A few years ago, I had complained about the lack of a well-stocked and accessible library in Bangalore. To a certain extent this complaint has been addressed since by the quick rise of Just Books in the city. Just Books has a rapidly-growing chain of lending libraries here in Bangalore (and in some other cities in India). The collection of books is decent enough and the lending-rates fair enough for this to be an attractive option for most book-lovers in the city.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
2011-08-15
2009-12-27
Hard Lines
I find myself agreeing with the author of the article "Good Novels Don't Have to Be Hard": a lot of "good" fiction in modern times is just too much work. It should not be too surprising to find many people giving up on it and moving on to simpler and more entertaining stuff. A struggle is not what I usually look forward to when I take up a novel during my precious free time.
2009-02-14
An Ideal Electronic Book Reader
As a bibliophile with a limited space to hoard dead-tree books and without an access to a well-stocked library, I would like to move on to reading electronic books on electronic book readers. However, I am holding off buying one of the many electronic book readers already available in the market since I feel that they still have some way to go. So what would I like to see in an ideal electronic book reader?
2009-02-10
The Kindle 2
As was widely anticipated, Amazon launched the Kindle 2 yesterday at an initial price of about $360. Though the new Kindle has many improvements over its predecessor (and some surprising regressions), it still falls short of what I wish for in an electronic book reader. Despite its shortcomings, the Kindle 2 provides a great overall package compared to other electronic book readers, but only if you live in the US.
2008-10-13
Indian Edition of the Purple Dragon Book
After a long wait, the low-priced Indian edition of the Purple Dragon Book ("Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools", 2nd Edition, by Alfred Aho and others) is finally available in bookshops. The ISBN for this edition of the book is 9788131721018.
2008-05-18
Electronic Book Readers
As I have lamented before, I do not have access to a well-stocked and conveniently-located library here in Bangalore that lends books at reasonable rates. The alternative of buying all the books that I want to read is not just an expensive proposition - I also do not have enough space in my home to stock all such books. For some time now, I have been eyeing electronic book readers as a solution to this problem. It looks like I will very soon (but not quite yet) be able to get such a device at an affordable price.
Besides saving lots of space and providing unprecedented portability, electronic books also have some additional advantages over ordinary books:
Of course, electronic books will never quite have the "feel" of ordinary books. Some of us also love the different smells of different books. An electronic book reader is quite delicate and more expensive when compared to an ordinary book. Unless an electronic book is in an open format like plain-text, HTML or PDF, it is quite possible that future electronic book readers will not be able to read it. Some publishers intentionally cripple electronic books with DRM making it more difficult to do things that are otherwise quite simple to do with an ordinary book (for example, share it with a friend). Many of the electronic books are unreasonably priced compared to the corresponding paper versions in spite of the fact that it is far cheaper to produce and distribute an electronic version of a book.
Ars Technica usually provides in-depth and unbiased reviews and therefore I have also linked to a review of a device on Ars Technica wherever available. MobileRead has a comparison-matrix of electronic book reader devices. You can also find a lot of nice videos on YouTube that show most of these devices in action, giving you a feel for these devices that is very difficult to get by just reading the reviews.
Besides saving lots of space and providing unprecedented portability, electronic books also have some additional advantages over ordinary books:
- There are lots of freely-available electronic books. For example, Project Gutenberg provides electronic versions of thousands of classic books.
- You can easily make backup copies of (non-DRM-crippled) electronic books. This is unlike ordinary books, which can get damaged, lost or stolen.
- It is much easier to search through an electronic book.
- It is easier to enlarge the font of an electronic book or have the text read out by a text-to-speech software to help the visually-impaired folks.
- You save trees from being cut to produce paper.
- Electronic books should be cheaper than ordinary books since the publisher can very easily produce as many copies of such books as it wants.
- The Internet makes it much faster to deliver an electronic book than an ordinary book, when you order them through an on-line retailer. You also save on the shipping costs.
- Since software is usually used to write and typeset books these days, electronic books can be produced with no additional effort.
