Review: The Linux Command Line

Posted on 25 January 2012 by John

No Starch Press recently released The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction (ISBN 1593273894) by William E. Shotts, Jr.

True to its name, the book is about using Linux from command line. It’s not an encyclopedia of Linux. It doesn’t explain how to install Linux, doesn’t go into system APIs, and says little about how to administer Linux. At the same time, the book is broader than just a book on bash. It’s about how to “live” at the command line.

The introduction explains the intended audience.

This book is for Linux users who have migrated from other platforms. Most likely you are a “power user” of some version of Microsoft Windows.

The book has a conversational style, explaining the motivation behind ways of working as well as providing technical detail. It includes small but very useful suggestions along the way, the kinds of tips you’d pick up from a friend but might not find in a book.

The book has four parts

Learning the shell
Configuration and the environment
Common tasks and essential tools
Writing shell scripts

The book could have just included the first three sections; the forth part is a bit more specialized than the others. If you’d prefer, think of the book has having three parts, plus a lengthy appendix on shell scripting.

The Linux Command Line is pleasant to read. It has a light tone, while also getting down to business.

Pax Romana

Posted on 7 January 2012 by John

From A History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill:

In our own fevered, changing, and precarious age, where all is in flux and nothing is accepted, we must survey with respect a period when, with only three hundred thousand soldiers, widespread peace in the entire known world was maintained from generation to generation, and when the first pristine impulse of Christianity lifted men’s souls to the contemplation of new and larger harmonies beyond the ordered world around them.

R in Action

Posted on 2 January 2012 by John

No Starch Press sent me a copy of The Art of R Programming last Fall and I wrote a review of it here. Then a couple weeks ago, Manning sent me a copy of R in Action (ISBN 1935182390). Here I’ll give a quick comparison of the two books, then focus specifically on R in Action.

Comparing R books

Norman Matloff, author of The Art of R Programming, is a statistician-turned-computer scientist. As the title may imply, Matloff’s book has more of a programmer’s perspective on R as a language.

Robert Kabacoff, author of R in Action, is a psychology professor-turned-statistical consultant. And as its title may imply, Kabacoff’s book is more about using R to analyze data. That is, the book is organized by analytical task rather than by language feature.

Many R books are organized like a statistical text. In fact, many are statistics texts, organized according to the progression of statistical theory with R code sprinkled in. R in Action is organized roughly in the order of steps one would take to analyze data, starting with importing data and ending with producing reports.

In short, The Art of R Programming is for programmers, R in Action is for data analysts, and most other R books I’ve seen are for statisticians. Of course a typical R user is to some extent a programmer, an analyst, and a statistician. But this comparison gives you some idea which book you might want to reach for depending on which hat you’re wearing at the moment. For example, I’d pick up The Art of R Programming if I had a question about interfacing R and C, but I’d pick up R in Action if I wanted to read about importing SAS data or using the ggplot2 graphics package.

R in Action

Kabacoff begins his book off with two appropriate quotes.

What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations? — Alice, Alice in Wonderland

It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it’s not for the timid. — Q, “Q Who?” Star Trek: The Next Generation

R in Action is filled with pictures and conversations. It is also a treasure chest of practical information.

The first third of the book concerns basic data management and graphics. This much of the book would be accessible to someone with no background in statistics. The middle third of the book is devoted to basic statistics: correlation, linear regression, etc. The final third of the book contains more advanced statistics and graphics. (I was pleased to see the book has an appendix on using Sweave and odfWeave to produce reports.)

R in Action includes practical details that I have not seen in other books on R. Perhaps this is because the book is focused on analyzing and graphing data rather than exploring the dark corners of R or rounding out statistical theory.

Kabacoff says that he wrote the book that he wishes he’d had years ago. I also wish I’d had his book years ago.

Flannery O’Connor’s accent

Posted on 28 December 2011 by John

When Flannery O’Connor went to the University of Iowa for graduate school, her mentor Paul Engle could not understand her Georgian accent. Engle later recalled his reaction when she asked to attend his workshop.

Embarrassed, I asked her to write down what she had just said on a pad. …

Like Keats, who spoke Cockney but wrote the purest sounds in English, Flannery spoke a dialect beyond instant comprehension but on the page her prose was imaginative, tough, alive: just like Flannery herself.

Source: Flannery O’Connor: The Complete Stories.

Here is a recording of O’Connor reading her story A Good Man is Hard to Find. I don’t find her at all hard to understand. The recording was made 13 years after her first encounter with Engle, and perhaps her accent had moderated. Or perhaps my ears are simply accustomed to Southern speech.

Gutenberg + Readability

Posted on 18 December 2011 by John

Here’s a very simple idea: Use Project Gutenberg for content and Readability for style.

Project Gutenberg has a large collection of public domain books in digital form. The books are available in several formats, none of which are ideal for reading. Project Gutenberg provides text without much styling in order to make it easier for people to use the content as they please.

You can go to the HTML version of a book on Gutenberg and use Readability (or Instapaper) to format it for easier reading. Importing the HTML page to a Kindle similarly improves the formatting.

* * *

Has anyone made a style sheet to approximate the look of Readability or Instapaper? I’d like to use something like that to improve the appearance of the static HTML pages on my site.

