Comments for Macha Mackha

Comment on Programming Books by Peter

Peter — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 01:22:04 +0000

Code Complete is a nice book for “learning how to program better”. I would also recommend “The practice of programming” by Kernighan and Pike
and “Programming Pearls” by John Bentley. They are more concise and to the point than Steve McConnell’s work. Both use C, but the ideas can be applied easily to Java, JavaScript, or any other “modern” language.

Comment on Programming Books by Charlie Root

Charlie Root — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 18:52:50 +0000

For textbooks I only bother to visit a bookstore if it’s near a university.

Comment on Programming Books by Macha

Macha — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 11:22:22 +0000

@ItarPeyo: That’s a good idea. I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks.
(Edited, this comment was originally incorrectly addressed to Laurent)

Comment on Programming Books by Laurent Jégou

Laurent Jégou — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 08:24:10 +0000

I agree with your finding.
That’s why i’m now a suscriber of SafariBooks Online by O’Reilly

Comment on Programming Books by ItarPeyo

ItarPeyo — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:03:57 +0000

You can take a look at parts of almost any book on google books before buying it online. I know this is not exactly the same as being able to browse a paper book, but serves well to check the writing style, code examples etc.

Comment on Programming Books by Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:41:37 +0000

The computer section in any book store in that I’ve been in Cork has sucked so badly. All the one dummies one you’ve mentioned. Expect it’s more like Photoshop/Vista/Excel for dummies.

Technical books are SO expensive as well. Any of the O’Reilly books are like 30 to 40 euros or 24 for pdf. Who’s going to fork over that amount if it isn’t directly connected to their interests. It’s not like going in to a book store. People would expect to be walking out with two to three books for that amount.

Comment on Simplicity by Macha

Macha — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:31:46 +0000

@Sirupsen
Less features = Less to learn = More user friendly is fine, as long as it has all the features you need. When simplicity is taken to extremes, and you get something that just feels spartan, it’s not more user friendly.

To stop picking on Arch, take sleeping for a non-computer-related example. A floor fulfills the same purpose as a bed for sleeping. It has less features (i.e. none). But it’s certainly not a better experience, despite being simpler. Which is why people only sleep on floors when they really have to (after drinking way too much at a big party, for example).

@Matt Lloyd
Yeah, I suppose everyone draws the line between the learning curve and the eventual gain somewhere else.

Comment on Simplicity by Matt Lloyd

Matt Lloyd — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:01:14 +0000

There’s points to each argument. One states technical simplicity is preferred over user simplicity. Now as a user I’d always prefer user simplicity, I don’t really care too much what repo’s my package manager uses as long as it has what I need (and if it doesn’t I can simply change that.) As a programmer the CLI is king, I want options, I want to be able to script OS features easily. I want the power to do what I want, how I want.

The Arch fan would argue whats simpler than ‘pacman -S python’? The GUI is just bloat! But the issue is the user experience is damaged by the learning curve. Even though the eventual user experience ‘could’ be better the learning curve is the obstacle. The average linux user won’t be perturbed by this but I’m betting the average windows or OSX user would.

So in my eyes it boils down to usage and if your willing to put time in to get over that initial learning curve. The people who do might find that the eventual user experience is more suited to them. But the fact the learning curve gate is there to begin with breaks down the user experience for too many for it to be a viable solution in all cases.

Comment on Simplicity by Sirupsen

Sirupsen — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:37:09 +0000

I’d like to point out that when I say that less features is simplicity, it also usually means that it’s more user friendly, in terms of that there is “less to learn”, and less to master. Which I believe, is part of the user experience.

Comment on First projects by Macha

Macha — Tue, 11 May 2010 19:04:20 +0000

I certainly see where you are coming from, and yes, those are also quite good as projects. Maybe I’m just restricting myself to ideas that cater to my short attention span