Of course, electronic books will never quite have the "feel" of ordinary books. Some of us also love the different smells of different books. An electronic book reader is quite delicate and more expensive when compared to an ordinary book. Unless an electronic book is in an open format like plain-text, HTML or PDF, it is quite possible that future electronic book readers will not be able to read it. Some publishers intentionally cripple electronic books with DRM making it more difficult to do things that are otherwise quite simple to do with an ordinary book (for example, share it with a friend). Many of the electronic books are unreasonably priced compared to the corresponding paper versions in spite of the fact that it is far cheaper to produce and distribute an electronic version of a book.
All this aside, there has been a huge downside of electronic books till recently - reading electronic books has not been as comfortable as reading ordinary books for most people. It is quite straining on the eyes to read lots of text on a computer monitor or on the tiny LCD screens of smart-phones and PDAs. It is also difficult to read such text in bright light. Even the dedicated electronic book readers have suffered from this problem. You can print out an electronic book to ordinary paper, but this is either too expensive or not feasible for most people.
This has now changed due to the availability of "electronic paper" displays. These displays look just like ordinary paper and are therefore quite easy on the eyes. They only use power when the displayed image needs to be changed and thus can run on a battery charge for much longer periods than LCD displays. Though the technology has been around since the 1970s, it has only recently become commercially viable. There are now several electronic book readers based on this display technology and judging by the reviews of these devices, we might just have passed an inflection point in the history of electronic books.
Here are some of the electronic book reader devices based on electronic paper technology currently available in the market, along with their prices as advertised at the moment:
- Kindle, by Amazon, $400 (Ars Technica review of the Kindle)
- PRS-505, by Sony, $300 (Ars Technica review of the PRS-505)
- Iliad, by iRex, $784 (Ars Technica review of the Iliad)
- Cybook, by Bookeen, $480
- Hanlin, by Jinke, $300
- BEBOOK, by Endless Ideas, $400
- SoriBOOK, by Diginaru, $400
Ars Technica usually provides in-depth and unbiased reviews and therefore I have also linked to a review of a device on Ars Technica wherever available. MobileRead has a comparison-matrix of electronic book reader devices. You can also find a lot of nice videos on YouTube that show most of these devices in action, giving you a feel for these devices that is very difficult to get by just reading the reviews.
For example, here is a little video review of the Amazon Kindle:
Of these devices, the Amazon Kindle seems to have the best overall package in terms of price, connectivity and availability of electronic books. I like its integration with Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia. I also like its ability to look up the definition of a word in the integrated dictionary. Unfortunately, it also looks like the ugliest of the lot with some rather weird design choices in my opinion. It also cannot natively display PDF files. Amazon should release a newer version of the Kindle that rectifies these mistakes. Some of these devices, including the Kindle, are also unnecessarily saddled with DRM. Many of them have features that are of doubtful utility in an electronic book reader (for example, an MP3 player or a web browser with severely limited features).
Electronic paper still has some way to go before it can become an acceptable replacement for ordinary paper. The resolution of electronic paper still doesn't seem to be anywhere as good as ordinary paper. It cannot display colours other than black and white (or shades of grey), which is all right for ordinary text and figures but not for colourful photographs. The most troublesome aspect seems to be the manner in which the display is redrawn - there is a slight pause, followed by the blackening of the display followed by the final image. Depending on the person, this can either be very irritating or barely noticeable while turning pages.
These devices seem to be almost, but not quite, there. I think I will wait for the next generation of such devices before I buy one for myself.
2008-03-18
A Dismal Quest
I am looking for a good introductory book on economics to teach myself the basics of this dismal science. From the little I know about it, I have come to realise how important it is in helping one make sense of much that happens in the modern world. I am looking for a book that systematically provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles of macro-economics and micro-economics.
The most popular text for this purpose, till recent times, seems to be "Economics" by Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus. However, N. Gregory Mankiw's "Principles of Economics" seems to be becoming increasingly popular these days. Fortunately for me, both of these books are available in cheap Indian editions. I flipped through the pages of these books in a bookshop and I must say that Prof. Mankiw's book looks far more approachable to a layman.
