Re: Which non-Perl books made you a better (?:Perl )?Programmer?

One that I don't recommend is Hackers and Painters. I found it pretty dissapointing. The articles were not well written and all had a pretty shallow point that could have been covered in a page or two. Many of them seemed very self-serving too, with an overtone of "I got rich with my company, so that proves I'm right." Graham has established himself as a LISP expert, but I don't think his musings on things outside of that domain are worth your time.

I know this books is something of a sacred cow in the Perl community, because he tells us things we want to hear, like we're smart and Java programmers are idiots. Nevertheless, I think some of the Java programmers have more to teach you than this book does.

There is an amusing critique of the title essay in the book here.

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Re^2: Which non-Perl books made you a better (?:Perl )?Programmer? by brian_d_foy (Abbot) on Nov 16, 2005 at 05:28 UTC
I actually don't like that book that much. I think he falls for the fallacy of outstanding example. It worked for him (at a time when just about anything you a millionaire), so he must be right about everything. My main problem with him, though, is that he gives techies the wrong-headed notion that they are better than everyone. Many programmers aren't artists or hackers. It's not fundamentally a noble profession. Most of the stuff programmers do is monkey work. No matter how cleverly we code, the documenting, testing, debugging, and maintaining isn't all that artistic. Not many people care about beautiful looking programs. Most of them care about getting work done. -- brian d foy <brian@stonehenge.com> Subscribe to The Perl Review	[reply]

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Re^2: Which non-Perl books made you a better (?:Perl )?Programmer?
by brian_d_foy (Abbot) on Nov 16, 2005 at 05:28 UTC

I actually don't like that book that much. I think he falls for the fallacy of outstanding example. It worked for him (at a time when just about anything you a millionaire), so he must be right about everything.

My main problem with him, though, is that he gives techies the wrong-headed notion that they are better than everyone. Many programmers aren't artists or hackers. It's not fundamentally a noble profession. Most of the stuff programmers do is monkey work. No matter how cleverly we code, the documenting, testing, debugging, and maintaining isn't all that artistic. Not many people care about beautiful looking programs. Most of them care about getting work done.

--
brian d foy <brian@stonehenge.com>
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