David's Computer Stuff Journal: Free Computer Book!

Free Computer Book!

David N. Welton — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 03:59:00 -0700

I've recently finished writing an article for Free Software Magazine, who, as part of sponsorship deals, are able to distribute a free book to their authors.

I thought that that would be easy enough, but on second thought, I'm actually not sure... These days I'm reticent to get books on things that are documented on the web - those sorts of books tend to get stale pretty quickly. I think I'm more in the market for a 'classic', but even there, I'm not really sure. I have a lot of good ones already (scroll down on this page: http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/), and as you can see from that list, "documentation" style books quickly become dated. To tell the truth, I haven't actually bought any computer books in a while, having focused more on marketing, business, economics and the like, which aren't "documented" online as thoroughly as most programming topics are.

So, I'm lookng for suggestions. One possibility is the recent Erlang book by Joe Armstrong, but even that is mostly covered by docs on the erlang.org web site.

Free Software Magazine's publishing sponsors are: Apress, Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall, O’Reilly, No Starch and Packt - and I can select any book from them, to my knowledge.

Suggestions? Thanks!

"Free Computer Book!" by petunjuk

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 02:33:44 -0700

Software engineering books won't get stale for some foreseeable future.

http://www.freetechbooks.com/forum-15.html

You'll find some agile readings too.

"Free Computer Book!" by riffraff

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 11:14:50 -0700

I was going to scream "CTM!" (aka: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming) but maybe it's not available in your list. "Code Reading" is a book I liked. And maybe "Extreme Programming Explained", which may be slightly hypey, but not much.

"Free Computer Book!" by Rob Jessop

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:04:39 -0700

"Beautiful Code"

"Free Computer Book!" by David N. Welton

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:13:31 -0700

Already have a LaTeX book:-)

I am quite a book collector, actually, if I had infinite quantities of money, I'd fill my house with them.

"Free Computer Book!" by Roland

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:09:41 -0700

One particular range of books that's not going to go stale anytime soon is about LaTeX. If you do any amount of it, the LaTeX Companion could be a good pick, and I don't think it's on the web.

"Free Computer Book!" by Bernd Zeimetz

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 07:01:22 -0700

What about the Cookbook for geeks? http://www.oreillynet.com/fyi/blog/2007/05/daskochbuchfuergeeks1.html

not sure if there's an english translation and how it is called.

"Free Computer Book!" by David N. Welton

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:41:31 -0700

Hi Daniel, I already have 'Founders at Work', and I enjoyed it a lot, actually!

"Free Computer Book!" by ak

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:39:56 -0700

Since you mentioned the Erlang book by Joe Armstrong... I personally find that book didactically better than any of the tutorials and introductions that you can find on the web.

"Free Computer Book!" by Daniel Lopez

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:27:06 -0700

Ciao David,

Definitely, "Founders at Work" from Apress, you will enjoy it :)