I notice that Paul Krugman has also come out with such a book titled "Economics", though I couldn't locate an Indian edition for the book. There are also freely-available economics text-books published on-line like "Introduction to Economic Analysis" by R. Preston McAfee (an "open-source book") and "Principles of Economics" by Timothy Taylor (an advertisement-supported book). I do not like reading lots of text on the computer screen and I cannot order the "dead-tree" versions of these books until I know for sure that they really are better than the more popular alternatives (viz. the books by Prof. Samuelson and Prof. Mankiw).
I would like to ask those of you who are more knowledgeable in economics: what book would you recommend for this purpose?
The most popular text for this purpose, till recent times, seems to be "Economics" by Paul Samuelson and William Nordhaus. However, N. Gregory Mankiw's "Principles of Economics" seems to be becoming increasingly popular these days. Fortunately for me, both of these books are available in cheap Indian editions. I flipped through the pages of these books in a bookshop and I must say that Prof. Mankiw's book looks far more approachable to a layman.
I notice that Paul Krugman has also come out with such a book titled "Economics", though I couldn't locate an Indian edition for the book. There are also freely-available economics text-books published on-line like "Introduction to Economic Analysis" by R. Preston McAfee (an "open-source book") and "Principles of Economics" by Timothy Taylor (an advertisement-supported book). I do not like reading lots of text on the computer screen and I cannot order the "dead-tree" versions of these books until I know for sure that they really are better than the more popular alternatives (viz. the books by Prof. Samuelson and Prof. Mankiw).
I would like to ask those of you who are more knowledgeable in economics: what book would you recommend for this purpose?
2007-12-04
The Golden Compass
Some days back, I saw the trailer for the film "The Golden Compass". I am eagerly looking forward to watching this film, as it is based on the eponymous book that is the first in the fantastic "His Dark Materials"
trilogy by Philip Pullman.
"His Dark Materials" sadly does not seem to have achieved as much popularity as some of the other less-deserving sagas. I for one didn't even know that such a series existed until Ananth had pointed it out to me and given me his copies of the books to read. Once I had read it though, I liked it immensely (my review of the series on Amazon.com; the same on my web-site). I some times even use the names "Lyra" and "Pantalaimon" in my code and scripts instead of the prosaic "foo" and "bar", much to the bewilderment of the reviewers.
Ananth is so excited about watching the film and its sequels that he has already re-read the books to refresh his memory. He plans to watch the first show of the first day for the film. He eagerly laps up articles about Dakota Blue Richards, the young girl who will play the role of "Lyra", the charming protagonist of the books.
I always have a mixture of excitement and dread when I learn of a film based on a book that I have liked - for me, the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films are the only such films that haven't left me disappointed. When you read a book, you imagine the characters and the scenes in a certain way that might not be shared by the director of a film. A film is also constrained by a limit on the duration of the film, which might not be enough to develop all the characters to the extent the book has done. When those who have not read the book watch the film, they usually either get confused or miss a lot of (what you consider) important references in the dialogues. You still look forward to watching the films because you want to see how the directors have realised the books as films, because you want to revisit the characters and the story and because you hope that the films will get more people interested in reading the respective books.
I will keep my fingers and my toes crossed.
trilogy by Philip Pullman."His Dark Materials" sadly does not seem to have achieved as much popularity as some of the other less-deserving sagas. I for one didn't even know that such a series existed until Ananth had pointed it out to me and given me his copies of the books to read. Once I had read it though, I liked it immensely (my review of the series on Amazon.com; the same on my web-site). I some times even use the names "Lyra" and "Pantalaimon" in my code and scripts instead of the prosaic "foo" and "bar", much to the bewilderment of the reviewers.
Ananth is so excited about watching the film and its sequels that he has already re-read the books to refresh his memory. He plans to watch the first show of the first day for the film. He eagerly laps up articles about Dakota Blue Richards, the young girl who will play the role of "Lyra", the charming protagonist of the books.
