Forging The Future » Librarian’s Log

Book of the Day ::: The Architecture of Open Source Applications

The IEUC — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:24:18 +0000

While there are countless books about writing small programs,the real test of one’s skills comes when you tackle a large project, perhaps with a group of colleagues. As the number of lines of code rapidly mounts it becomes nessessary to think about how to organize it all.

The Architecture of Open Source Applications is an incredibly valuable source of illumination in this regard, since it shows you how others have tackled this very challenge. You can read it online or procure a hard copy to join the contributors in exploring the design of 25 impressive pieces of Open Source software.

Book of the Day — Zen Computer

The IEUC — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:29:51 +0000

If you are really new to computing and enjoy Eastern Philosophy, then “Zen Computer” by Philip Toshio Sudo is a must read for you.

This lightweight paper back is a great Ski Lodge or Beach book that will gently introduce you to many computing concepts related to computer hardware, software, programming, and networking while relating them ideas drawn from Zen.

Each entry begins with a pithy quote and leads you on from there with a mix of exposition and the occasional koan to relieve the stress of your day.

Find it at your favorite bookseller from Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 0-684-85410-4).

Tool of the Day — Zotero

The IEUC — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:18:43 +0000

If you ever have to do any academic writing you know how much work can be involved in building and formatting a bibliography.

There are some great commercial products that dispatch this task with aplomb, but they tend to be too expensive for casual End Users who aren’t in academia.

Enter Zotero a free FireFox plugin that does the job.

Zotero makes it easy to extract references from web pages and build bibliographies from citations you insert in your favorite word processor. Zotero can even capture web pages and sync across multiple computers & operating systems.

Many of us at the IEUC still use commercial products that support higher end functionality in our workflow, but Zotero is a great compliment to these tools as well.

Book of the Day — Coders At Work

The IEUC — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:31:51 +0000

Did you ever wonder how software gets created? Who are the people behind the programs you love to use? How do they think and what do they think about?

If you do, “Coders At Work: Reflections On The Craft Of Programming” is the book for you!

Written by Peter Seibel, the book contains revealing interviews with such famous programmers as Douglas Crockford, Simon Peyton Jones, Guy Steele, and Donald Knuth among others.

Find it at your favorite bookseller from Apress (ISBN: 978-1-4302-1948-4).

Readscheme.org

The IEUC — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:00:00 +0000

Readscheme.org — Functional Programming Resources is an annotated bibliography and digital library of academic papers and resources related to functional programming. If you are Computer Science student, grad or undergrad, it would behoove you to make extensive use of this site.

Functional Programming is a very powerful paradigm with many terms of art, so it is a good idea to start with the early papers where these deep concepts are first introduced.