

Save 50% on all oreilly's ebooks and videos (today only) - salimmadjd
http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/day-against-drm.do

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philipithomas
I love o'reilly publications, but I remain a fan of printed books.
Specifically in technical texts, I like being able to scan and leaf through
physical pages. If they had a special on printed books today, I would buy a
couple; alas, with this special, my wallet remains closed.

~~~
babarock
As much as I agree with you, I find that the ability to run a grep (or the
more commont Ctrl+F) to quickly look for what I'm looking for of very high
value. I usually enjoy reading the book from front to cover, but as soon as I
want to consult it again for reference, I am happy to have the computer do the
search work for me.

Other than that, I often read on the (crowded) subway ride to work. Carrying a
600 page book is often a pain in the ass, compared to the lightweight feeling
of my Kindle.

On the other hand, I completely relate to the pleasure of the physical page. I
also enjoy very much watching my collection of books slowly expand on my
shelves.

I wish there were a model where buying a physical copy of the book would
entitle you to the digital one or vice-versa. I think both have their
advantages in different situations.

~~~
matthewbadeau
Manning Publications offers free ebooks when you buy physical copies.
(<http://manning.com/>)

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telemachos
I think this will interest some HN readers: Zachary Kessin's _Building Web
Applications with Erlang_ [1] is available as an early-release ebook. As an
early release, the ebook price is already cheap, but combined with the 50%
discount, today it's $6.49. Definitely seems worth a look.

[1]: <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021452.do>

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maayank
What are some 'must have' (and 'must read' ;) ) O'Reilly books for programmers
and entrepreneurs?

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jgrahamc
You might like to read my book, The Geek Atlas, which contains many places
related to the history of computing.

<http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do>

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maayank
Already have it and already visited the place in Ireland and many of the
places in England based on it :-) Visiting Bletchley Park was a true formative
experience for me and Alexander Fleming's lab also really hit a chord with me,
recalling me reading and learning about him in my childhood. Thank you for a
great book and guide (and the science explanations inside are very nice as
well) :-)

In my last trip to Germany I truly enjoyed Konrad Zuse Museum[1] in Hünfeld.
Many descriptions are in German, but I can truly recommend it, especially if
you're with a German speaker (but even without, there are models and
artifacts). Not many people (me included) know about the dawn of computer
science behind Britain and the US, so it was very interesting and refreshing.

[1] <http://www.zuse-museum-huenfeld.de/>

edited for more information.

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jgrahamc
Thanks for the nice review.

I really must visit the Zuse museum. When I was working in Munich I saw some
of his hardware in the Deutsches Museum. Very interesting.

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Jun8
On a related note I'd say that forget about these deals and go get yoursf a
Safari Online subscription. I convinced my boss to do this for around $350
(that's the corporate rate), one of the best tool I've got. I have _all_ their
books (and from a lot of other publishers, too) at my fingertips!

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diab0lic
Its nice to have rights to a few of them and actually own them. Can you put
safari books on your kindle these days?

~~~
Jun8
Dont't know about Kindle but they have a nice app for iPad. Also, periodically
you get tokens and you can get free books , I receive 5 tokens per month and
there are a lot of books for 10-15 tokens.

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eloisius
I'm definitely grabbing Programming Collective Intelligence[1] and Machine
Learning for Hackers[2]. Any recommendations based on those?

[1] <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596529321.do>

[2] <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018483.do>

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salimmadjd
Here is a python conversion of machine learning for hackers,
<http://slendrmeans.wordpress.com/category/will-it-python/>

Thanks for posting the collective book...I think I need to get it now :)

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ZanderEarth32
Anyone have experience with either of these books

Programming Python <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596158118.do>

and

Learning Python <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596158071.do>

Not sure where I fall with these books in terms of skill and knowledge.
Looking through the table of contents for Learning Python I recognize
everything and know what they are, but don't have a great masterful grasp of
most of the stuff but I am afraid too much of it will be stuff I already know.
On the flip side, Programming Python might be too advanced for me.

EDIT Seems Programming Python is mainly geared towards Python 3.x but I'm
still using 2.6.

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tomku
They're looooooong. I read through "Learning Python" and came out a better
Python programmer because of it, but it was an epic journey that may as well
have involved hobbits and a wizard.

I also strongly disliked the author's choice of examples. In particular, the
examples for metaclasses and decorators were repetitive and un-Pythonic. If
you want private member functions, you're probably better off using a language
like Java that supports them rather than trying to hack them in using one of
the several ways explained in the book.

If you can handle the length and the trailing off of example quality near the
end, it's a solid and comprehensive coverage of Python the language. In terms
of the 3.x/2.x split, "Learning Python" covered both comprehensively. The
differences aren't huge, and it's mostly just a matter of the example code
being adapted to work in one or the other.

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MaxGabriel
Any comments on the iOS 5 Cookbook or Chas Emerick's Clojure book? On Chas's
book, specifically I thought chapter 1 was pretty technical with very short
snippets of code. Do later chapters have more code?

~~~
espeed
Chas's "Clojure Programming" book is great, and there is code throughout the
book.

The book is divided into several parts: Part III "Tools, Platforms, and
Projects" and part IV "Practicums" give you an overview on project patterns
and structure, and this alone was worth it for me.

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damian2000
Anyone looking for a C# reference, can't go past this one...

"C# 4.0 in a Nutshell" <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596800963.do>

Australia-based Joe Albahari who wrote it is the author of the free 'LinqPad'
tool.

~~~
stefanoric
It's a great book, and it actually is more about .NET 4 than just C#.

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neovive
Excellent! Just bought another 4 books. Now I just have to find some time to
read them. I should probably start buying books based on the number of pages
-- shorter book wins. I seem to stay better focused on tech books with < 300
pages. Probably related to my motivation level.

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bostonvaulter2
Any recommendations for good books beyond what is on the page? Although I
might buy that clojure book.

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lucian1900
That's exactly what I just bought.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Yeah I ended up getting it too.

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oacgnol
Seriously, another sale? My poor wallet... I'm going to pick up Clojure
Programming (<http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920013754.do>) after hearing
so many good things about it.

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hmart
Javascript Pocket Reference <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920011460.do>
for only $3.99 is an absolute bargain

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edu
I'm having problems with the checkout. Is it working for you?

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bitops
I'm getting 500s all over the place, typical for their big sale days. Once the
sale hits reddit, the masses descend. Usually if you just keep trying your
order will make it through. But it takes a bit of patience.

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spelunker
Is Programming Scala any good? I'm trying to learn Scala on my freetime, and
$15 for a book about Scala seems hard to pass up.

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thebluesky
Scala for the Impatient probably a better choice. Programming _in_ Scala (not
the O'Reilly book) is also good, but very long-winded. The O'Reilly book isn't
too bad though, but not my first choice.

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mr_dev4
Doesn't seem to work for Unix power tools.

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duck
Has anyone read _Node: Up and Running_ yet?

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noisebleed
I haven't gotten far enough to give a good review, but you do know they have
the whole thing online for free as an "Open Feedback Publishing System"
project, right? <http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449398583/>

~~~
duck
I did not know that, thanks!!

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stuartmemo
It's in celebration of "Day against DRM", so just tell me what you want and
I'll email it to you instead.

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oskarth
Are you a Hollywood lobbyist rallying behind enemy lines? Anti-DRM != Theft.

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stuartmemo
Nope, was just a joke. Just a happy simple little joke.

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debacle
We don't take kindly to jocularity in these parts.