I always have a mixture of excitement and dread when I learn of a film based on a book that I have liked - for me, the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films are the only such films that haven't left me disappointed. When you read a book, you imagine the characters and the scenes in a certain way that might not be shared by the director of a film. A film is also constrained by a limit on the duration of the film, which might not be enough to develop all the characters to the extent the book has done. When those who have not read the book watch the film, they usually either get confused or miss a lot of (what you consider) important references in the dialogues. You still look forward to watching the films because you want to see how the directors have realised the books as films, because you want to revisit the characters and the story and because you hope that the films will get more people interested in reading the respective books.
I will keep my fingers and my toes crossed.
2007-02-02
LibraryThing
If you are a bibliophile with a non-trivial collection of books, sooner or later you would feel the urge to catalogue it. If you use a computer, you would either use a software like Delicious Library or hack up something yourself if you have the skills, the time and the enthusiasm.
LibraryThing is a web site that allows you to maintain this catalogue online, with your catalogue being either publicly visible or being private. With a free account, you can catalogue up to 200 books. Since many users catalogue their books like this, you can also use the web site to meet other people who have a taste similar to yours in books and you can also get suggestions about new books you might want to check out based on your existing collection. You can also find lots of reviews about books you actually intend to check out.
This is not all. Since the most boring part of cataloguing your books is entering in all the data (even if you only enter the ISBNs and then the software looks up the details itself), they provide a CueCat bar-code scanner for automating this job at a price that is cheap even by Indian standards. I ordered one as a way of showing my support for the site. It is surprisingly easy to get it working - under Linux, if you have USB HID enabled (quite likely), any application can read the scanned-in bar-codes as if they were directly typed in at the keyboard. Of course, the CueCat obfuscates its output so that applications cannot readily make sense of the data, but it is very easy to get back the plain text or to "declaw" it altogether.
LibraryThing understands the obfuscated output of the CueCat and it supports a "bulk import" feature - you scan in the ISBN bar-codes of your books into a text file, upload it and LibraryThing uses Amazon.com, the Library of Congress, etc. to query the details of the books and automatically add them to your online library. The process is so simple that I was able to scan in two shelves of books in under 10 minutes, upload it to LibraryThing and see my online library populated automatically over the next three days! The reason it took three days was that LibraryThing is nice enough to throttle its querying of free online catalogues so as to not overwhelm them with such requests.
When she saw that I had bought a funny-looking bar-code scanner just for cataloguing my books, Anusha gave me one of those "What a weirdo!" looks. She had earlier burst out laughing when I had said that I was toying with the idea of getting one for myself. However, bar-code scanning is so much fun that she was soon merrily scanning in books with me. Her criticism is considerably muted now.
LibraryThing is a web site that allows you to maintain this catalogue online, with your catalogue being either publicly visible or being private. With a free account, you can catalogue up to 200 books. Since many users catalogue their books like this, you can also use the web site to meet other people who have a taste similar to yours in books and you can also get suggestions about new books you might want to check out based on your existing collection. You can also find lots of reviews about books you actually intend to check out.
This is not all. Since the most boring part of cataloguing your books is entering in all the data (even if you only enter the ISBNs and then the software looks up the details itself), they provide a CueCat bar-code scanner for automating this job at a price that is cheap even by Indian standards. I ordered one as a way of showing my support for the site. It is surprisingly easy to get it working - under Linux, if you have USB HID enabled (quite likely), any application can read the scanned-in bar-codes as if they were directly typed in at the keyboard. Of course, the CueCat obfuscates its output so that applications cannot readily make sense of the data, but it is very easy to get back the plain text or to "declaw" it altogether.
LibraryThing understands the obfuscated output of the CueCat and it supports a "bulk import" feature - you scan in the ISBN bar-codes of your books into a text file, upload it and LibraryThing uses Amazon.com, the Library of Congress, etc. to query the details of the books and automatically add them to your online library. The process is so simple that I was able to scan in two shelves of books in under 10 minutes, upload it to LibraryThing and see my online library populated automatically over the next three days! The reason it took three days was that LibraryThing is nice enough to throttle its querying of free online catalogues so as to not overwhelm them with such requests.
