Content tagged with "programming"
The book is weird. It’s not about “code,” really. It’s about human representation in code. It’s really about how humans relate to code, and about how humans are represented as code. Two chapters in the middle are representative, and neither have anything to do with code – One discussed the…
A complicated book about how to architect systems that grow and change over time. Lots of detail, very theoretical, and sometimes hard to digest.
I’ve been coding C# for more than a decade, but I still found so much in here that I missed over the years. Lots of these things were basic language features that I was just working around, in complete ignorance. Other things were changes in the platform over the years. Fact is, we get stuck in…
The book was a bit scattered, though I’m not sure what I expected. I was looking for a book on CSS best practices, and there is some of that in here, but there’s also a re-hash of a lot of non-secret CSS stuff. Like, there’s a whole chapters on transforms and another on transitions, which isn’t…
An absolutely magisterial work that explores every last corner of the CSS spec. The advancements that have come along since I learned CSS are amazing – you can almost write executable code in CSS now. This book explores every edge case, no matter absurd, to probe every last corner of the spec. I…
A very complete look at all the steps necessary to manage devops in a software shop. Some of it was lost on me, because it’s exactly what it purported to be: a comprehensive review of everything you might do to manage the process of releasing and supporting software. Of interest was some emphasis on…
Good book for what it is. If you know Drupal, you’ll be bored. But if you have no idea what a CMS is, this is a good overview. There is zero code. This is all “Drupal by configuration,” which is a school of thought which may or may not appeal to you. Gets bogged down in individual module…
I’m rating this five stars because it accomplished everything it set out to do, but books like this really defy rating. This is a procedural book. You’re meant to have this open while you do stuff. There’s not a lot of words – it’s largely screencaps and code listings. Books like this also become…
this book prompted me to re-acquaint myself with a word: “grok.” To grok something is to understand it intuitively, down to its bones. The term comes from a Robert Heinlein book, it turns out. “Git for Humans” took me a step closer to grokking Git. Lots of tutorial books are of the “insert tab A…
I’ve used HTMX for a number of years . As such, this book is preaching to the choir quite a bit. Like a lot of situations with technology, the book exists on two levels: It does quite well at both. It’s very much swimming upstream, given the current technical environment, but it makes a good case…
A good look at all the skills you should know but don’t if you’re a programmer without a CS degree. My degree was in Political Science , and I’m a self-taught developer. This book covered a lot of things I sort of knew but had never really studied . The book is a little uneven at times – it takes a…
Very short, solid book that delivers exactly what it claims. It covers npm well, concisely, and to-the-point. I learned a lot without a ton of overhead.
Exactly what the title says – it’s a very short, concise guide to the Java language. It’s especially helpful for developers of other languages who want to see how things are done in Java. I read it over the course of a day – kept it in my back pocket while I walked around the Mall of America. I’d…
I started reading this all the way through, but – like most “Cookbook” titles – it gets increasingly esoteric later on. Still, a very good book which helps you get a grasp on jQuery through considerable examples. Many examples are incredibly basic, which means the books functions well as an…
This is a solid overview of React. Good examples, but like most coding books, they get long. Also, “React” isn’t just one thing – it’s an entire stack of technologies that work together, and this book seems to cover them all. Well-written, clear.
This is a comprehensive and primer review of RDF. I don’t know if “linked data” is a specific term, but in this book, it’s RDF, and not just “casual” RDF. It’s not just embedded metadata – this is a hardcore look at creating what are essentially distributed databases based on RDF data. Not for the…
Very low level. Really opens your eyes as to the things you can do with Node.
If you’re a developer and you just never “got” Drupal, this is your book. If this book succeeds at one thing, it’s to change your mindset about Drupal – to understand the different paradigms you need to adopt to work with it. Highly recommended in that sense.
This is one of the great books of computer science. As the title would imply, it’s about fixing the internals of computer programs, without changing how the program functions from the “outside.” This is a time-honored task in computer science – programs get all twisted and crufty over time as…
This wasn’t for me. I missed the word “beginner” in the subtitle. There are chapters explaining the basics of HTTP. And of programming in general. Also, it’s full of cutesy drawings and…stuff. This is good book for the right audience. I just wasn’t it.
Really wonderful book that covers all the high points. It delves as deep as it needs to, and invites you to explore things that interest you more, which is the hallmark of a good technical book. If you know nothing, this gives you a nice base, and a roadmap for where to go from here.
Deeply opinionated book that is violently opposed to the use of JS as an object-oriented language. It’s well-written, and has clear information and code samples, but the author is pushing an agenda which gets a little tiresome. I felt like I had to decide: do I believe the entire design team behind…
