GingerRobot Posted August 21, 2007 Share Posted August 21, 2007 Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for any particularly good books on anything in and around the subject of computing. Obviously i appreciate this is a huge field, but im not too fussy. Im looking to do some background reading during my last year before university, which'll also help with the application process. Being able to talk about things you know and have read will help with the interview quite a lot. So far ive read a couple books on artificial intelligence, which i think were good introductions to the field as they weren't too technical: On intelligence - Jeff Hawkins Creation: Life and how to make it - Steve Grand And ive just ordered "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose, which looks rather more complicated, but its got to be worth a try. So yeah, any suggestions would be very welcome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roopurt18 Posted August 21, 2007 Share Posted August 21, 2007 I'd recommend any resource that deals with the basics of abstract data types and algorithms. You won't need to know them to program PHP, but learning about them will teach you to think effectively about implementing solutions to problems. The best example of where this pays off that I can think of is this thread: http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,155891.0.html Any programmer, through sheer determination, can create a program that parses and then evaluates an expression. I can guarantee that any implementation that doesn't use a tree will be messy and difficult to maintain though. I can't recommend any resources that don't read like text books, but here are some general data types / concepts I think every programmer should be vaguely familiar with: linked lists queues priority queues hash tables binary search trees Those are some basic data structures, but you can accomplish quite a bit with them. They also lead into more complicated structures such as red-black trees, oct-trees, or graphs. Other topics I would recommend: algorithm analysis (big-O) discrete mathematics languages / grammars software development processes / methods (test driven, uml, test cases, that sort of thing) That's all I can think of right now. Inevitably there is always one individual that says, "None of that stuff applies to web development so don't waste your time." It's still good to know IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GingerRobot Posted August 21, 2007 Author Share Posted August 21, 2007 Thanks a lot for the input - certainly gives me some topics to look for. Inevitably there is always one individual that says, "None of that stuff applies to web development so don't waste your time." It's still good to know IMO. Haha. Im now waiting for the inevitable post that says exactly that. Or perhaps no-one will now ive said this. Perhaps ive changed the future... Perhaps i should shut up and go to bed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akitchin Posted August 21, 2007 Share Posted August 21, 2007 None of that stuff applies to web development so don't waste your time. causality, shmausality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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