When she saw that I had bought a funny-looking bar-code scanner just for cataloguing my books, Anusha gave me one of those "What a weirdo!" looks. She had earlier burst out laughing when I had said that I was toying with the idea of getting one for myself. However, bar-code scanning is so much fun that she was soon merrily scanning in books with me. Her criticism is considerably muted now.
2007-01-21
"Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming"
I just finished reading "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming" by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi. If you are the kind of person who thinks that "The Art of Computer Programming" and "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" are good books, then you owe it to yourself to check this book out.
There is a slightly-dated version of the book available online (PDF, 3.4 MB), if you want to preview some of the content before buying it. There is also an Indian edition of the book published by Prentice Hall of India (ISBN: 81-203-2685-7) and priced at Rs 450. The book's web site links to some reviews and you can also read my review of the book.
There is a slightly-dated version of the book available online (PDF, 3.4 MB), if you want to preview some of the content before buying it. There is also an Indian edition of the book published by Prentice Hall of India (ISBN: 81-203-2685-7) and priced at Rs 450. The book's web site links to some reviews and you can also read my review of the book.
2006-12-21
"LtU Books" In India
There are some books on computer science that I had never heard of until I had started reading "Lambda the Ultimate" (LtU). I found these books being mentioned and recommended in various posts and forum topics on LtU from time to time. As I found out more about these books, I became interested in reading them. Since they were relatively obscure, I had no hopes of finding them here in India. The prospect of having to fork out hefty sums of money for buying the books via something like Amazon.com made me apply the brakes on my normal impulse of buying an interesting book when I come across it.
Imagine my delight then, when I stumbled upon the fact that all of these books had an Indian reprint available at an extremely affordable price. Incidentally, all of these books were originally published by MIT Press and the Indian reprints are published by Prentice-Hall of India.
Here are the "LtU Books" along with the ISBNs of their Indian reprints and the corresponding price:
Imagine my delight then, when I stumbled upon the fact that all of these books had an Indian reprint available at an extremely affordable price. Incidentally, all of these books were originally published by MIT Press and the Indian reprints are published by Prentice-Hall of India.
Here are the "LtU Books" along with the ISBNs of their Indian reprints and the corresponding price:
- "Types and Programming Languages" by Benjamin Pierce, ISBN: 81-203-2462-5, 350 rupees.
- "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming" by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi, ISBN: 81-203-2685-7, 450 rupees.
- "How to Design Programs" by Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt and Shriram Krishnamurthi, ISBN: 81-203-2461-7, 325 rupees.
- "Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages" by Benjamin Pierce, ISBN: 81-203-2792-6, 425 rupees.
- "The Elements of Computing Systems" by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken, ISBN: 81-203-2885-X, 195 rupees.
2006-09-06
Where is The Purple Dragon Book?
The "second" edition of the Dragon Book (a.k.a. "Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools" by Alfred Aho and others) has already been delayed a lot, considering that the previous edition was published twenty years ago in 1986 and the new edition was supposed to be published "soon" years ago. The final publishing date was supposed to be 31st August 2006 and the corresponding Amazon.com page and the Addison-Wesley page continue to stick to the same date as of this writing and yet proclaim the title to be unavailable. Jeffrey Ullman says that the book is finally done and that they handed it over to the publisher at the end of June 2006, so I wonder what is causing all these delays and whether the wait would be worth it. Note that an online preview of some of the revised as well as newly-added chapters is still available, though the site uses an awful amount of Flash, JavaScript and pop-ups for some weird reason.
I put "second" in quotes since the publisher says that this is the second edition, though coming after the Green Dragon Book and the Red Dragon Book, I think this should be called the third edition of the book. However, I do realise that there was a change in the title of the book and it was thoroughly revised when it was published as the Red Dragon Book, so this is just nitpicking on my part. It has already been nicknamed the Purple Dragon Book based on its cover, continuing the convention for giving nicknames to its predecessors.
