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After a few days vacation, I didn’t end up finishing the Pragmatic Programmer, but I made a significant dent in it. I read the first half on the way out, but spent the rest of the time relaxing by the lake or napping in the hammock. I’m glad I didn’t finish the rest of it because it was nice not doing anything.

I’ve found the book a surprisingly easy read so far. Most technical computer books I’ve read take some serious brain power to  chew through; however, this one provided plenty of analogies such as Stone Soup, Helicopter Controls, and Broken Windows that even a non-technical person can grasp what he is saying at first glance. 

One part of the book highlighted a talent of programmers I’ve admired. In chapter 4, if I recall, it mentions how the shell is extremely powerful and worth the investment to learn.  I whole heartedly agree. In addition, it recommend to know and use a single editor. 

I look forward to the rest of the book. Hopefully it doesn’t start collecting dust.

I should come up with a new title for this category. Hopefully it is not a bookshelf resident, but gets read, passed around, written in, referenced, anything but sitting around gathering dust.

After a recommendation from a friend, and anticipating an upcoming vacation, I decided to use a Barnes and Nobel gift card to add The Pragmatic Programmer to my bookshelf.

It has come highly recommended and I look forward to getting into later this week. I was pretty sure David Thomas was the origin of the Angry Monkeys. In addition, he has several other books from his pragmatic bookshelf which are all highly rated.

I’ll be sure to post more as I make my way through it.

I passed on several other books. I was also considering, in several combinations:

• Beautiful Code
• XCode 3 Unleashed
• Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte
• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
• The Myths of Innovation

After seeing the alternate cover for Here Comes Everybody, I remember where I first heard about it. Jeff Atwood wrote a post about him recently. Maybe that book bumps up a few notches on my reading list now.