Philosophical Geek

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the kind of technology and scientific understanding that would need to go into a computer like the one on the Enterprise in Star Trek, and specifically its interaction with people. It’s a computer that can respond to questions in context—that is, you don’t have to restart in every [...]

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Filed under: A Better Future, Books, Software Development, Thoughts On Tech and More | 1 Comment »

I saw this book when I bought Programming WPF a few weeks ago and it looked promising enough to buy. I’ve been doing unit testing in C# for a few years now, but I thought there were always things to learn and maybe I’d pick up a few new ideas.
It is easy to contrast this [...]

Popularity: 6% [?]

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Well, after a week of investigation, I’ve settled on a social network for books: Shelfari. It’s attractive, easy-to-use, easy to manipulate many books at once, they have a mobile version, and I have one friend on it (who invited me).
 Goodreads.com also looked nice, and it almost won. bookwormr.com, the one I originally found was just [...]

Popularity: 6% [?]

Filed under: Books, Link/News | 1 Comment »

I found a great site I wanted to share with everybody: bookwormr.
To explain:
I’ve got 3 large books on my nightstand at the moment:

Scotland: The Story of a Nation - Magnus Magnusson - Much of my heritage is Scottish, and I got intensely interested in Scottish history during our trip to Edinburgh last year.
Code Complete - [...]

Popularity: 6% [?]

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Even if the Internet connection goes out, your computer does not become a dumb brick. There were days these last few days where I didn’t bother turning it on. Then I realized all the things I could still do.
(My home Internet connection finally came back this morning. I’m bit upset that they didn’t figure it [...]

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What books should all serious developers read and study? This is a list of books that I have either found particularly helpful in my own growth as a programmer, or that are popular on various required-reading lists. I have bolded books I consider absolute required reading (probably multiple times) for all software developers.
I’ve gathered these [...]

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According to his blog, Robert Jordan passed away yesterday. He fought a tough illness for quite a while. I became a big fan of The Wheel of Time a few years ago and forced myself to stop reading the books until the final one comes out.
I loved the books because they were immense, detailed, [...]

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I just read the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. This is the first time I’ve read it, never having come across it in school, like most people seem to. To me, it was the greatest argument against getting a TV. My wife and I decided towards the beginning of our marriage to never subscribe to [...]

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I finally bought myself a copy of Steve McConnell’s Code Complete, 2nd Edition. I’ve read about a third of it so far and love it. It’s by far the most practical and useful book on programming I have ever read.
But how to learn it all? Sure, an experience programmer will pick up many of these [...]

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