I read parts of the Red Dragon Book when I took the Compilers course in my college about twelve years ago. It was a bit boring (as are almost all textbooks I have ever read), but it was the only book I could lay my hands on that covered bits of everything about compiler construction. Even to this day, 20 years after it was published, it still seems to be a recommended book if you want to know about the basics of compiler construction. However, it is acknowledged to be terribly out-of-date with the current techniques, so a major revision was long overdue.
I have been meaning to brush up on the fundamentals of compiler construction techniques for several years now, especially since the time I was introduced to the development of GCC, but my excuse was that I wanted to postpone it till the time the new edition of the Dragon Book becomes available (which was always marked to be released "any time now"). Now that the Purple Dragon Book would become available "soon", my excuse is that I would at least wait for the second printing so that all the readily-apparent errors are corrected and I don't have to read the book with a thick errata in hand. I would also wait for the low-priced Indian edition to become available since the international editions are atrociously priced in my opinion.
Yes, I do make up really silly excuses for what is ultimately procrastination driven by plain old sloth.
Update (2006-06-07): As luck would have it, just a day after I write about the unavailability of this book, both Amazon.com and Addison-Wesley now show it as in-stock and ready for shipping.
I put "second" in quotes since the publisher says that this is the second edition, though coming after the Green Dragon Book and the Red Dragon Book, I think this should be called the third edition of the book. However, I do realise that there was a change in the title of the book and it was thoroughly revised when it was published as the Red Dragon Book, so this is just nitpicking on my part. It has already been nicknamed the Purple Dragon Book based on its cover, continuing the convention for giving nicknames to its predecessors.
I read parts of the Red Dragon Book when I took the Compilers course in my college about twelve years ago. It was a bit boring (as are almost all textbooks I have ever read), but it was the only book I could lay my hands on that covered bits of everything about compiler construction. Even to this day, 20 years after it was published, it still seems to be a recommended book if you want to know about the basics of compiler construction. However, it is acknowledged to be terribly out-of-date with the current techniques, so a major revision was long overdue.
I have been meaning to brush up on the fundamentals of compiler construction techniques for several years now, especially since the time I was introduced to the development of GCC, but my excuse was that I wanted to postpone it till the time the new edition of the Dragon Book becomes available (which was always marked to be released "any time now"). Now that the Purple Dragon Book would become available "soon", my excuse is that I would at least wait for the second printing so that all the readily-apparent errors are corrected and I don't have to read the book with a thick errata in hand. I would also wait for the low-priced Indian edition to become available since the international editions are atrociously priced in my opinion.
Yes, I do make up really silly excuses for what is ultimately procrastination driven by plain old sloth.
Update (2006-06-07): As luck would have it, just a day after I write about the unavailability of this book, both Amazon.com and Addison-Wesley now show it as in-stock and ready for shipping.
2006-08-10
Lost Books on Computer Programming
I am not into old books on computers the way Graydon seems to be, but I still feel sad that the current generation of programmers will most likely never get exposed to some of the great books on computer programming that I was able to read when I was young.
At least here in Bangalore, it is almost impossible to buy these books from a bookshop unless they have either retained very old stock or are selling second-hand books. For example, here are a few books that seem to be very difficult to buy these days in Bangalore:
Of these, I have only been able to buy Dromey's book so far. In my opinion, it is one of the most under-appreciated books in computer science and deserves to be read by every novice programmer. It is a perfect complement to the usual textbooks for a Data Structures and Algorithms course.
A kind soul has scanned in the pages from "A Discipline of Programming" and made them freely available to everyone. The electronic version of "Communicating Sequential Processes" is now freely available for download. But I still wish I had these books "for real".
By the way, Robert Dewar hopes to produce an updated version of "Microprocessors: A Programmer's View" sometime soon.
