Why there is no Hitchhiker’s Guide to Mathematics for Programmers by Jeremy Kun.
From the post:
Do you really want to get better at mathematics?
Remember when you first learned how to program? I do. I spent two years experimenting with Java programs on my own in high school. Those two years collectively contain the worst and most embarrassing code I have ever written. My programs absolutely reeked of programming no-nos. Hundred-line functions and even thousand-line classes, magic numbers, unreachable blocks of code, ridiculous code comments, a complete disregard for sensible object orientation, negligence of nearly all logic, and type-coercion that would make your skin crawl. I committed every naive mistake in the book, and for all my obvious shortcomings I considered myself a hot-shot programmer! At leaa st I was learning a lot, and I was a hot-shot programmer in a crowd of high-school students interested in game programming.
Even after my first exposure and my commitment to get a programming degree in college, it was another year before I knew what a stack frame or a register was, two more before I was anywhere near competent with a terminal, three more before I fully appreciated functional programming, and to this day I still have an irrational fear of networking and systems programming (the first time I manually edited the call stack I couldn’t stop shivering with apprehension and disgust at what I was doing).
A must read post if you want to be on the cutting edge of programming.