Steve Yegge's recent post about the second most important course in CS made me smile. I discovered Eric Raymond's How To Become A Hacker fairly early on in my career, and to a Mathematics graduate with a job doing Visual Basic 6.0, that was eye-opening stuff. But you always have to remember that all authors have an agenda (including this one, obviously - Ed) and it has been commented by people other than myself that esr's HOWTO could be alternatively titled 'How To Be Like Eric Raymond'. Well, so be it. It's always the journey that's the interesting part. So can we consider Steve's post to be an equivalent 'How To Be Like Steve Yegge'? Doesn't matter. Again, it's the journey that has value.
As an aside, I had an email from Amazon today.
Your order #xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx (received 27-March-2007)Note the order date as well. Three months to get that book. Ouch! But at least it's given me time to read these two, and I can interpret Steve's post (and Joe's comment) as a good barometer of where I'm heading.
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Ordered Title Price Dispatched Subtotal
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Amazon.co.uk items (Sold by Amazon EU S.a.r.L.):
1 Compilers: Principles, Tec... £47.49 1 £47.49
Shipped via Home Delivery Network Limited (estimated arrival date:
28-June-2007).
1 comment:
Excellent choices, all. Looks like we're on the same journey. I also recommend "The Definitive ANTLR Reference", by Dr. Terence Parr. The ANTLR website has a lot of excellent reference material, as well as the ANTLRWorks tool, which you will likely want. Jean Bovet, the creator of ANTLRWorks, also provides his Visual Automata Simulator, a great visual tool for exploring DFA's, NFA's, and Turing Machines.
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