Alarmingly, some relatively recent books are also becoming difficult to find these days. For example:
Thankfully, the "The Art of Computer Programming" (TAOCP) series by Donald Knuth is still easily available. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (SICP) by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman and Julie Sussman is also visible in bookshops from time to time.
I think the strong sales of TAOCP are more due to the "classic book" effect than anything else. To quote Mark Twain, "A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read". If there are people who have actually read TAOCP, they seem to have been rather successful at avoiding to meet me. To quote Bill Gates, "If you have read The Art of Computer Programming from cover to cover, send me your resume!".
At least here in Bangalore, it is almost impossible to buy these books from a bookshop unless they have either retained very old stock or are selling second-hand books. For example, here are a few books that seem to be very difficult to buy these days in Bangalore:
- "The Elements of Programming Style", Brian Kernighan and P. J. Plauger.
- "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs", Niklaus Wirth.
- "A Discipline of Programming", Edsger Dijkstra.
- "The Science of Programming", David Gries.
- "Communicating Sequential Processes", C. A. R. Hoare.
- "How to Solve it by Computer", R. G. Dromey.
- "Microprocessors: A Programmer's View", Robert B. K. Dewar and Matthew Smosna.
Of these, I have only been able to buy Dromey's book so far. In my opinion, it is one of the most under-appreciated books in computer science and deserves to be read by every novice programmer. It is a perfect complement to the usual textbooks for a Data Structures and Algorithms course.
A kind soul has scanned in the pages from "A Discipline of Programming" and made them freely available to everyone. The electronic version of "Communicating Sequential Processes" is now freely available for download. But I still wish I had these books "for real".
By the way, Robert Dewar hopes to produce an updated version of "Microprocessors: A Programmer's View" sometime soon.
Alarmingly, some relatively recent books are also becoming difficult to find these days. For example:
- "Programming Pearls", Jon Bentley.
- "The Practice of Programming", Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike.
Thankfully, the "The Art of Computer Programming" (TAOCP) series by Donald Knuth is still easily available. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (SICP) by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman and Julie Sussman is also visible in bookshops from time to time.
I think the strong sales of TAOCP are more due to the "classic book" effect than anything else. To quote Mark Twain, "A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read". If there are people who have actually read TAOCP, they seem to have been rather successful at avoiding to meet me. To quote Bill Gates, "If you have read The Art of Computer Programming from cover to cover, send me your resume!".
2006-07-08
Books on C and C++
Tarandeep asked me what books on C and C++ I would recommend for someone who knows a bit of each of these programming languages. My problem is that I do not generally like reading books specific to a given programming language. In addition, I do not know C++ properly enough to be able to discern a genuinely good book on C++ from a mere pretender. He still insists that I write down a list of such books. I am therefore putting this list as a blog post in the hopes that people more knowledgeable about such things would help him out. We did search for such lists on the web but I was frankly not satisfied with the lists that we could readily find.
Here are the books on C that I would readily recommend:
Here are the books on C++ that I think should be useful:
By the way, many people do not like "The C Programming Language" but I am one of those who just love this book. It is a short book that is always to the point and has examples that teach you a lot about computer programming techniques and style. I agree that you should already know a bit about computer programming to fully appreciate this book. It was the book that I used to learn C. I love all of Brian Kernighan's books in general. He is one of the very few authors who have actually imbibed the lessons from "The Elements of Style".
In India, we have a few books on C and C++ written by some Indian authors that are terrible in my opinion but that unfortunately have been mandated as text books in several colleges here. The result is that many of the graduates who have not been exposed to other books form extremely warped ideas about these programming languages and about things like pointers. Sad.
Here are the books on C that I would readily recommend:
- "The C Programming Language", Second Edition, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.
- "Expert C Programming - Deep C Secrets" by Peter van der Linden.
- "C Traps and Pitfalls" by Andrew Koenig.
Here are the books on C++ that I think should be useful:
- "The C++ Programming Language", Third Edition, by Bjarne Stroustrup.
- "Effective C++", Third Edition", by Scott Meyers.
