In a post on JavaLobby, Meera presents her TOP5 of technical books published in 2008.
I definitely agree with the first three: a new book from Robert C. Martin, the second edition of the great Effective Java and a collection of articles from ThoughtWorks.
I haven’t read yet the first one but i liked his “Agile Software Development” and the initial reviews are quite good.
The new edition of Effective Java contains 21 new items and presents 1.5 language features such as enum, generics and annotations and also updates items related to improved features e.g. items in the concurrency section.
An interesting reading is also the ThoughtWorks Anthology, a collection of essays on various IT topics, ranging from software methodology advices to ant build files optimization tips.
If you are a software developer or if you know one, this time of the year is the right time to buy one of these books.
Let me add a few more titles, that even if not published in 2008 (or not technical) could be good gift ideas:
Java Puzzlers: Traps, Pitfalls and corner cases
Another book from the great Joshua Bloch based on the JavaOne’s serie of presentations, full of thought-provoking “puzzles” related to details or known bug of the Java language.
Here is a video of one of the Joshua’s presentations:
C++ Common Knowledge: Essential Intermediate Programming
As the cover says : “What Every Professional C++ Programmer Needs to Know—Pared to Its Essentials So It Can Be Efficiently and Accurately Absorbed”.
As an Effective Java for the C++ language, it uses the same itemized approach and it describes very clearly and with many examples what every C++ programmer should know.
Perfect for anyone who needs to review the language skipping the basics.
My job went to India
In this book published in 2005 , Chad Fowler takes his experience with outsourcing in India as a starting point to give reasonable advices about IT carer development. Even if some of these could sound obvious (as reasonable advices usually are), the book is still an enjoyable reading and give you the opportunity to review the way you approach your job in IT and think about what could be improved.
Highly recommended.
Permutation City
A post-cyberpunk sci-fi book by Greg Egan, full of clever ideas about AIs, future post-death scenarios and virtual reality.
Open-source electronics platforms for rapid prototyping have already been around for a while, i can think of Arduino board but surely there are more of them.
The low cost, the wide variety of inputs/outputs, the ability to interact with sensors ot to control motors, the ease of use and the community, make these platforms a perfect fit for hobbyist’s and artist’s projects.
Regarding the ease of use, Arduino can be programmed in a c-like language ( additional straightforward libraries to access the board’s functions are provided ) and has a development environment based on the famous Processing.
And now, SUN Spot.
I’ve spotted the video embedded below on the googletechtalks youtube channel.
The platform developed by SUN Laboratories seems awesome:
2.4 GHz IEEE 802.15.4 radio with integrated antenna
USB interface (host?)
2G/6G 3-axis accelerometer
Temperature sensor
Light sensor
8 tri-color LEDs
6 analog inputs
2 momentary switches
5 general purpose I/O pins and 4 high current output pins
100 mt max distance between Spots (more info on this on the sunspotworld.com forum, the devices together form a meshed network, so multiple stations can be used to extend the network civerage, but the maximum distance between two spots seems limited to that)
Missing agps and only 4mb flash you say? Looks like someone already built a custom gps module and SD module for their projects. Some new addons have been shown at JavaOne2008.
The SUN Spot can be programmed enterely in Java, and has a development platform based on NetBeans (Eclipse can also be used).
Refer to the embedded video for some example projects. Above all, watch @00:21 for the cool Sun Blackbox monitoring project.
It comes in a developer kit with 1 Spot base station and 2 standard Spots for under $700, a kit that reminds me of the early openmoko developers kit.
The two things that i found most intriguing are the ability to upload new “software packages” wirelessly (in this presentation is done through a management interface, could this be done dinamically using the java api provided?) and the way the meshed wireless network formed by Spots is managed (i should take a look at this sooner or later).
Additional videos about Sun Spot and projects based on it can be found on youtube.
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