2008 Summer Reading List: What Are You Reading?
July 1st, 2008
Summer is finally here! Well… “here” as in, “here in Canada” where we have 8 months of winter, fall, and spring…
This summer I hope to finish up the following books:
- Windows PowerShell in Action – PowerShell is a shell scripting language for Windows. I’m a command line / keyboard junkie, and I’m hoping PowerShell can further automate some of my day to day tasks inside Windows.
- Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software - From what I’ve read so far, this book is great.
- Software Creativity 2.0 - I’m a Robert Glass Fan boy (I’ll read anything he writes). I’ve had this book on my must read list for a while now.
- Inside Windows Communication Foundation – I make use of WCF every day, and would like to learn more about the unknown nooks and crannies that lie within.
- The Ruby Programming Language - An amazing book (it even has illustrations). The Ruby language is fascinating, terse, and elegant, I’m curious to see how I can make use of Ruby in .NET since IronRuby has been released. This book also happens to be fun to read.
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street - I’m trying to brush up on how to make better investments. The author starts off by telling you that most people working in the trading realm are crooks… :)
Books and reading are essential for personal and professional development. The more you read, the more you understand and the more resources you have to fall back on.
What books are you reading this summer? Do you have any recommendations?
Well, I’m not much of a reader, but I have been trying to get myself into the habit of reading when I have nothing better to do. Actually, it’s quite relaxing to just sit outside with a cigar on a nice day and read, that’s pretty much the only time I get anything done, but it’s been somewhat working for me thusfar.
As for books, I’ve actually stolen 2 of your brothers books while he’s out west to read. Firstly, I’m reading Programming C# 3.0 by Jesse Liberty and Donald Xie. It’s been a pretty decent read so far (I’m only a couple of chapters in), but it’s pretty much opened my eyes to how similar it is to Java.
The second book I have on the go is one that you speak very highly of, and I can see why, <a href=”http://www.amazon.ca/Code-Complete-Steve-McConnell/dp/0735619670/ref=pd_bowtega_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215538025&sr=1-1″>Code Complete</a> by Steven McConnell. It’s definitely discussed a lot of great tips about the computer programming realm, and definitely a good read for anyone about to enter the field. I love how it’s language neutral, you can read the entire book and take what he discusses into any job using any sort of language. Definitely a great read in that respect.
Anyways, I probably won’t finish them this summer, since I’m a terribly slow reader, but one day they’ll be finished and I’ll actually feel like I accomplished something providing me with some intellectual growth. It’ll be weird haha.
A nice cigar and a book would be a great combination.
Code Complete is a great book, some people feels it’s a little outdated, but I think the contents are timeless – the principals in software haven’t really changed since the industry’s inception. This book really opened my eyes to what software is really about. Try to read the whole thing, I keep a notepad and write down topics I don’t understand so I can revisit them later. I highly recommend this book.
Java and C# share so many similarities – although the C# language seems to be moving at a quicker pace. In the latest release they’ve included some features to make C# feel more like dynamic languages (Overview of C# 3.0). I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing yet, I guess time will tell.
Actually, there’s a whole Wikipedia article on the topic: Comparison of Java and C Sharp.
Did you finish the book on PowerShell? I’ve been interested in PowerShell’s capabilities since it’s inception, but haven’t yet got around to using it. So far, has it made day-to-day computing more keyboard friendly?