- "Essential C++" by Stanley Lippman.
By the way, many people do not like "The C Programming Language" but I am one of those who just love this book. It is a short book that is always to the point and has examples that teach you a lot about computer programming techniques and style. I agree that you should already know a bit about computer programming to fully appreciate this book. It was the book that I used to learn C. I love all of Brian Kernighan's books in general. He is one of the very few authors who have actually imbibed the lessons from "The Elements of Style".
In India, we have a few books on C and C++ written by some Indian authors that are terrible in my opinion but that unfortunately have been mandated as text books in several colleges here. The result is that many of the graduates who have not been exposed to other books form extremely warped ideas about these programming languages and about things like pointers. Sad.
2006-06-22
Libraries
I really miss having access to a well-stocked and conveniently accessible library of books here in Bangalore. I really like reading books and it is not possible for me to buy all the books I fancy reading. It is not just a question of being able to afford these books; I do not have enough space in my home to stock all such books and they are a pain when moving houses.
2006-06-06
Graphic Novels
I am quite intrigued by graphic novels and look forward to reading some of them, especially those by Alan Moore. I was therefore very happy when I spotted some graphic novels in Landmark, Blossoms and Crossword here in Bangalore. The happiness was rather short-lived as I discovered that they were quite expensive. There is no way I am going to shell out 800 rupees for such a thing when I don't even know if I am going to like it and especially since many of them are in a rather battered condition probably caused by many people browsing through them but then deciding to not buy them.
2006-01-04
"A Practical Sanskrit Introductory"
Thanks to Anirban Mukherjee, I came across a nice document (2.5MB PDF) written by Charles Wikner containing introductory lessons for the Sanskrit language. Just take a look at the first chapter to see why I personally consider the phonetically precise Devanagari script to be far superior than the utterly challenged and much abused Roman script, even at the risk of appearing jingoistic.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
2005-12-15
Preview of the Next Edition of The Dragon Book
Addison Wesley have put up a sneak preview of what is in the long overdue and much anticipated updated edition of The Dragon Book (a.k.a. "Compilers: Principles, Tools and Techniques" by Aho, Ullman and Sethi). For some insane reason, they have decided to use JavaScript, Flash and pop-ups to show these chapters, prompting instant revulsion in yours truly. I'd rather wait for the dead-tree edition than subject myself to such torture.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
2005-11-10
Videos of SICP Lectures
Most of the coders who have read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) would agree that it is a profoundly insightful book that teaches you a whole new way of coding. So when I found out that the videos of the SICP lectures given by Abelson and Sussman are now available for download, I was excited. However, my excitement turned to dismay when I found out that the videos were huge - even a single DivX-compressed video of a lecture would bring me perilously close to my monthly broadband download quota, not to mention take an awful amount of time.
So if any of you out there have all these videos already downloaded, would you be willing to burn it to a DVD-R and send it to me? I am of course willing to pay for the cost of the media, package, postage and reasonable labour charges. Drop a message to rmathew AT gmail DOT com if you can. I would prefer the DivX-compressed versions. I had already written to Hal Abelson to know if they provided such a service and they indicated that they don't.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
So if any of you out there have all these videos already downloaded, would you be willing to burn it to a DVD-R and send it to me? I am of course willing to pay for the cost of the media, package, postage and reasonable labour charges. Drop a message to rmathew AT gmail DOT com if you can. I would prefer the DivX-compressed versions. I had already written to Hal Abelson to know if they provided such a service and they indicated that they don't.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
2005-05-15
"How to Solve it"
I found this classic book on problem-solving by G. Polya to be worthy of every praise that has been heaped on it by generations of budding mathematicians and programmers. It requires a bit of perseverance and suspension of cynicism to fully benefit from this book. As with most self-help books (if I may use the term), the basic approach and the given heuristics are rather simple and "obvious", but the real benefit for the reader lies in appreciating their significance and in applying them consistently to solving problems. Very highly recommended.
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
(Originally posted on Advogato.)
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