I agree with the article, but am skeptical of his taking a pass on Knuth-- I think that working through TAOCP is a good investment for anyone serious about programming (given sufficiently large values of "serious").
Agreed. But remember, this is Jeff Atwood... I doubt his readers do much other than 1) submit his blog to reddit and 2) write Visual Basic applications.
Not exactly what I would consider "being a programmer", but to each his own, I suppose.
"I doubt his readers do much other than 1) submit his blog to reddit and 2) write Visual Basic applications."
I agree with point #2, and perhaps he does as well. He has said much the same thing, openly, and he has also said that his mission is to provoke them into hoisting themselves up a little beyond that.
I apologise for the terrible analogy, but perhaps Jeff's blog is like a car's first gear. It exists to overcome a large amount of inertia and get an object at rest to start moving, slowly. Other gears take it from there.
I personally wish he would push them to explore towards more free software and tools rather than stay on the Microsoft plantation, but if he can get anybody to read just one more book this year, the essay is a win.
Heck, if it can remind me that I need to read one more book this year, it's a godsend for me.
Except for the fact that one of Atwood's articles is on Hacker News at least once a week. So, who is submitting these articles?
Atwood definitely does write about simple ideas, though. His blog is packaged to be consumed for programmers of all skill levels. As a result, it's often a little bit mundane for those with higher levels of knowledge.
Hey, don't knock the VB-- there's a goodly number of coders with serious programming juju (like Brianbec, for instance) who consider VB.NET to be their language of choice.
Definitely. I'm working through TAOCP, and the exercises in that book are incredibly useful in stretching your brain in ways that day-to-day coding simply will not.
That said, I think the reason that I enjoy Knuth so much is that he is a mathematician; admittedly, I'm biased, as my formal education background is rooted in mathematics as well. The nice thing about this is that Knuth not only knows what he is talking about, but that he doesn't tend to skip fundamental steps. Nor does he play the notation games that are so often found in computer science texts.
Speaking of 'notation games', why do they use 'equals' for 'set inclusive'?
So, yes, to learn how to program in language X, the Internet is probably a better resource than the average book. But to learn how to program well, a proper bookshelf is invaluable.
