On 4/20/06, Paul Lalonde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It's sad how few computer (as opposed to computing science) books are > happy addressing an expert audience; writing anything that assumes > programming skills and intelligence would probably reduce the > audience to much less than a printing :-(
I would disagree with that assessment. As neither an expert nor a novice, I find that most texts are at the extremes. It's either iPod Syncing for Dummies or Implementing IKE-DNS Interfaces using Visual Studio, with a dearth of titles that assume some middling knowledge by the reader. It's either 1200 pages of hand-holding or some tome written for some poor schmuck who has to read it to keep his job tending the same Oracle DB day after day. Rarely do you see From Smalltalk to Ruby, Plain Old C for the C++ Brainwashed, Your First Device Driver, or Understanding the Model-Viewer-Controller Model. Try finding an introduction to assembly that assumes you haven't already done it before. It's easy to find architecture-specific references, but the general theory stuff is just gone. Either you lived through it, you went to school for it, or you're on your own. I'd like to see guides for the not-yet-lost. The Practice of Programming is probably the best recent book for the neither-drooler-nor-brainiac crowd. I find myself picking up stuff that's out of print, just for the perspective: Software Tools, Starting FORTH, Project Oberon, etc. I've heard good things about the How to Think Like a Computer Scientist variations, but haven't read them. -Jack
