ThoughtFactory.CreateThought() A random collection of thoughts from an easily bored developer

Free as in Books

As I've previously mentioned, my recent purchase of an Eee PC has resulted in an increase to the number of eBooks that I've been reading. This horrible new addiction has lead to a general shortage of reading material that comes in the format I need.

Here in Australia we're a tad behind the times, so I doubt we'll be getting the Kindle or any similar "buy books on the go" service any time soon. Besides, I still can't bring myself to pay full price for an eBook. Can you imagine paying US160 for Don Knuth's Art of Computer Programming series and getting 3 PDFs? I don't think so. How can I let guests know that Knuth is my homeboy if I don't have a huge boxset sitting on the shelf for all to see?

So where does that leave my insatiable thirst for PDF files? Well, it turns out that there are a number of decent eBooks available for free online, the only trouble is finding them.

Googling for "Free eBook" will bring up a number of bogus resources, mainly proxy sites set up to collect Amazon referrer fees or sites that are offering up copyright infringing material. Unless you have a specific subject or prior knowledge it is very hard to sift through the junk.

There are a few legitimate free collections of eBooks, some specialising in technical books, others in classical literature that has fallen into the public domain, but in general these sites are very hit and miss.

The real gems are found scattered over the web, sitting as a reference on someone's blog or a random website. In the technical space there are a few well known books that are well worth a read, such as Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python, and Domain Driven Design Quickly. These books are popular for a reason. Then you have books that are not so popular but are written by a well known author, such as Charles Petzold's .Net Book Zero: What the C or C++ Programmer Needs to Know about C# and the .NET Framework.

Sometimes decent reading material just falls into your lap while you're busy trying to do something else. Take Dr Paul Carter's PC Assembly Tutorial, for example. It's a fascinating refresher on x86 Assembly and broader topics such as name mangling and compiler linking, and it was a totally unexpected find on my part. I'm sure I was searching for Pokemon at the time.

At other times you can find something worth reading in an unusual place. Things that are not necessarily "books" can make for good bus fodder. The Sun ONE Architecture Guide is a good example. It is remarkably well written, and also available in PDF format. In fact, manuals and guidance can be a great source of reading material. The SVN book, OpenGL Redbook,
TFS Branching Guidance and TFS Team Development Guide are all available online for free, and are all worth a look (especially the OpenGL Redbook).

With a little effort and a lot of luck you're bound to find something that's work reading. Just be sure to avoid sites advertising "Fr33 3B00kz 4 J00". They may infact try to hack your gibson or something equally scary.