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Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by mathnode on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:04AM (#14487288)
- The Pragmatic Programmer

- The Practice of Programming

- The Mythical Man Month

- The Cathedral and the Bazaar

- The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

- Introduction to Algorithms

- Hackers and Painters

Some of these do contain mixed language code examples, but they are expressed in a way to be agnostic. A problem is a problem; in any language.

Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by optimuspaul on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:07AM (#14487302)
The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by inerg on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:27AM (#14487419)
I believe he was talking about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (https://www.amazon.ca/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry...).

It's a nice fiction book that goes into how different people view the world. At least that's what I've gotten out of it so far, I'm only about a quarter of the way through it so I might be missing some of the things it covers.

Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by optimuspaul on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:43AM (#14487514)
yes, I assumed that to be the book they meant. I read it 25 years ago. I am just surprised that it would be included in this list. I see no connection to the question posed.
Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by inerg on Monday June 05, 2017 @10:09AM (#14487666)
I'm not sure why he included it in his list. However I do think that it does a very good job of bringing to light that your customers/users may not be appreciative of buggy code. They want something that "just works" and to not have to deal with vague error messages.

I started reading the book about a year into my first development job and it really brought to light the frustrations my users were having as I was seeing as it was just another interesting problem to me. As I said in my past post I haven't been diligent in reading it so I'm only a quarter of the way through but here's hoping I'll get more insights out of it when I pick it back up.

I do think that what this book talks about can be discovered in other ways, but for people who are just starting in the technology field it's a good primer to be aware of how others experience what you implement.

Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by randcraw on Monday June 05, 2017 @10:57AM (#14488042)
In a way, the entire book is about debugging, but the target is the author's thought process rather than code. While Robert Pirsig fictionalizes the story, in fact it's closely based on his own life, in which he sought understanding of values (via zen and academics) but somehow went wrong and ended up catatonic and in shock therapy. The plot is a revisit of the mind trek he was on then and a quest to see where he went wrong. Pirsig approaches this not as a psychologist, but as a reductionist philosopher/scientist, trying to identify what troubled him and caused him to fail -- a debugging of the mind.
Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by dreeri on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:17AM (#14487362)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is about how people see quality.
Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by LyndsySimon on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:30AM (#14487433)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060589469/

IMO, It's more "philosophy" than "programming", but it makes you think about the role of technology in our lives and our role as creators of that technology.

Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by superpope99 on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:17AM (#14487361)
They mean 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by the late Robert M. Pirsig - I second the recommendation
Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by ryan-allen on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:29AM (#14487429)
I found this book very difficult to read, and I didn't understand it's significance :(
Re:Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I... by cpr on Monday June 05, 2017 @09:11AM (#14487319)
Zen and the Art...