Books for programming

I use books to teach myself programming a lot as it's a fast, fun and easy way to learn the languages I need to learn to go out and make a career in my field(web development). I originally had taken a class and taught myself by using the W3Schools web site which was overall a very good experience in teaching myself HTML 5 and CSS for my intro to web development. After I completed my class I bought my first book which had lots of bright and colorful examples that took me step by step through a set of codes to make great pages.

I was curious if anyone else used books to learn. If not you should as they are very helpful. Especially if your learning languages like JavaScript. The book I have has over 30 different examples that I can very easily build off of and use in my own web pages. I can't wait to save up some more money and get a few more books that I have had my eye on.

I have only used online tutorials for my learning. W3schools mainly for HTML, CSS & JS, Oracle tutorials for Java. I have not really felt the need for books - examples can be found on the internet on hundreds of different websites, If I need an example that one site doesn't have I can use DuckDuckGo (search engine) to find one on another site, and gain a perspective of the language from different people.

There's a website where IT books are free, I use it all the time:

it-ebooks.info

They even have a restful API that you can implement so you don't even have to use the website (maybe a little weekend project?).

Cheers.

If you're just starting out codecademy.com is worth visiting, but once you got the basics covered it may be a bit too simple. The website Dash suggested is great for further reading. It's a goldmine!

Could lurk in gamedev.net and ask around. A certain young nooblet looking to write an online game did that in 2004, and had some slight success ;)

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/205797-game-programming/

That was really inspiring to read. The first comment is amazing "read this thread again after 3 years" - I wonder how often Ched looks back on his beginnings. He sure was determined to learn.

Anyhow, I was just about to start a thread on IT books and voila it already exists.

I'm a web designer and I'm also studying Web Applications Development.

I'm currently learning PHP but the class I'm taking and the book we're using are so so. I'm looking for further books and ways to learn and practice PHP. What would you recommend?

I also plan to teach myself JS and have only just started fidling with jquery for my websites. This would be my summer project to learn I reckon. Again, I'd love some advice on how to best learn this.

Websites are great too, I just find books provide a bit more structure and I'm not the most disciplined person in the world.

using sites like code acadamny and certain youtube channels works a treat.

> I also plan to teach myself JS and have only just started fidling with jquery for my websites

Nice. I'd recommend studying Angular and, since you're a designer, probably also Bootstrap is worth mentioning.

HTH.

Alessandro

Well, I have a few Lynda.com vids, use w3c regularly, youtube, etc but it all lacks structure (except lynda). Looking for specifics rather than general sites.

Hmm, thanks Archimede, would you start there as a beginner with JS or should I be learning something else before I attempt to figure out what angular and bootstrap are?

As you probably already know, there's an overwhelming quantity of resources about Javascript.

This could be a good starting point: https://gist.github.com/ericelliott/d576f72441fc1b27dace

> would you start there as a beginner with JS or should I be learning something
> else before I attempt to figure out what angular and bootstrap are?

JS is certainly the foundation for using more advanced frameworks like Angular. Therefore I'd suggest you have at least a basic knowledge of the language, if you choose this path.

Having said that, if you google a bit you'll find plenty of material about Angular too: you might want to try some beginners stuff just to get a feeling of how it works.

Good luck!

Alessandro

Hmm.

I work as a software engineer and we make several web-apps, however, I can't say I would recommend PHP unless you're looking to learn a PHP framework such as laravel or codeigniter.

Javascript is probably the best route for a web designer nowadays. Or django (python). I use python for back-end work and haven't really had a chance to deploy something using django, but I've fooled around with it a bit and it is very beginner friendly. :)

BTW: Django offers a fairly well documented beginner's guide on their site, so you don't really need a book.

I use and manipulate WordPress a lot, and am currently very dependent on using the internet to find code. WP is PHP based, so it would be very useful to me to understand. And it's a requirement for my major to learn either asp or php. Screw asp.

My goals are to learn PHP and JS, and will look into mobile app development by the end of the year. Any language recommendations for that would be swell!

I'm looking for books that come recommended by y'all. I'm familiar with most general web resources, but web dev related links would be useful too (Please don't say youtube unless you take me for an idiot).

WP is okay but is on its way out in my opinion (although one can usually be wrong about frameworks being on their way out).

I sold about 20 WP sites back in the day to small businesses who needed a quick and easy CMS solution. We used to make themes and stuff, but we weren't really selling people that, we sold them support. It was okay.

If you want to learn a web framework that is mostly CSS/JS related check out bootstrap or foundation. I also quite like "Pure CSS".

Again, as far as PHP frameworks go, laravel and codeigniter and probably the best route (in that order), although laravel 5 which recently came out is a bit different from other versions and kind of a hassle to learn.

My recommendations for books would be any that involve those topics. For absolute beginners, the head first series is pretty good, and I used head first java to learn java when I was in the university (we don't call it college here). There are "head first" books on pretty much any topic, ranging from html, php, C, java, javascript all the way to high school physics.

At the risk of sounding like an advertisement of some sort, you can find all these books and more at it-ebooks.info and there are more advanced books as well.

A recommendation: If you're going to be a web designer, learn MVC (model view controller) as most serious web frameworks are MVC frameworks, unless you're focussed strictly on front-end design. We've had to turn down more than a few self-proclaimed web designers who don't know this kind of stuff where I work.

Cheers.

This is a bit of a long shot, but I really need a digital copy of

Title: Programming with Alice and Java
Authors: John Lewis, Peter Depasquale
ISBN: 032151209X

Pearson, the publisher doesn't seem to carry it at all anymore, and amazon has used paperback, but nowhere have I been able to find a pdf. I'm doing an online course whilst travelling so shipping a physical copy won't work, either because they won't ship to where I am or it takes a month.

Any ideas where I can get hold of it as an ebook?