Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes

I know what you’re thinking – SAMs: Teach Yourself [blank] in 10 minutes… how can that be good in any way shape or form? This must be the single good book in their line up, because this book is fabulous for learning SQL. I had a job where I had to learn SQL in a few days (at least the basics, enough to do some basic web development) and this book was recommended to me. It ended up working out great. Each of the chapters is devoted to a particular concept in SQL, be it basic joins, inner and outer joins the select statement, etc. There are plenty of good examples given for each statement and in general a lot of good, high quality explanation. This is not a good all-in-one book – it is really only suitable for learning the basics of vanilla SQL. That being said, I now feel confident that I could pick up any book about a particular flavor of SQL, or about optimizing SQL on a particular platform, and understand it well.

Additionally, this book is so short and so well organized it functions very well as a reference book. It is very easy to look up various operations and see how they function, complete with a variety of examples.

Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes

Basic Topics in Mathematics

I will admit, I have always done reasonably well in math. I like the subject – it seems intuitive to me for the most part. One of the things that stuck with me for the longest time, though, was quality of instruction I got from once teacher in Highschool – my Calculus teacher. During the first day of class, he explained all pre-calculus math to us in about 30 minutes, and it made sense. I had the same experience listening to Richard Feynman’s lectures on Physics.

That is why I was so astounded to find this gold mine in a used book store. John Riner, the author, walks through mathematics the way it should be done – starting with set theory and gradually progressing through algebra, geometry and matrix theory up to calculus. This is a small book – only 297 pages including the index, but it teaches math in the way it was meant to be taught. This is not to say that this book is easy – it moves fast and it has none of the “new math” garbage word problems in it that contemporary students are probably used to. Instead, it focuses with laser precision on the actual mathematical concepts. For the serious student of mathematics, I cannot recommend this book enough.

One last note, this book was published in 1963 and is out of print. As of this writing, there are only 4 used copies left on Amazon. I would not expect those copies to remain available forever.

Basic topics in mathematics

The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style

Just awesome. There is a reason that this book is a classic. It is simply one of the best, most accessible books about English style in composition.

Flash 8 – Projects for Learning Animation and Interactivity

Flash 8 – Projects for Learning Animation and Interactivity

I am trying to learn flash right now. It seems like a good short to medium term bet (and as far as I understand Javascript 2 and Actionscript 3 are the same, so maybe it’s a good longterm bet as well). Most of the books that I run into teach languages poorly, but this one seems to be an exception (I am in the middle of it right now). It doesn’t even try to teach theory, it’s just a series of projects that have you (me) gradually explore the flash environment. Afterwards, I’ll probably pick up something that is comprehensive, but in the beginning, this is a perfect book for becoming acclimated to flash.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

This is probably the first challenging computer programming book that I’ve read. I am reading it as part of a study group. It’s pretty fun. If you are near Seattle, feel free to stop by here.

If you want to really learn computer science, this is probably the best place to start out. The book really is quite challenging, though, so, if you don’t have access to a class or a study group, you can always watch the videos and have the authors explain the material to you. The videos are available at their website here: http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/.