Request Programming Books Recommendation

Hi, I would like to know about good books to read as a beginner since I started a course to learn programming so can some of you recommend me any book (in either english or portuguese).
edit: I'm learning with mostly javascript

This is my first thread so please forgive if I didn't get how to make one.


Thanks in advance for the help.

 

I'd generally say that most books are the same across the different titles.
If you want really specific tutorials you can always go search them up online.
You can start at codeacademy.com for example and they will guide you all the way without needing a single book.

 

Not a book, but I'd recommend starting out with Harvard's CS50 https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x

It's the best introductory material to development I've seen bar none. After that you'll have the foundation of a few different languages under your belt to make a more informed decision as to what you want to learn after that.

 

Your course does not have a textbook, labs, or office hours?

 

O'Reilly books, this publisher has many programming books, from beginner to more advanced subjects and are really good.
Humble Bundle has a few sales a year of their books, and they come real cheap, i bought 15 euros of digital books on humble that would have cost me at least 400 if i bought on amazon.

 

Well, it kind-of depends on what you want to do.

If you want to program WebUIs, you'd need HTML, CSS, JavaScript (EcmaScript 7+)/NodeJS, and for more advanced content OAuth2 standard and security.

If you want to do stuff closer to back end/(web) services, you'd likely want to learn f.ex. Java, Spring Framework, PostgreSQL databases, etc. Of course, with good quality control, you can do back end code also with JavaScript/NodeJS/ExpressJS too.

If you're any serious, you'd need to understand also software testing; f.ex. JUnit/Mockito for Java and Mocha/Sinon/Chai stack for JavaScript.

If you want Android software, I think Kotlin is hot there at the moment, but that's not my most familiar area.

And, well, all of the above are still more or less basic technical stuff... on top of that, to succeed, you'll need the softer skills that make you a software engineer, instead of just a programmer.

Then you'd need to understand f.ex. how businesses get their money, start learning about the customer needs and developing software agilely customer needs first, communication with other humans, usability, software design, and strive for readable and maintainable code... maybe brush up also on Test Driven Development and friends.

Simply because (ideally) in professional world, you'll want all your code to serve a solid and fully tested purpose... all other code is not needed and take only time from code maintainers and such.

As you may have noticed, it's a big field.

If you want software science (i.e. hardcore skillz), then you can start from abstract algebra, graph theory, matrix calculus, mathematical logic, statistics, etc. depending on whether you want to start building solid coding practices via proving programs and its close friend state machines. Then you also have the must have of data structures and algorithms, like how to sort efficiently, what are red-black trees, etc. However, note that most of that stuff is for lulz and help you build a more solid foundation, but won't be of use everywhere in practical life; best people have a grasp on those too, though.

As final recommendation, steer far, far away from Ruby... its tenets are already mostly anti-thesis of production code... ignoring backwards compatibility and allowing programmers to do whatever they want without caring about best practices (google those for everything you learn to be loved) burn your butt hair sooner or later... and I have seen that kind of unmanageable and unreliable software that just simply had to be dropped like a bad habit.

There's more where that stuff came from, but I'll leave it at that to keep you confused and to allow myself go to sleep.

Hope it helped.

UPDATE.
Oh yeah, recently monoids and functional programming are hawt even in Java/JavaScript/Kotlin etc. See f.ex. promises (async/await), streams, and such.

UPDATE 2:
Ahh, a very important warning is in order before you start reading books too literally.

You should always read programming books and other technical stuff and articles with critical thinking set to full power.

If you want to do actually good and useful stuff, you need to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Higher level code is always meant for someone else to read, and it's about communicating with your fellow developers (and yourself), first and foremost.

Optimization is done only when necessary, for that reason.

There is loads of biased advice and opinions everywhere, so finding the actual best practices from any written or said text takes a good deal of getting to the root of things... and sometimes the best solution is not the optimal one either but the one everyone else uses, depending on situation.

 

You could try Codecademy it is a good resource that teaches coding starting from level zero. Although I don't know which coding language you wish to learn. I was able to learn C# programming by doing tutorials with Unity. Both resources are free.

 

Honestly speaking...google. The real trick to programming is to actually just program. If you have a problem, look up how someone else does it.

After teaching you about variables, flow control, and maybe how memory is allocated the books were only really useful for programming terms that you would use to look up extra info.

 

it has labs , it only started this week so no textbook and sorry for my stupidity but I don't know what do mean by office hours, are you talking about the time I can consult them or the classes or something else?
I still don't know how to translate some things from english to portuguese

 

Donald Knuth's Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science.

teehee

 

Think Python is free on the author's website: http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/

 

Just a possible recommendation if you hurry, Humble Bundles : Intro to Code Book Bundle https://www.humblebundle.com/softwa...medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_1 ends in about 45 minutes

 

I've a question
The best way to learn is to practice and make projects on your own , right
What I want to ask is , is there some place where I can what program to make and also the required function or technique used in it
What I mean is a place where they give you an objective and also not the entire code but atleast the function or command that can be used
Cause most of the sites I started browsing to learn c only have the basics
I'm interested in building programs on my own but the problem is where do find tricks or new methods of doing something or alternative
Thanks for the help

 

Google Blue Pelican Java. It's a great free resource to learn Java with. You'll also need a program like Eclipse(also free) to code with. Unless you don't mind the web browser solutions. Gl

 

Pay @Tony nuffies to teach you programming

 

Office hours is a time where you can consult the professor and/or teaching assistants of the course. Usually, they will give a set time, but they can generally be scheduled if those times don't work for you.

Also, as others have mentioned, programming is learnt best by just doing. I've never had to actually read a book to program TBH.
Basic steps: Write the "Hello, World" program. Write a program that does a basic calculation and outputs it. Write a program that uses a method/function. Write a program that uses an object or struct.
When you don't know how to do something, Google it. Like "how to output text in <whatever programming language you use>"
If you don't want to go directly to programming, looking at other people's code is a better first step than reading a textbook in my opinion.

 

I rely on imagination and intuition. The only books I read are more about algorithms, software architecture and different frameworks.

I haven't even completed a single programming language book though. Prefer to learn language through solving the tasks.

 

If you basic instruction I would suggest online classes like Sololearn, or W3schools, (which are free) or if you want a lecture to help you out go to Udemy and buy a course for ten bucks. Do you know what language you want to start with? I mean a lot of schools will start you with Python but there are so many out there.

 

The Elements of Programming Style is not a bad starting point. Bit more practical based than a textbook. This one is very old school though. For a newer version look for the version that uses the language you want to learn (Elements of C Programming Style, etc).

 

Thanks for clarifying