[thelist] programming books (was: PHP vs JSP)

[Cory Preus]

> i'm a begining programmer.. i love o'reilly's "nutshell" series, but are
> there any other ones i should pick up?

If you have a basic understanding of programming
if/while/switch/functions/expressions/linked lists and the like, books like
the Peachpit Visual Quickstart Guides are helpful. They give quick and dirty
how-tos for common tasks. Your basic understanding will allow you to modify
the bare bones to fit your needs. The book helps get you through how HTML
interacts with Java etc.

I really can't recommend a more fundamental book since I grew up on C++
intro books. IMHO, if you know the basics you can learn any language in an
evening. Most pure reference books would do since all you'll need to know is
syntax (damn those parse errors all to hell). Knowing things like when to
use a switch statement instead of an if statement is most valuable. Once you
know what you need to do, looking up the structure of the statement is a
non-issue.

Case in point: a year ago, I had to program a web server in C which I had
never programmed in. Albeit it is similar to C++, but not quite (plus I
hadn't programmed C++ in 3 years [we were using Java then]). I didn't start
the project until the night before it was due. In short: a nifty little web
server was running before dawn broke. Learn the fundamentals -- they are the
same in nearly all languages...then books like the Nutshell series can do no
wrong.

hth,
Cory