The Practice of Programming
So as I mentioned before, I was reading The Practice of Programming. I just finished the book today so I figured I'd give you guys some feedback of how I felt about the book.
Unfortunately, I felt the book was a waste of time. The Art of UNIX Programming I felt covered the topics in a much better and much more generic way that is far more applicable for today's programming environment. The Practice of Programming might be nice for a beginners book but for someone with any experience I think it is pretty much useless. My feeling is the gist of the book is well summarized by the Appendix. If you read that you don't need the book. Look up the concepts in the Appendix that confuse you but otherwise the book is out of date for the programmers of today.
I can see the book being a great resource maybe for hardcore low level C/C++ programmers but otherwise I'd skip it.
The newest book I'm reading is The Mythical Man Month. The book was quoted in both The Practice of Programming and The Art of UNIX Programming and some of the speakers during my training at my new position referenced it so I got really curious about it. While I'm still on page 13, I can tell you I only expect this book to wow me more and more as I go on. The book was originally written in 1975 or so but as you read it you feel like the issues the book speaks about are those that you see every day!!! I can't believe it. Maybe it's because I'm still starting the book but I can say so far it's well written. We'll see how I feel as I go on I'm sure :)...