Books
02/10/06 13:52 |Personal-English
I'm a bookworm. Everyone who knows me well enough
knows this.
Moreover, when I find something of a real interest, I would go on and buy (almost) every book written for the subject. Most of my good friends know this. Janos or Peter once asked me why do I have so many C++ books. Read the earlier post, its STL was one of the thing that blew me away.
The same went for Haskell (even though I couldn't find that many books comparing to C++), Chaos Theory, Fractals, Complex System Theory, Cellular Automata (all of these triggered flood of Physics, Applied Maths, and other science books I bought).
Now the same is going for Ruby (and Rails). Recently I found myself started shopping again, even though my salary as a university professor isn't that high (comparing to when I was a scholarship student; this is the way things are in this country). I will surely review those Ruby & Rails books later.
Among them, I found Best of Ruby Quiz to be practically very good. It's one of the best way ones could learn a new programming language and how to program in that language; by learning to tackle programming problems and learn a full solution from many other people. This way, not only you understand a new language, you also
I'm still looking for a hardcopy of Programming Ruby, Agile Web Development with Rails, Rails Recipes, and Ruby Cookbook. If anyone kind enough to see them somewhere in Bangkok, please kindly let me know. And, no, buying online from any source isn't an option for me currently.
Moreover, when I find something of a real interest, I would go on and buy (almost) every book written for the subject. Most of my good friends know this. Janos or Peter once asked me why do I have so many C++ books. Read the earlier post, its STL was one of the thing that blew me away.
The same went for Haskell (even though I couldn't find that many books comparing to C++), Chaos Theory, Fractals, Complex System Theory, Cellular Automata (all of these triggered flood of Physics, Applied Maths, and other science books I bought).
Now the same is going for Ruby (and Rails). Recently I found myself started shopping again, even though my salary as a university professor isn't that high (comparing to when I was a scholarship student; this is the way things are in this country). I will surely review those Ruby & Rails books later.
Among them, I found Best of Ruby Quiz to be practically very good. It's one of the best way ones could learn a new programming language and how to program in that language; by learning to tackle programming problems and learn a full solution from many other people. This way, not only you understand a new language, you also
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Practically using it to write real programs that
actually do something useful. The #1 problem I
found with people learning a new language is that,
they learn syntax and write toy examples following
books. That's it. This cause them to switch back to
the old language whenever they have to solve
problems. It happens to many of my students trying
to learn Python, only to switch to C when solving
problems. Only a few actively using Python nowadays
because they chose to do one of their assignment in
Python.
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Effective communication using idioms and
expressions. Programming a new language is like
learning to speak in another language. Not only you
have to learn the syntax, the grammar. You will
also need to know a lot of idioms and more
importantly, expressions. Some languages are
obviously expressionistic than another. I lived in
Japan for 7 years and find the Japanese language
more expressionistic than the language of my mother
tongue and English. So, it's important to learn how
to use those expressions and idioms well, rather
than just understand its grammar structures and how
a sentence is composed. Otherwise an effective
communication won't be achieved.
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Change the way of thinking. This is, also, like the
learning a new natural language. It reflects the
way you think about communication and solving
problems. Thinking in metaprogramming, functional,
terms is really different from thinking imperative.
It's really Fortran vs. Lisp. It's really Java vs.
Haskell. It's really English vs. Japanese. It's
really about how you're thinking now vs. how you
have to think if you're to use a new language
efficiently effective.
I'm still looking for a hardcopy of Programming Ruby, Agile Web Development with Rails, Rails Recipes, and Ruby Cookbook. If anyone kind enough to see them somewhere in Bangkok, please kindly let me know. And, no, buying online from any source isn't an option for me currently.