TheProgrammersBooklist

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories

Synopsis

The Programmers' Booklist is a collection of references to valuable programming related information. Currently it is roughly a linear listing of entries and is (was?) maintained manually by SunirShah, but the goal is to make this into a user-supported collaborative object database.

See also TheProgrammersBooklistHistory

Links

The official version lives at

http://sunir.org/booklist

If you hunt around, you can find mirrors to it.

Project Goals

The goals can be broken down into short, medium and long term goals. The futher in the future, the more unlikely and pointless they naturally become. At any given moment, the project will focus on the short term goals, letting practical considerations override whizbang technical goals. ContentOverForm.

Short term

Place the existing list online with a searchable index.
Allow new entries to be submitted/added.

Medium term

Everything is an entry.
Pervasive rating system.
User-written reviews.
Universal editability of non-authored content (e.g. reviews are authored, but book descriptions are not)
Separate the content from the database technology; the back end should be usable in different contexts.

Long term

Create a distributed, searchable semi-structured database.
Connect different sites with different foci together into one giant database.

Concerns

I believe emphasis on identity (authorship of content) will be destructive. The emphasis should be on building a repository of information, not on who said what. However, peer review and authentication is important. But that's what the reviews are for.

Choice of language. Currently it's Perl, but Perl is gross. Smalltalk is an interesting candidate, but that would defeat the long term goal of wide distributability. Indeed, C and Perl (and possibly Java) are the only really acceptable candidates if everyone (with a Unix-based web hosting service) is supposed to join in the fun. Python is a candidate too, since it's part of major Linux distros now, and easy to have for Win and FBSD.

TheProgrammersBooklistProjectJournal

Language discussion was moved to PerlAdvocacy. --TakuyaMurata

TheProgrammersBooklist

Discussion