The Art Of Unix Programming by Eric Raymond

The Practice of Programming by Kernighan / Pike

Telecommunications. Day is relaxing and fun. Start about 9:30am to avoid the traffic, leave about 6:30 for the same reason. I work solidly all day. The stuff is pretty complicated, so a lot of it is 2 hours of meetings, 2 hours of private discussions, 2 hours of thinking, 1.5 hours researching and reading documentation, 5 minutes coding, 25 minutes cleaning up and checking in and documenting, and 5 seconds attaboys on a job well done. Used to be more coding, but now it's more thinking and communicating. Can't complain. It's solid intellectual work, everything makes a difference, and it's well paid, and there's some flexibility.

Writing accounting systems on Apple ][s and IIIs, and Commodore PETs.

I learned that things will go wrong because there are always gotchas at lower levels that you will discover the hard way. Later, you learn that compilers and interpreters and third-party libraries always have gotchas that are going to screw you. I learned that co-workers will intentionally and unintentionally screw you over. I learned that employers have no idea what you do and always get pissed because it takes too long and they never want to pay what it's worth. I learned that customers want stuff that seems really stupid to you, but if you give it to them they will be really happy and they will pay you and you will understand that what you thought was a stupid idea was really a good idea because you only know programming and they know what they need in their business. I learned that you have to keep experimenting and learning new things, that you should never get complacent with a platform or a language, you should always aim for where jobs will be in ten years time, and keep moving there.

The first four are good books that will improve your code. Man Month will let you recognise bullshit silver bullets so you can avoid them. I would like to add Ed Yourdon's Death March, so you can recognise death marches and know when to leave your company.

Master.

I also recommend ownCloud. It's neat. I use it for file syncing, storage, my calendar and contacts and bookmarks, and it also has a great RSS reader plugin that does a great job.

Something was going on with the website. I left it alone for a few hours, came back and it was behaving better. No sign of Learning Free, but I went back to the original link and the page came up. Tonight, the book is PHP jQuerry Cookbook. I have it. Interesting.

I've been doing that up till now, but tonight I get 404 a lot and the Free Learning link is not to be seen. I've cleared my cookies, cleared my cache, not sure what is happening.

What is tonight's book?

I've been getting the occasional book, but today the links are gone, the free books are gone. Is the deal over? Is there a limit on how many books you can get?

Mostly classical, but modern classical. The classic repetitive minimalist stuff mostly - like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, Bolero. That stuff blocks out the outside world, sets up interesting patterns in my head and lets me focus hard without jerking me out of the zone.