Recently, I've been reading books on how to develop websites using "Web 2.0" techniques (basically AJAX). What I've noticed about these books--and even other coding books in my library--is that there is a serious lack of books for the experienced, well-disciplined programmer.
I honestly find it a little insulting that every book on C++ feels the need to re-explain to me APIE (Abstraction, Polymorphism, Inheritance, Encapsulation). As does every Java book. As does every Python book. Even books that claim to cater to the experienced or advanced programmer always recover these topics.
Of course, I've heard of projects like Rosetta Code, but that's not really what I'm looking for either. For one thing, there are only 87 examples, not even covering topics I'm really interested in. (An example of a topic I'd like to see is, "How to remove items from a collection based on a predicate?") Yes, it's wiki. Yes, I could go write the article myself. No thanks.
I guess what I really want to find are books that tell you the right way to perform tasks in a certain language, or why you would prefer one method over another. For example, in which situations should I prefer to use a vector instead of a map? (I'll give you a hint, even in key-value situations there are reasons to sometimes prefer a vector to a map).
For example, let's say I'm writing a new piece of C++ code. Should I use the stl? Almost always. Is there a good logging subsystem out there that I could use to avoid rewriting a new one? Are there any libraries I should avoid? Boost.
I don't need to relearn why I should write objects or what should go into an object. Tell me how to define an object, how to use inheritance, how abstraction is implemented. Give me actual, realistic costs of making design tradeoffs. For example, how much will it cost me to call a virtual function? Is there a way I can mitigate this inside of a single class, if I really know what the type of the class is?
I'm sure, one of these days, someone will get it. Till then, I'll just continue to suffer in silence.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)