Category: Books

In the President’s Secret Service by Ronald Kessler

In-the-presidents-secret-service

Now that I drive plenty on a daily basis, I have a lot of time to listen to audio books.  I don’t have the routine or taste worked out yet, so my picks are rather random.  One of the first things that got onto my radar was “Inside the President’s Secret Service” by Ronald Kessler.

I do have a fascination with all kinds of special forces and units, so that was a quick pick.  Unfortunately, the book doesn’t go into too much detail of the Secret Service training (maybe because it is a Secret Service), but it does cover a bit of history and provides a bit of insight into what kind of a job a Secret Service agent has.  The rest of the book is dedicated to the different presidents and their families – how are they in real life, when the cameras aren’t rolling.  I don’t know how much of these are actually true, but it was still interesting to listen to and “compare notes”.  There were also some funny anecdotes in there.

As far as recommendations go, I wouldn’t suggest this book, unless you are completely out of ideas for anything else.  There are better ones.

The Architecture of Open Source Applications

The Architecture of Open Source Applications

Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study critiques of those buildings written by masters. In contrast, most software developers only ever get to know a handful of large programs well—usually programs they wrote themselves—and never study the great programs of history. As a result, they repeat one another’s mistakes rather than building on one another’s successes.

Our goal is to change that. In these two books, the authors of four dozen open source applications explain how their software is structured, and why. What are each program’s major components? How do they interact? And what did their builders learn during their development? In answering these questions, the contributors to these books provide unique insights into how they think.

If you are a junior developer, and want to learn how your more experienced colleagues think, these books are the place to start. If you are an intermediate or senior developer, and want to see how your peers have solved hard design problems, these books can help you too.

There is also the fourth book in the works – 500 lines or less.

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

The conclusion is that either people are in a big rush to learn about computers, or that computers are somehow fabulously easier to learn than anything else. There are no books on how to learn Beethoven, or Quantum Physics, or even Dog Grooming in a few days.