Title: Francis' Scribbles

Been thinking about your wretchedly difficult competition for the last couple of weeks now. Am now at the point where I have to mail you or it will haunt me forever.

Underrated or overlooked book: Software Tools in Pascal by Kernighan and Plauger. Now obviously this is not some amazing undiscovered gem, because you frequently see it mentioned and it is still in print after nigh on 25 years. We do work, however, in an industry where a book a year old can be past its sell-by date, and that makes it easy to discount a book that was published when many of my work colleagues were unwrapping their ZX81s. Often, when I recommend it, people say "in Pascal?" and laugh in a nervous are-you-going-mad way.

Once they actually read it, they are generally converted. There is a clarity in the writing, coupled with a strong narrative. Starting with an almost laughably simple program to copy the input to the output, it builds to a rather capable line editor, text processing and macro processing almost without you noticing. All the time it stresses good practice - refactoring, library building and so on. That the code is in an obsolete language is almost an advantage in these modern times. Everyone can read Pascal, even if they've never encountered it before, and translating to your language of choice is a useful exercise of itself. It is just super.

Books for <someone>: My category is a C++ programmer who did not actually train as a programmer, sort of fell into it by accident, and who works alone or in a small, inexperienced team of people. They are generally keen, but lack direction so have to rediscover everything for themselves. The first selection to £100 leans toward good practice.

Code Complete by Steve McConnell, £23.79 - changed how I work

The Practice of Programming by Kernighan and Pike, £17.23 - changed how I work more

The C++ Standard Library by Nico Josuttis, £29.91

The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt and Thomas, £23.19

On up to £250, I would add in some more C++ specific advice, together with a couple of books to remind them that good practice goes wider than just the code in front of you.

The C++ Standard, £24.47

Effective C++ by Meyers, £25.49

Effective STL by Meyers, £21.69

Managing Projects with GNU Make by Mecklenburg and Oram, £15.71 - if there was one program I could have "invented" it's make CVS Pocket Reference by Purdy, £6.95 Software Tools in Pascal by Kernighan and Plauger, £19.99 at Amazon

Writing Solid Code by Steve Maguire, £9.95 used at Amazon - the homely anecdotal pair to Code Complete's rigour

The Mythical Man Month by Brooks, £22.99

Castaway tools and references: This is extremely difficult. It rather depends on what I would spend my time working on if I did not have to work. Since I am finishing up an XPath engine, I suppose I might have a crack at an XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0/XQuery implementation. In addition, maybe try a bit of games programming. I'm not sure I can actually get close to the £2000 limit. Most of the tools I use are available at no cost - emacs, CVS, grep, gcc and so on, although I might also go for a couple of Visual C++. The standard version would probably be fine.

I'd take the books listed above, plus

C Standard

C++ Templates by Vandevoorde and Josuttis

Standard C++ IOStreams by Langer and Kreft,

Java in a Nutshell by Flanagan,

XML in a Nutshell by Harold and Means,

XSLT by Tidwell,

Python Cookbook by Martelli and Ascher,

Programming Pearls by Bentley,

The XML, DOM, XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0 and XQuery recommendations

Friedl's Mastering Regular Expressions,

Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing by Greenspun - just terrific

XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web - my friend Kal is a co-author on this, and I keep meaning to find out what it really is he does,

Modern C++ Design by Alexandrescu

A ZX Spectrum emulator and David Webb's Super Charge Your Spectrum and Advanced Spectrum Machine Language. The latter book was the first one to really show me that you could have a library of routines to draw on again and again.

I am showing a singular lack of imagination. I really cannot think of anything else ...

All prices are from Computer Manuals, unless otherwise noted.

Even as I type this, I'm doubting myself. Should I have included Fowler's Refactoring? Booch? Peopleware? Gah. As I said at the beginning, it has been extremely difficult.

When I commented that he did not seem to have any hardware to use, Jez added the following:

For a box to work on I would take something like a Demonite Graduate. It does not have to be top of the range, because it is not like there would be huge pressure of time or enormous builds to do. The basic ~£825 version would be fine (my own slightly more expensive one does go like the clappers - they are super). I'd swap the bundled flat monitor for an Iiyama Vision Master, say the 454 (~£250). I would also throw away the mouse and get a Logitech TrackMan Marble. I am not sure they still make them, but I paid about £30 for mine. I did toy with taking two machines, but decided that would be a bit silly.

