what are the best beginning programming books out there?
(hopefully relevant to LAMP or perl, but only if they stand on their own as being a beginning *programming* book.) ... for those who never were comp sci majors.

O'reilly have some good books on PERL.
and for most of the people, learning there 1st language is always tough job. So even a damn easy book seems to be tough for a beginner.
So start with some O'reilly book on perl and practice it at least twice.
(practice means compile and run programms along with reading the book)

regards

I liked "Learning Perl" the O'Rielly book. The way the authors present the material keep it interesting(especially their comp. humor), while still challenging you to learn well. This was my first
programming book, and I feel like I picked everything up in it quickly, and it gives you a lot of sources to learn more about the things it doesn't teach you a lot about. go to perl.com to find this, barnes and noble, or another book store.

I do not recommend O'Reiley books because they are written for intermediate to expert programers by programers. O'Reiley books are not structured for learning. They are mainly tidbits from several programers. O'Reiley books are good as side dishes that are sweet-bittery-disgusting.

I have "C by Discovery (3rd Edition)". It explains each line of C programming code or section of the code about what it does.

"The Web Wizard's Guide to Perl and CGI" is good as a beginner's book to learn Perl.

Not true. You are thinking of the many desktop references that O'rielly books publishes. They also have a line of programming books for the extreme noob(like the one I posted above.) I learned perl from that book quickly, and well, without any programming experience.

I'm quite sure that's exactly what he's thinking of. That being the case, the statement is true. Until recently I was unaware of any novice level O'Reilly books, though you are right. Some do, in fact, exist.

And the ones that do exist are, from what I have seen, excellent.

I'm reading the "Llama" book now. Good so far. I'm a n00b at programming , let alone perl

I'd like to mention "How to think like a computer scientist: learning with python" (available on ibiblio). Python is a really neat language--easy to learn, yet it's useful in the "real world".

Also, schemers will always tell you to go read SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs), but... well, I haven't seen lisps (including scheme) being used in the "real world", except in emacs.

In any case, you should probably learn C sooner or later (probably later, if what you're into is "intarweb programming"). For that, nothing beats "The C programming language" by Kernighan and Ritchie, which goes in great depth explaining upwards of two nines of what you need to know to be productive (the rest is something you need to understand through practice--i.e. grok--and is not knowledge).

But for perl or php, I'm drawing an 040.

hth --Jonas

Hello I used the wrox press books you can download from theexamking site

I personally don't like O'Reilly books if I am doing anything at beginner level because I always find them hard to read. Learning Perl and Learning PHP5 are exceptions. So far, I have enjoyed reading them and have learnt a lot in the process.

I had a lot of success with O'Reilly books learning PERL. PERL is actually better to learn, while IMO you won't use much PERL in production web servers, if you get a grasp on PERL, PHP will be cake. Also you can write apps in the Linux enviorment with PERL

Hey you guys and girls,

Is there much mathematics in C programming and Perl and the other programs that you talked about?

I'm not real good at mathematics but I want to have a go at some programming soon. I'm even thinking about going to uni next year.

I saw one guys maths books. He's started a Bachelor of IT. One maths module (1040 or something like that) (I'm in Australia) didn't look too bad, but I would really need to study it and then there's more. Plus I read there is physics to learn. I never did that in school.

Can you give me some examples of the mathematics involved please?

Thanks
Michshelly

If you aren't good at math you won't be good at programming. Programming takes discipline, like math. You have to be exact, like math. If you mess up you get the wrong answer, like math. You also need a teacher to learn programming with any speed. What you can learn in two semesters would take eight years without a teacher.

Here are some examples:

If you need to know the negative value for a binary number it is the logical not minus 1.

If you need to calculate any of thousands of business type math you need to know calculus. If you don't know calculus you won't be writing any programs to do, for example: compound interest calculations, mortgage payments with what amount is interest and what amount is principle, amortizations, depreciations, and a whole host of other things.

You need to know how something like this is read and executed:

if
a>b and c<d or int1=5.2 or int2=2.3 and tempvar>6
Then do
endif

That is boolean algebra with logical operators. You need to know how to arrange the if statement so it works the way you want.

You have to know how to flip bits in a byte:

1101 0011 to 0010 1100

That is called bitmasking and you use boolean operators to do it.

If you want to write a program for interplanetary navigation you need to know three dimensional calculus.

And, you need to be able to design a program. That requires math skills because it is only adding and subtracting, maybe with a logarithm or two, but it has to be exact.

Say you want to know how many digits a number has so you can have the program design an array to hold different size numbers. Log10variableINTportion with give you the dimension of base 10 digits, which your program can use to make an array that size an load it with the number.