Friday 1 January 2010

Reading Plan

Read

Recommend

For would–be entrepreneurs, innovation managers or just anyone fascinated by the special chemistry and drive that created some of the best technology companies in the world, this book offers both wisdom and engaging insights - straight from the source.

- Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, and author of The Long Tail

“All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money and (b) not having done it before, ever.” - Steve Wozniak, Apple


Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company.

Where did they get the ideas that made them rich? How did they convince investors to back them? What went wrong, and how did they recover?

Nearly all technical people have thought of one day starting or working for a startup. For them, this book is the closest you can come to being a fly on the wall at a successful startup, to learn how it's done.

But ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence. The reason their founders become rich is that startups do what businessesdo—create value—more intensively than almost any other part of the economy. How? What are the secrets that make successful startups so insanely productive? Read this book, and let the founders themselves tell you.



Currently Reading

Peter Seibel interviews 15 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a brand-new companion volume to Apress’s highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words “at work” suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day-to-day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting.

Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the Coders at Work web site: www.codersatwork.com. The complete list was 284 names. Having digested everyone’s feedback, we selected 15 folks who’ve been kind enough to agree to be interviewed:

  • Frances Allen: Pioneer in optimizing compilers, first woman to win the Turing Award (2006) and first female IBM fellow
  • Joe Armstrong: Inventor of Erlang
  • Joshua Bloch: Author of the Java collections framework, now at Google
  • Bernie Cosell: One of the main software guys behind the original ARPANET IMPs and a master debugger
  • Douglas Crockford: JSON founder, JavaScript architect at Yahoo!
  • L. Peter Deutsch: Author of Ghostscript, implementer of Smalltalk-80 at Xerox PARC and Lisp 1.5 on PDP-1
  • Brendan Eich: Inventor of JavaScript, CTO of the Mozilla Corporation
  • Brad Fitzpatrick: Writer of LiveJournal, OpenID, memcached, and Perlbal
  • Dan Ingalls: Smalltalk implementor and designer
  • Simon Peyton Jones: Coinventor of Haskell and lead designer of Glasgow Haskell Compiler
  • Donald Knuth: Author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeX
  • Peter Norvig: Director of Research at Google and author of the standard text on AI
  • Guy Steele: Coinventor of Scheme and part of the Common Lisp Gang of Five, currently working on Fortress
  • Ken Thompson: Inventor of UNIX
  • Jamie Zawinski: Author of XEmacs and early Netscape/Mozilla hacker

What you’ll learn

How the best programmers in the world do their job

Who is this book for?

Programmers interested in the point of view of leaders in the field. Programmers looking for approaches that work for some of these outstanding programmers.



To Read

"This book covers both the theory and practice of game engine software development, bringing together complete coverage of a wide range of topics. The concepts and techniques described are the actual ones used by real game studios like Electronic Arts and Naughty Dog. The examples are often grounded in specific technologies, but the discussion extends way beyond any particular engine or API. The references and citations make it a great jumping off point for those who wish to dig deeper into any particular aspect of the game development process.

Intended as the text for a college level series in game programming, this book can also be used by amateur software engineers, hobbyists, self-taught game programmers, and existing members of the game industry. Junior game engineers can use it to solidify their understanding of game technology and engine architecture. Even senior engineers who specialize in one particular field of game development can benefit from the bigger picture presented in these pages."



"Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the original romantic comedy, brimful of wit and wisdom. When the haughty and aristocratic Darcy refuses to dance with Elizabeth Bennett, she instantly dislikes him, despite his reputation as a wealthy and eligible bachelor. Are her first impressions correct, or is there more to Darcy than meets the eye? Sharply observed and sparklingly funny, this is one of the most delightful love stories ever written."



"Let your imagination run wild in the world of Unreal Technology. Mastering Unreal Technology: The Art of Level Design knows no boundaries as it shows you how to build custom mods, maps and levels with the Unreal engine. Its tutorial format will give you immediate results through the tips and demos provided from the industry's top level designers.

Learn to create your own characters, weapons and gaming environments, as well as how to go beyond the Unreal environment and export custom elements from 3D modeling applications. A CD that contains the Unreal Engine, graphics, examples and code is also included, giving you everything you need to create custom levels in Unreal or build your own games and virtual environments. Mastering Unreal Technology will help put you on the cutting-edge of gaming technology."

On Writing by Stephen King

Story by Robert Mckee

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