I’ve been recommended to read this apparently great book called The Design of Everyday Things. Have any of you read it? What are a few other non-programming books according to you that would be of help to in the daily life of a programmer?
I found Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman to be a very interesting and inspiring read. It's all about the way we think and the way we make choices.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy because Marvin the depressed robot. Interesting AI musings there.
Marco Alka
Software Engineer, Technical Consultant & Mentor
I really recommend reading Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". Sure, it teaches about war tactics. Many managers read it and try to apply techniques and ideas to management. But at the same time, a few things can also be applied to programming!
For example, Sun Tzu talks about the importance of the environment and about things which are there and visible to us, but which we do not actively perceive, even though they are important. When programming, we also have to think about the environment. What platform(s) do we develop for? What are the minimum hardware requirements? What kind of hardware will be used? How can we optimize for that? What can go wrong with that hardware?
Something like that is really important! Just think of the Row Hammer attack on RAM, which, amongst other things, can allow applications to gain root permissions on devices without the user's permission.