George Schlossnagle is a principal at OmniTI Computer Consulting, a Maryland-based tech company that specializes in high-volume Web and email systems. Before joining OmniTI, he led technical operations at several high-profile community Web sites, where he developed experience managing PHP in very large enterprise environments. He is a frequent contributor to the PHP community and his work can be found in the PHP core, as well as in the PEAR and PECL extension repositories.

Before entering the information technology field, George trained to be a mathematician and served a two-year stint as a teacher in the Peace Corps. His experience has taught him to value an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving that favors root-cause analysis of problems over simply addressing symptoms.

George's favorite books: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler -- Much more practical than the 'Gang of Four' Design Patterns book, Fowler packs an immense amount of practical design knowledge into this book. If you're working in the web and looking for an introduction to design patterns, I can't recommend this book enough.

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens -- APUE (as it is often affectionately referred to) is the authoritative guide to UNIX systems programming. If you want to hack on things like Apache or PHP, this is the place to hone your C skills to the necessary level. Stevens is great because it is not only amazing comprehensive, but incredibly readable as well. The combination of readability and density in Stevens sets a high standard, which many technical authors aspire to. It is the only book in my library that I won't lend out lest I need it.

Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition by Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington -- Perl was my first scripting language, and thus holds a special place in my heart. Even though I spend most of my time writing either C or PHP these days, I consider the Perl Cookbook to be the gold standard when it comes to the cookbook genre. Its recipes are basic enough that you can actually learn how to program Perl directly from the book, yet useful enough to keep me going back to it over the years.

Scaling Oracle8i: Building Highly Scalable Oltp System Architectures by James Morle -- Although the title might lead you to believe that this book is dated, it's actually one of the most comprehensive looks at top-to-bottom database performance tuning and capacity planning. Morle covers every relevant aspect of software and hardware performance, from evaluating hardware platforms, to laying out disks, to writing scalable SQL.

Secrets and Lies (Out-of-Print) by Schneier -- Bruce Schneier is probably the most cogent writer on digital security today. While his uber-classic Applied Cryptography is the book to have around if you are implementing encryption systems, Secrets and Lies is a book to keep on your bedside table, or in your bag for reading on the train in the morning.

PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling, Laura Thomson -- If you're looking to learn PHP, it's hard to find a better place to start than this book. I keep a copy of this book on my shelf specifically to lend to friends and colleagues who want to learn PHP.

Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas -- Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt have forgotten more about software development best practices than most of us will ever know. This is a book about the software development process, and it is relatively unique in that it actually delivers on the pragmatism that its title offers. This book should be on the wish list of every developer who wants to move from being a 'code monkey' to a professional software engineer.

The AWK Programming Language by Alfred V. Aho, Brian W. Kernighan, Peter J. Weinberger -- Yep, you read the title right: Awk. Although Awk has largely taken a backseat to Perl as THE parsing language for shell programming, this book is still a gem. Written by the 'A', 'W' and 'K' of Awk, this book is like peering into the workshop of the early masters. Beyond the content (it's regarded as the Awk Bible), the examples are both incredibly rich and practical. It is possibly the best written computing text I have ever read.

How to Solve It by G. Polya -- This is the book that convinced me to pursue a degree in mathematics. It lays out the processes of structured reasoning in simple and elegant explanations. Though the text concerns teaching problem solving methodologies for math problems, I use the general skills involved (finding analogous problems, breaking problems into component parts) every day in debugging.

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver -- Hey -- I get to have one non-technical choice, right? While I enjoy Neil Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and Robert Jordan as much as the next guy, Barbara Kingsolver manages to capture the beauty of everyday life in a way few authors do. Her characters are accessible, their problems real, and her topics manage the fine art of making a strong political statement without bashing you over the head with it.

When this story was posted in November 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:

Kerry reaches out to Returned VolunteersThe Kerry campaign wants the RPCV vote. Read our interview with Dave Magnani, Massachusetts State Senator and Founder of "RPCVs for Kerry," and his answers to our questions about Kerry's plan to triple the size of the Peace Corps, should the next PC Director be an RPCV, and Safety and Security issues. Then read the "RPCVs for Kerry" statement of support and statements by Dr. Robert Pastor, Ambassador Parker Borg, and Paul Oostburg Sanz made at the "RPCVs for Kerry" Press Conference.

RPCV Carl Pope says the key to winning this election is not swaying undecided voters, but persuading those already willing to vote for your candidate to actually go to the polls.

Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL InterviewPCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before.

Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention Governor Schwarzenegger praised the Peace Corps at the Republican National Convention: "We're the America that sends out Peace Corps volunteers to teach village children." Schwarzenegger has previously acknowledged his debt to his father-in-law, Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver, for teaching him "the joy of public service" and Arnold is encouraging volunteerism by creating California Service Corps and tapping his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead it. Leave your comments and who can come up with the best Current Events Funny?

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Story Source: Bookpool

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Nepal; Internet; Computers

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