Sound off your field!

[MSC]

What is the best entry level book for your field/fields of expertise?

Self directed homework. Feel free to add a personal book list in the order you'd read them in.

No textbooks please. Unless that is stylistic of an individual relevant and important author. 

 

Thanks so much in advance!

[swansont]

You have mutually exclusive requirements here - best intro book, but no textbooks. That’s not generally how science works. Non-textbooks are usually pop-science, where you learn about science, but aren’t necessarily learning much actual science. (i.e. you aren’t being prepared to go out and be a scientist, outside of the narrative of the book)

I know of no entry-level pop-sci physics books, at least none marketed as such. 

[MSC]

55 minutes ago, swansont said:

You have mutually exclusive requirements here - best intro book, but no textbooks. That’s not generally how science works. Non-textbooks are usually pop-science, where you learn about science, but aren’t necessarily learning much actual science. (i.e. you aren’t being prepared to go out and be a scientist, outside of the narrative of the book)

I know of no entry-level pop-sci physics books, at least none marketed as such. 

Fair enough. Textbooks allowed. I'll edit the OP to reflect. My apologies.

Edit, nevermind. Won't let me edit the main body. Is that just on mobile browsing or can I not edit on pc either?

Edited October 6, 2020 by MSC
Additional

[iNow]

It’s been too long since you submitted your post. After a certain amount of time has passed, the option to edit is removed. This is independent of device. 

[Sensei]

1 hour ago, MSC said:

What is the best entry level book for your field/fields of expertise?

For general IT beginners, webmasters, modern web application development (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX): https://www.w3schools.com/

for a more complex DOM development https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

 

For C/C++ beginners http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/

For Java beginners https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/index.html

For Windows, C/C++/C#, .NET Framework developers MSDN https://docs.microsoft.com/

For Android programmers (Java, Kotlin): https://developer.android.com/reference

For database development (required knowledge for more complex C/C++/Java/Web projects) https://dev.mysql.com/doc/

 

They are all free to read and use. You just have to want to learn.

 

1 hour ago, MSC said:

Feel free to add a personal book list in the order you'd read them in.

It is impossible to read them all by human.. They are too large. They have too many information. They are updated faster than any single human is able to read them. Programmers use references during regular work to check e.g. syntax of functions, arguments taken by function, return values etc. When you will use the same function, class or method hundred times you maybe will remember trace of information of how to use it. But there are millions of functions. Majority nobody will use them ever in their career.

[MigL]

For science that interests me
Gravitation  by Misner, Thorne, Wheeler
( not exactly introductory, but my favourite )

For modern military aviation ( Aerospace Eng )
Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach  by Raymer
( does not include Stealth )

For computer hardware
MaximumPC magazine
(before that Micro Cornucopia and BYTE )

For history the list could be huge depending on time period
The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire   by Gibbon
( sets the standard )

All except Gibbon are available in paperback, so I consider them ( or at least parts of ) introductory.
And incidentally, my field is Chemical Technology, but I just read ( and sometimes write ) SOPs for that, and they are proprietary information.

[MSC]

26 minutes ago, Sensei said:

For general IT beginners, webmasters, modern web application development (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX): https://www.w3schools.com/

for a more complex DOM development https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

 

For C/C++ beginners http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/

For Java beginners https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/index.html

For Windows, C/C++/C#, .NET Framework developers MSDN https://docs.microsoft.com/

For Android programmers (Java, Kotlin): https://developer.android.com/reference

For database development (required knowledge for more complex C/C++/Java/Web projects) https://dev.mysql.com/doc/

 

They are all free to read and use. You just have to want to learn.

 

It is impossible to read them all by human.. They are too large. They have too many information. They are updated faster than any single human is able to read them. Programmers use references during regular work to check e.g. syntax of functions, arguments taken by function, return values etc. When you will use the same function, class or method hundred times you maybe will remember trace of information of how to use it. But there are millions of functions. Majority nobody will use them ever in their career.

Firstly, thank you so much! I do really want to learn to code but my head gets crunched by a lot of the terminology within the first few lessons, however the sites I used weren't the ones you've supplied so I should give it a better go.

in your experience, are there certain things you can interpret, that I cannot, about a programmer based on his code? Like say, knowledge, expertise, work ethic etc?

7 minutes ago, MigL said:

For science that interests me
Gravitation  by Misner, Thorne, Wheeler
( not exactly introductory, but my favourite )

For modern military aviation ( Aerospace Eng )
Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach  by Raymer
( does not include Stealth )

For computer hardware
MaximumPC magazine
(before that Micro Cornucopia and BYTE )

For history the list could be huge depending on time period
The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire   by Gibbon
( sets the standard )

All except Gibbon are available in paperback, so I consider them ( or at least parts of ) introductory.
And incidentally, my field is Chemical Technology, but I just read ( and sometimes write ) SOPs for that, and they are proprietary information.

I think my first stop there will be Gibbon! Thanks MigL. I have read a lot about the rise of the Roman Empire, but outside the Huns invasion led by Attila and the Ottoman siege and capture of Constantinople led by Mehmed the conqueror, I haven't read nearly as much about the decline and fall. Those are just the smallest tip of the iceberg too, being purely military history. 

[Sensei]

1 hour ago, MSC said:

in your experience, are there certain things you can interpret, that I cannot, about a programmer based on his code? Like say, knowledge, expertise, work ethic etc?

Quite obviously. It's clearly visible if programmer is writing nice clean code, with meaningful names of classes, methods, functions, variables and constants. Whether return values and pointers are checked or not being null. How well he or she implements error handling, and display feedback information to user of application. etc.