
Ask HN: What programming/technical books do you wish existed? - lovelearning
Any experiences where you became unproductive while using a language or technology, wasting time googling, reading multiple blog posts on the topic, trying to fill in the blanks?
======
ufmace
I'd like to see more guides for how to get started with a particular language
for someone who is already an experienced developer in another language. It
seems to be true for pretty much every language that most of the guides for
learning them are written for novice developers, and most of the rest are in-
depth description and discussion on how tricky parts of the language work.

Especially something with good background information, like how the language
and ecosystem around it is different from other languages, what the choices
are for IDEs and syntax-aware editors and some pros and cons, what the good
language-specific resources and references are, the best ways to do debugging
and deployment, etc.

~~~
V-2
Yes, exactly. I wrote my comment before I read yours. Repasting it here...

I wish there were more books and series like "Language A for language B
programmers".

Whenever I'm trying to learn a new language, I have to sift through resources
and filter out all the fluff which stems from an assumption it is my FIRST
programming language and tries to teach me what a for loop is.

What's more, one's proficiency in language A can be leveraged by explaining
some constructs of language B in terms of concepts that exist in A, pointing
out specific traps, caveats, "false friends" etc.

I mean something like this:

[http://appendto.com/2010/10/how-good-c-habits-can-
encourage-...](http://appendto.com/2010/10/how-good-c-habits-can-encourage-
bad-javascript-habits-part-1/)

[http://blog.boyet.com/blog/javascriptlessons/?p=5](http://blog.boyet.com/blog/javascriptlessons/?p=5)

Or this:

[http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/Content/Devs/CsToCpp-
ASomew...](http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/Content/Devs/CsToCpp-
ASomewhatShortGuide.pdf)

Favorite quote:

    
    
        Templates are sort of like .NET generics except that they aren't.
    

:))

~~~
ufmace
Good links. I was actually writing a blog post on entry-level Javascript. A
lot of that stuff looks relatively high-level, though - interesting, but not
something that's very applicable until you've gotten a decent understanding of
Javascript basics.

------
noblethrasher
We have plenty of literature devoted to the topic of building “web-scale”
applications. I would love to have books that discuss the tricks that you have
at your disposal when you know that your application will never need to
accommodate more than, say, 50K users.

------
projectramo
How about a Python in Finance book? The selection out there is so poor (see
Amazon reviews) that the best book is Wes McKinney on Pandas (not really
focused on Finance, but more of a data science book). It doesn't even have to
be super advanced: just cover time series, volatility/GARCH, black-scholes,
and maybe some bond stuff. Just do it well!

------
cottonseed
I'm reminded of this MathOverflow thread:

[http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53036/books-you-would-
like...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53036/books-you-would-like-to-read-
if-somebody-would-just-write-them)

I couldn't find an analogous StackExchange thread. If you start one, please
follow up here.

~~~
V-2
I think it would get closed quickly. It would be an "idea box" type of
question and they are frowned upon on Programmers StackExchange, because there
is no right answer.

~~~
cottonseed
That's too bad. The big-list questions on MO are some of my favorite.

------
afarrell
I have yet to see a good long detailed but highly readable guide to writing
documentation, especially one that explained how to test it for
understandability.

~~~
theblueadept
You'd think/hope that a guide for that topic would be highly readable.

~~~
afarrell
I've seen lots of style guides, but most of them act like writing
documentation and editing it are the same process. And so they will give
advice on what not to do like "eliminate unnecessary words", but none on how
to actually begin explaining the structure of a new codebase or an old one.

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alok-g
I would love to see books on programming language tools around a specific
language including IDEs, debuggers and editors, build systems, profilers,
commonly available libraries, etc. This would ideally cover all of this from a
practical standpoint, showing how to build a real-life application using the
tools, etc.

Having started programming at an early age, I get stuck more often at the
tools and best practices when learning a new language than the language
itself. This is especially true given the unspoken idiosyncrasies that seem to
come along with all of it.

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6d0debc071
> Any experiences where you became unproductive while using a language or
> technology, wasting time googling, reading multiple blog posts on the topic,
> trying to fill in the blanks?

Yes, when trying to bridge between first learning to program the little text
applications and trying to program something more useful was the worst time
for that.

I'd like to see more guides bridging the beginner stuff; Land of Lisp, for
example; and the more complex stuff; such as creating a GUI, talking to other
devices connected to the computer, calling foriegn functions, and so on. There
seems to be remarkably little out there that takes someone from... toys... to
actually having something useful which they can put in the hands of someone
else. Or that tells you how to learn to learn that stuff for yourself.

I suspect we lose a fair number of potential programmers to that sort of thing
– running through the beginner stuff and then having no idea where to take it
next.

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EliRivers
A decent guide to using perf, with a number of carefully selected use-cases
with example commands and outputs.

That said, I have Brendan Gregg's "Systems Performance" on my shelf here
edging towards the top of the "needing to be read" stack. His flamegraphs were
embarrassingly useful and the few examples his webpages give punch well above
their weight. Maybe everything I need is in there.

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logn
It took me about three days of little sleep to set up an SMTP relay. I had
some pretty specific and odd requirements and never really configured email
servers before, but still, I think email administration is a skill that isn't
really covered well by good sources.

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auganov
Perhaps not a book, but a comprehensive language-agnostic resource on
functional programming patterns would be nice.

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tkxxx7
how to meteor.js LOL

