O'Reilly Disaster Relief 50% Special Off E-books

Today O'Reilly had a great 50% sale on all e-books with all revenues going to the Japanese Red Cross for disaster relief after the earth quake + tsunami from about 10 days ago.

I bought the following books for a rainy/sunny day:

High Performance MySQL, Second Edition

I personally prefer Postgres. I think MySQL feels a bit flimsy for some reason I can't articulate. However MySQL is still very widely used and I felt that whatever lessons I learn from this book probably applies to other SQL databases.

Canvas Pocket Reference

I coded a simple clickomania code with a friend at work which uses canvas for drawing so I was interested in learning more about using canvas.

Programming Android

I don't even own a smart phone :( But I'm still interested in learning about programming for Android. I'll probably end up owning one sooner or later. Just not in a hurry to get one.

TCP/IP Network Administration, Third Edition

This is probably a lot of stuff that I already learned in school many years ago. But I feel like I still have some gaps in my understanding. Gaps that don't usually affect my every day work, but gaps that I still want to fill, well just because.

Anyway, this was a great move by O'Reilly. They deserve a lot of credit for putting this special together. The total paid amount is at $70k at the moment. Let's hope it goes even higher and that Japan finally gets the power plant situation under control.

Programming books I read in 2010

I read quite a few programming-related books in 2010. Here are the ones I can remember:

Tehokas Java EE-sovellustuotanto

Perhaps the most important book I read all year. Helped me in getting my current job. Taught me the basics of Maven, Hibernate, Wicket, Spring and so on. All of which were needed in the first project I was working in.

Javascript: the Good Parts

Very nice book. I read this for the Javascript study group we've started at my workplace. Recommended to read more than once if you really want to learn Javascript.

Effective Java

Very good Java book.

Refactoring to Patterns

I just skimmed through the descriptions of the patterns and skipped most of the longwinded refactoring instructions. If I remember correctly the smaller refactorings of Martin Fowler's were more immediately useful.

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

While the content of this book was different from what I expected based on the "enterprise application" of the title, it was still a very good book. It taught me more about how Hibernate works. And I've referred to this book a few times when refactoring a project at work.

The Pragmatic Programmer

I had already read this one before. I just read through it again because it was such a long time since I last read it and because it's such a short and easy read.

Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

Sort of interesting. The abstraction level was quite high. I was aware of many of the ideas in the book already.

Pro Git

Online book about git. In 2010 I greatly improved my understanding of Git. This book was one of the best sources for learning about it.

CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions

HTML and CSS is one of the biggest pain points of making web applications. One of the things I remember the best from this book was how often the chapters had to have some extra workaround crap instructions for IE and what a pain in the ass it is to make rounded corners.

Rails Recipes

This one was written for Rails 1, so it was a bit out of date. At the moment, I can't really think of any useful recipes I learned from this.