During Black Friday and CyberMonday 2020, I didn’t find any great tech deals at Newegg. Not that they had any of the newest CPUs and GPUs launched in the last three months in stock. But I did find an old school tech deal at Amazon: a 3-for-2 deal on doorstoppers. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many programming books were so thick that they could stop a door.
Here are the three “doorstoppers” I bought from Amazon last month.
- “Python All-in-One For Dummies” by John Shovic.
- “Classic Computer Science Problems in Python” by David Kopec.
- “An Introduction to Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus” by Greg Michaelson.
Python All-in-One For Dummies
The first book was “Python All-in-One For Dummies” by John Shovic and Alan Simpson. The dummies book series has always been my number one source for learning a new subject. Although I already know Python, I needed a refresher course on the language. The book covers Python 3.7. A newer version of this book will come out in April 2021.
Classic Computer Science Problems in Python
The second book was “Classic Computer Science Problems in Python” by David Kopec. I went back to community college after the dot com bust to learn computer programming on a $3,000 USD tax credit. The programming courses I took were less about theory and more about applications. While I learned every flavor of Java, I never did learn the classic computer science problems. The book covers Python 3.7.
An Introduction to Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus
The third book was “An Introduction to Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus” by Greg Michaelson. Most functional programming tutorials I’ve seen begins with solving a classic math problem. That might not be a problem if I was familiar with the classic computer science problems. The book provides a high-level introduction to functional programming and lambda calculus. The code examples are in Standard ML and Common LISP.