out these two books:

• Badass LEGO Guns
  
• Forbidden LEGO
  
  I've got both books, but I haven't actually built any of the guns yet (assembling the parts needed is a challenge, and I haven't gotten the gumption up to hit bricklink.com to pick them out and order them.
  
  Still, very cool to check out. Some day, I'll build them.

> My supervisor wants to have an option in the main VI to choose one of the circuits. How can I go about doing this?

An event loop which takes an input and then conditionally runs the code.

Best to start at basics:

https://www.amazon.com/LabVIEW-Everyone-Graphical-Programming-Made/dp/0131856723

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers. Zakas is one of the best.

Yep, humans perceive differences in length much better than differences in angle. Yau's book Data Points talks about this extensively with examples.

I loved reading the book this interview came from. When Susan Lammers asked the CD-ROM question to all those different programmers, some of them saw that the real question was "how does software change when your computer has access to enormous amounts of data?" Which is really the internet; CD-ROMs were kind of a false dawn. It means the contents of this 1986 book are still relevant.

If you have a library card, most libraries carry a lot of beginning PHP books. Most of the systems I look at have this one and there are definitely enough. Just search for php books on amazon and type in some titles...

Also, torrents?

Vivek has some good tutorials, but I don't think they're good for brand new beginners off the street. I recommend Assembly Language Step By Step: Programming With Linux, and after that Professional Assembly Language

I don't yet know which text (if any) they're using for the class this semester and unfortunately I won't have any say in making that decision. When I took the class they used Using R for Introductory Statistics but I didn't find it particularly helpful.

In this order:

1. PHP for the World Wide Web
   
2. PHP 6 and MySQL 5
   
3. PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice and/or PHP Object-Oriented Solutions
   
4. High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, Replication, and More
   
5. Introduction to PHP PDO
   
6. Model-View-Controller MVC

There's also a paper airplane launcher in Forbidden Lego that works really well with a few modifications.

You may feel dumb walking around with it, but it helps with the foundations and verbiage you’ll see everyday, Construction Management JumpStart 2nd Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470609990/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_-jPPDbW33AFFR

Look no further. This book here is all you need. Comes with a CD and everything. I found it very useful.

When he has enough components, you can buy him more intruction books. http://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-LEGO-Models-Parents-Against/dp/1593271379/ref=bxgy_cc_b_img_b

A couple resources I am already aware of: constructionknowledge.net
This book: http://www.amazon.com/Construction-Management-JumpStart-Toward-Career/dp/0470609990/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2DX3TEPKWKM&coliid=I22448IN2GEL8P... I haven't read it but I saw someone suggest it before.

Professional Assembly Language covers SIMD instructions, although it's from 2005, so it's also a bit outdated.

The idea of specifying dimensional information in code is not a new one, and I think a lot of work on that was done in Ada decades ago.

In C++, I seem to recall the work done in Scientific and Engineering C++ and, more recently, in C++ Template Metaprogramming.

Incidentally, the latter book has the chapter dealing with dimensional analysis available as a sample chapter.

In Common Lisp, I know of the Measures package, part of LOOM.

https://www.amazon.com/Common-Lispcraft-Robert-Wilensky/dp/0393955443

Here is a student version of labview plus an Arduino for $50.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11225

You can use the arduino for real data acquisition and output. You can also learn labview and the arduino idk, which is C or something similar.

I have also found that this is a good reference book even though it is for version 8.

http://www.amazon.com/LabVIEW-Everyone-Graphical-Programming-Edition/dp/0131856723/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405129568&sr=8-2&keywords=jim+kring

Let me know if you need any ideas for projects!

Also, "Customers Who Bought This Item..."

"Forbidden Lego: Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against"

BRB, Christmas wishlist

Hey OP, I'm in a class where about half of it is writing AT&T syntax x86 assembly. This the same syntax output by GCC.

There's very little in the way of AT&T syntax documentation, but there is one good book: http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Assembly-Language-Richard-Blum/dp/0764579010

This book talks about all the linux utilities you need, how to write straight assembly, and how to inline it with your C programs.

AFAIK there are no bugs in gcc assembly compilation. The assembly language generated by gcc compilation of .c files will have a few bugs (they allocate memory in 16byte chunks, except when they don't), but I haven't encountered anything just compiling my .s files and running the executables.

gdb is useless for me when I'm doing assembly work, except to see where the program died but this is useless if you are not 100% sure you are following the calling conventions, because it could be that it dies in the caller but it's your (the callee's) fault. The only other thing it's useful for is dumping registers, but I have a register dump that's very easy to use if you want, you just call it in your code (don't even have to set up parameters) and it does everything for you. Only x86 though. Also have a hexdump program if you want to check what your stack looks like, but to use it you first have to learn how to pass two local ints and a pointer.

EDIT: forgot to say just message me if you want the programs and I will upload the source code

>Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Forbidden Lego: Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against!


I so want this book!!!