Not bothered about OS, so let me take some version of Linux - Debian or SuSE, say. Most of the tools I use are available at no cost - emacs, CVS, grep, gcc and so on. If I had gone for Windows, I would take a copy of Visual C++. Instead, I will take Comeau's compiler with libcomo ($50), along with Dinkumware's library for Comeau and gcc ($135).

Most Overlooked/Underrated

Multi Paradigm DESIGN for C++

Note: An incredibly hard one to pick. All my favourite development books are either popular and highly acclaimed or Highly Recommended by ACCU Book Reviewers. In the end, I selected this book because I think many people are put off by the highly academic style, which can make reading it very hard work. Despite this bar to wide popularity, I think this book is well worth the effort.

C++ Programmers Essential Reference Library

(Prices Based on prices listed on amazon.co.uk, Dec 2004)

For £100:

£34.99 - The C++ Programming Language, Special Edition

£30.79 - The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference

£29.39 - C++ Templates: The Complete Guide

For £250, as above, plus:

£24.46 - The C Standard

£24.46 - The C++ Standard

£29.39 - Standard C++ IO Streams and Locales: Advanced Programmers Guide and Reference

£18.89 - Exceptional C++

£20.99 - Effective C++

£23.09 - Modern C++ Design: Applied Generic and Design Patterns

Note: In creating a list with the theme of "Reference Library", the last three were a tough call.

Desert Island Developers Shopping List

Hardware (source: apple.com):

Software:

References:

As found online (free)

I am assuming either an internet connection from the island, or time to download and burn the software and references wanted to a DVD or two.

I found these two interesting responses. One thing I think that is worth noting is that both found the dash limits on books to be very tough to meet. I suspect that a minimal library for a serious software developer would cost of the order of £1000 ($2000).

That tells me two things; being a software developer is both expensive and time consuming. Having the books is not enough; you have to find time to study them. I think that I am now even more convinced that we need a concerted effort to get rid of the dross from the bookshelves (virtual as well as real) and make a great effort to see that good authors (or authors of good books) get the sales they deserve.

The vast number of bad and mediocre books taking up space is making it very difficult for the newcomer to find good books. Unfortunately, when we start listing the reading requirements the costs begin to daunt. You can easily spend much more on books than on hardware and an order of magnitude more than you need to spend on software.

Because there are only two submissions, I am not going to toss for which wins. Instead, I am going to award them both a choice of any book currently in print, costing under £45 published by Addison-Wesley, Wiley, Prentice Hall or O'Reilly.

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
  int i[] = {1, 1, 2, 0};
  puts("How many values?");
  scanf("%d", i+3);
  puts("The results are: \n\t1\n\t1");
  while(i[2]<i[3]) {
    i[1] += i[0];
    i[0] = i[1] - i[0];
    printf("\t%d\n", i[1]);
    i[2]++;
  }
  return 0;
}

#include <iostream>
int i(int i) {
  if(i < 0) return 0;
  if(i < 2) return 1;
  return ::i(i-1) + ::i(i-2);
}
int main() {
  std::cout << "How many members?";
  int i;
  std::cin >> i;
  -i;
  do {
    std::cout << ::i(i) << '\n';
  } while(-i > -1);
}

#include <ostream>
#include <istream>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>
int main() {
  std::vector<int> i(1);
  std::cin >> i[0];
  std::cout << "first " << i[0] 
            << " terms of the fibonacii "
               "sequence are:\n";
  while(i[0]- > 0) {
    i.push_back((i.size()<3)
      ? int(i.size()-1)
      : (i.back()+*(i.end()-2)));
  }
  std::copy(i.begin()+1,i.end(),
            std::ostream_iterator<int>(
                              std::cout," "));
  std::cout << "\n";
}

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
/* Cheating slightly declaring I, but GCC won't compile the rest without it and we never use it! */
int main(int I, char* i[]) {
  while(strtol(i[1], 0, 10)) {
    printf("%d\n", 
      (long)((pow((0.5 + sqrt(5.0)/2.0),
                 (double)strtol(i[1], 0, 10))
                  - pow((0.5 - sqrt(5.0)/2.0), 
                 (double)strtol(i[1], 0, 10)))
                  /sqrt(5.0)));
/* The nasty hack */
    sprintf(i[1], "%d",
            (strtol(i[1], 0, 10) - 1));
  }
  return 0;
}

Here is last issue's clue:

As many of you worked out, the answer is 4040

Margaret Wood came up with:

I feel sure I had another one, but I seem to have mislaid it.

Now try this one:

When hunting for alternate clues you might remember that we are considering strings of digits rather than numerical values. And that is about all the extra I am willing to give you.