Houston Public Library, 1926

Posted on 16 December 2011 by John

In 1926, Houston completed construction of a new public library. This building has been restored and reopened to the public this month. My wife and I visited the library yesterday and I took a few photos.

When you visit the library, now known as the Julia Ideson building, the staff recommend you begin your tour on the third floor to see the ceiling.

Then on the second floor you’ll see something like this.

The reading room opens next week and so I could only photograph it from outside.

The children’s library also opens next week and so I could only photograph it through the door.

Finally, here is a meeting room.

My photos of the building’s murals and tapestries turned out poorly and so I’ll spare you from seeing those. (I’ve hardly ever used a camera. Someday I’d like to learn how to take decent photos.) You can find more photos of the library, current and historical, on the website for The Julia Ideson Library Preservation Partners.

In 1976 a new library opened next to the 1926 building. The contrast between the buildings is stark. No historical society will ever lobby to preserve or restore the new Houston library building. It’s just a typical, bland, modern box. The old library feels like a library. The new library feels like an office building. The old library makes you want to stay and lose yourself in a good book. The new library makes you complete your transaction and leave.

New programmer’s survival manual

Posted on 13 December 2011 by John

A computer science degree doesn’t prepare you to be a programmer. Here’s an excerpt from a blog post I wrote comparing computer scientists and programmers:

I had a conversation yesterday with someone who said he needed to hire a computer scientist. I replied that actually he needed to hire someone who could program, and that not all computer scientists could program. He disagreed, but I stood by my statement. I’ve known too many people with computer science degrees, even advanced degrees, who were ineffective software developers. Of course I’ve also known people with computer science degrees, especially advanced degrees, that were terrific software developers. The most I’ll say is that programming ability is positively correlated with computer science achievement.

How do you bridge the gap between obtaining a computer science degree and becoming a professional programmer? For years I’ve recommended that CS grads read Code Complete. Now I’d also recommend New Programmer’s Survival Manual by Josh Carter. This new book has some similarly to Code Complete. However, Code Complete is about good programming technique, not programming as a profession.

The Survival Manual has four parts:

Professional Programming
People Skills
The Corporate World
Looking Forward

The first part has the most similarity to Code Complete, though even there the two books are complementary. The second part, people skills, has some great advice, though I imagine most CS graduates will skim over this part because they don’t realize it is important.

CS students may do well to read the Survival Manual, especially parts one and three, to find out whether they want to be programmers. Some who find abstract computer science fascinating will find a typical programming sorely disappointing. See Mike Taylor’s post Whatever happened to programming.

A few of these may be able to find refuge as computer science professors, but not many. If you want to become a professor and think you’ll be able to get an academic job, watch So you want to get a PhD in theoretical computer science and read No, you cannot be a professor.

The Survival Manual assumes the majority programmers will be working in cube farms on enterprise software, which is true. But there is a small middle ground between enterprise development and academia, jobs that will give you a chance to use advanced computer science without having to write papers about it.

One reservation I have about this book is that it may be overwhelming. If you have a friend who is starting a new career as a programmer, maybe you could buy a copy of the Survival Manual and rip it into chapters. Then mail your friend one chapter a week.

Another reservation I have is that new CS graduates may not benefit much from the book because they won’t believe it. They may deny that the real world is as Josh Carter describes.

The people who may benefit the most from reading the Survival Manual are programmers with some experience who want to improve their skills. They may have learned through hard knocks about some of the challenges Carter writes about. Also, Carter describes life in a software shop with fairly high standards. Those who are used to producing lower quality software will do well to read about life in an organization with higher standards.

Related post: Where does programming effort go?

Never a time so completely parochial

Posted on 30 November 2011 by John

“There never was a time when those that read at all, read so many books by living authors rather than books by dead authors. Therefore there was never a time so completely parochial, so completely shut off from the past.” — T. S. Eliot

Posts related to T. S. Eliot:

Posts on old books:

Fundamental theorem of code readability

Posted on 28 November 2011 by John

In The Art of Readable Code (ISBN 0596802293), the authors call the following the “Fundamental Theorem of Readability”:

Code should be written to minimize the time it would take for someone else to understand it.

They go on to explain

And when we say “understand,” we have a very high bar … they should be able to make changes to it, spot bugs, and understand how it interacts with the rest of your code.

The Tangled Web

Posted on 27 November 2011 by John

The Tangled Web (ISBN 1593273886) is a security book that you may find interesting even if you’re not interested in security. The first half of the book is an excellent explanation of how Web technologies work in theory and especially in practice. This material is included in order to discuss security implications, but it’s interesting on its own. The second half of the book is directly devoted to Web security.

The author, Michal Zalewski, has a colorful writing style. His book is serious and loaded with technical detail, but that doesn’t stop him from turning a nice phrase here and there.

Here’s an excerpt from The Tangled Web that I particularly liked, one that explains why security concerns on the Web differ from previous security concerns.

In the traditional model followed by virtually all personal computers … there are very clear boundaries between high-level data objects (documents), user-level code (applications), and the operating system kernel … These boundaries are well studied and useful for building practical security schemes. A file opened in your text editor is unlikely to be able to steal your email …

In the browser world, this separation is practically nonexistent: Documents and code live as parts of the same intermingled blobs of HTML, isolation between completely unrelated applications is partial at best …

In the end, the seemingly unlikely scenario of a text file stealing your email is, in fact, a frustratingly common pattern on the Web.

Books