Books like Just for fun by Linus Torvalds

The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those rare tech audiobooks you’ll listen, re-listen, and listen to again over the years. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced practitioner, you’ll come away with fresh insights each and every time. Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this influential book in 1999 to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding. These lessons have helped a generation of programmers examine the very essence of software development, independent of any particular language, framework, or methodology, and the Pragmatic philosophy has spawned hundreds of books, screencasts, and audio books, as well as thousands of careers and success stories. Now, 20 years later, this new edition re-examines what it means to be a modern programmer. Topics range from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. All the old favorite topics are there, updated for this new world. And there's a bunch of new content, reflecting what we've learned in the intervening years. Whether you’re a new coder, an experienced programmer, or a manager responsible for software projects, use these lessons daily, and you’ll quickly see improvements in personal productivity, accuracy, and job satisfaction. You’ll learn skills and develop habits and attitudes that form the foundation for long-term success in your career. You’ll become a pragmatic programmer. This audiobook is organized as a series of sections, each containing a series of topics. It is read by Anna Katarina; Dave and Andy (and a few other folks) jump in every now and then to give their take on things.

Take a strategic approach to software construction—and produce superior products—with this fully updated edition of Steve McConnell's critically praised and award-winning guide to software development best practices. Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming, Steve McConnell's original CODE COMPLETE has been helping developers write better software for more than a decade. Now this classic book has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices—and hundreds of new code samples—illustrating the art and science of software construction. Capturing the body of knowledge available from research, academia, and everyday commercial practice, McConnell synthesizes the most effective techniques and must-know principles into clear, pragmatic guidance. No matter what your experience level, development environment, or project size, this book will inform and stimulate your thinking—and help you build the highest quality code.Discover the timeless techniques and strategies that help you:Design for minimum complexity and maximum creativityReap the benefits of collaborative developmentApply defensive programming techniques to reduce and flush out errorsExploit opportunities to refactor—or evolve—code, and do it safelyUse construction practices that are right-weight for your projectDebug problems quickly and effectivelyResolve critical construction issues early and correctlyBuild quality into the beginning, middle, and end of your project

This Side of Glory is both a compelling personal narrative and an eyewitness account of the Black Panthers that reclaims a piece of history long obscured and now almost lost. Just as David Hilliard's candid life story illuminates this revolutionary movement, it sheds light on America's present racial and political troubles. Hilliard's experiences encapsulate an entire generation. Born in the forties, the twelfth child in a poor but intact Alabama family, he began life as. The traditional Southern black culture was ending. When the family migrated to the West Coast, Hilliard and his pals hung out on Oakland's streets, exhilarated by the fifties boom, testing their adolescent selves to the fullest, but also learning the limits of blacks' participation in American life. Witnessing the unfulfilled promises of the civil rights movement and an expanding economy, Hilliard joined the rebelliousness of the sixties and the Black Panther Party. Old. Friendships with and tested loyalties to the Party founders, coupled with his intelligence, catapulted him into the position of Chief of Staff. In retrospect, the naivete of these young revolutionaries astounds. Responding to the brutal police beating of a fifteen-year-old black girl, the first armed patrols were intended to make the police obey the law. When the inevitable shoot-out occurred, a policeman was dead, Huey Newton badly wounded and under arrest for murder. The ensuing Free Huey campaign propelled the first black American armed revolutionary movement into a nationwide organization providing free food and medical and legal services to the poor, and, ultimately, into electoral politics. This Side of Glory breaks twenty years of silence to provide firsthand accounts of Huey Newton's shoot-out, the killing of Fred Hampton, how money was raised and spent, the sexual mores of the Panthers, how illegal activities erupted and were. Controlled. Whatever their accomplishments and failings, the Panthers, "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country," according to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, began to dissolve as police raids, gun battles, IRS investigations, trials, and prison terms decimated their ranks. Covert tactics including infiltrators - agents provocateurs - and a disinformation campaign turned Panthers against one another. Some, Hilliard included, turned to drugs and alcohol. Whatever the government had not destroyed, the Panthers finished themselves. Hilliard was imprisoned and deserted by the Party. His subsequent disillusionment, addiction, and degradation serve as paradigms for African-American despair in the seventies and eighties. Written with the drive of a novel, Hilliard's riveting story of young militant blacks reaching toward a vision of justice and radical change is in the tradition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. This Side of. Glory is an important historical document and one of the most profoundly telling memoirs of our time.

November 1944. The British government finally agrees to send a brigade of 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine to Europe to fight the German army. But when the war ends and the soldiers witness firsthand the horrors their people have suffered in the concentration camps, the men launch a brutal and calculating campaign of vengeance, forming secret squads to identify, locate, and kill Nazi officers in hiding. Their own ferocity threatens to overwhelm them until a fortuitous encounter with an orphaned girl sets the men on a course of action — rescuing Jewish war orphans and transporting them to Palestine — that will not only change their lives but also help create a nation and forever alter the course of world history.