A Big List of Interesting Programming Books Released in 2011

The following is a list of 48 interesting programming books that were released in 2011. While technically some of them are only programming-related and not about coding per se, each one is sure to be of interest to some programmers. As some of you know, I run a service called Any New Books?, which emails you a list of new books that are related to the categories of your choice each week. For the most part I pulled...

My Technical Blogging Book Is Now Available in Beta

Technical Blogging: Turn Your Expertise into a Remarkable Online Presence is now available in beta. This first beta includes about 200 of the estimated total 250 pages. Most of the information you need to know is already included in the existing chapters. Early feedback has been great and helped shape the book. The reception by early readers and reviewers has been nothing short of incredible. Here is one: My career...

An Update On My Technical Blogging Book

Today I wanted to let those of you who don’t follow my adventures on twitter know that I have a few updates in regards to my upcoming technical blogging book, which I announced a while ago. The most important update is that the book is not going to be self-published. Instead, after receiving offers from a couple of major publishers earlier this year, I decided to publish the book with The Pragmatic Bookshelf....

My First Impressions of Android

Last weekend I finally took the plunge and bought myself a smartphone. I didn’t want to sign for an expensive three year contract, so I opted for Wind Mobile and paid up front for an Optimus LG 2X. I’m no stranger to mobile operating systems (you know the rules, and so do I). I own an iPod Touch and an iPad, and have a history with pocket sized devices that goes all the way back to primitive PDAs from a...

jQuery Air: An outstanding introduction to jQuery

Code School is a fascinating new provider of video lessons for programmers. In the past I reviewed their Rails Best Practices course and certainly didn’t hide the fact that I’m a fan of their approach. It combines modular video lessons with practical exercises (called challenges), game-like rewards with scores and virtual badges, and also includes a handy support forum in case you get stuck. Recently Code...

Results of the Technical Blogging survey

A couple of weeks ago I published a survey in which I asked you a few questions about a book on technical blogging I intended to write. The response has been very positive, so today I’m officially announcing that I’ve started writing this book. I also created a pre-launch landing page where you can signup to receive occasional updates about the progress of the project, and learn of when the book becomes...

Review of Rails Best Practices

Over the weekend I had a chance to play around a bit with Rails Best Practices, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts I had regarding it. In the startup world we often debate the merit of ideas vs execution. In this particular case, the idea behind this product is pretty straightforward. It’s a video course about common idioms and best practices in Rails, that helps you learn how to refactor bad Rails...

I’m thinking of writing an ebook and would love your feedback

Over the past few months I’ve been toying with the idea of self-publishing an ebook about technical marketing and blogging. These are topics that I feel are very important for a technical audience (one that is often less keen on marketing and self-promotion). However, before committing to investing a large amount of my time and energy in such a project, I thought it would be best to gauge the interest level in...

Interview with Michael Hartl, author of the Rails 3 Tutorial

The following is an interview with Michael Hartl, author of the popular Rails 3 Tutorial. I want to thank Michael for his time and answers. Be sure to read until the end; as per Monday’s post, I’m doing a Twitter giveaway for this interview, too. 1. How did you go from Theoretical Physics to Ruby Programming? I have a background in computational physics, and I learned Perl and then Python to avoid the...

Eloquent Ruby Review

In 2007 Russ Olsen published Design Patterns in Ruby (US | UK | CA). Right around that time there were several other Ruby books hitting the shelves (as Rails was really reaching the peak of its popularity), however Olsen’s book managed to distinguish itself as a highly valuable resource for readers who wanted to better understand how to apply design patterns to Ruby programming (in an organic rather than dogmatic...

An In-Depth Comparison of the Kindle DX Vs. iPad as Reading Devices

These days ebook devices are becoming increasingly common thanks to the convenience they afford readers and the affordable prices. As much as I love holding an actual printed copy in my hands, I’ve experienced several benefits from owning an ebook reader that make me thoroughly glad I decided to try them out. Why buy an ebook reader? One of the benefits that most appeals to me about having an ebook reader is...

The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

There’s exciting news in Computer Science-land this week, as the 4A volume (on Combinatorial algorithms) of The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth is now complete and is available for preorder on Amazon. To make things even more intriguing, and to really get all of us CS/programming/math enthusiasts salivating, the boxed set is also made available for preorder (it’s slated to ship out next...

The recommended Ruby and Rails book pages have been updated

During the holiday lull I managed to finally update the Ruby and Rails book pages. The Ruby page includes a few new titles and sees a few existing ones get the axe, as I took the major emphasis on Ruby 1.9 into consideration when updating this list of books. The Rails page is a complete rewrite as I’ve removed any trace of Rails 2 books. I outlined a useful path of Rails books to follow based on the few...

In-Depth Book Review: Authoring eBooks

Jeremy McAnally is a fairly well known name in the Ruby community. Among other gigs, he’s published three Ruby related books: Ruby in Practice, Humble Little Ruby Book, and most recently The Rails 3 Upgrade Handbook. The latter book earned him over $40,000 in a year. That’s excellent, considering that we are talking about passive income from a single, relatively small, self-published ebook. Jeremy has...

Get weekly emails about new Programming books

Today I’m announcing a pet project of mine that I think may interest some of my readers. Any new books? is a free notification service which enables you to subscribe to a series of subjects that interest you and receive weekly emails about new book releases in those categories. These books are hand-selected, to filter out obvious duds, and include only books that appear to be promising/interesting. Naturally I...

In-Depth Book Review: Practical Clojure

Title: Practical ClojureAuthors: Luke VanderHart and Stuart SierraTrue pp.: 198Publisher: ApressPublished on: June 2010ISBN-13: 978-1430272311Rating: 6.5/10 Published in June 2010, Practical Clojure by Luke VanderHart and Stuart Sierra is the latest Clojure book to hit stores. Despite the Clojure 1.0 jar shown at the beginning of the book, this title tries to cover the current version of the language, including...

Ten recent programming books that will make you a better developer

Programming is the type of discipline that requires countless hours of dedication to reading and writing code, rather than purely theoretical learning from books. Yet programming books can be enlightening and provide guidance while one attempts to hone their craft in the pursuit of mastery. In this post I’ll share a (necessarily incomplete) list of relatively new books that I believe will make most developers...

Upgrading to Rails 3

Rails 3 is a major upgrade; using it almost feels like working with an entirely new framework. Porting existing applications and acquiring the skills required to build new ones entails a significant amount of effort. You could scout the net for bits and pieces of information, but that would be time consuming and possibly frustrating. Thankfully there are resources available that have done the work for you, so you...

Recommended Ruby and Rails books (August 2009)

I finally got around to updating the Ruby and Rails book pages. The existing list was getting a bit obsolete and I didn’t like the idea of recommending old books to newcomers. I also had some interesting new entries. Without further ado: Recommended Ruby Books Recommended Rails Books A few people may disagree with the choices, but I think most experienced Ruby and Rails programmers, who’ve read those...

Do programmers still buy printed books?

Yesterday I published a post titled My latest order of programming books, which received a fair number of comments both here and elsewhere online. Aside from a few good suggestions for other must-read books for programmers, there were several comments about how buying hard copies of books in this day and age is stupid. A few advocated piracy as an alternative to buying books, printed or not. Aren’t we supposed...