steve kwan user experience designer

Books that suck

(January 3rd, 2005 - 8:27PM)

I read a lot of books; some of my latest are Tongue Fu! and Security Warrior. Tongue Fu! is a communication book recommended to me by Sarah. It's very good. Security Warrior is a lousy tech book written by a couple of Linux nerds. It's really bad. Aside from the fact that I read the two books in a short time frame, they don't have much in common.

Nothing is worse than spending a ton of money on a technical manual to find out it's written by a bunch of egotistical Linux nerds. It's like getting a new roommate and finding out he's a crazy terrorist. What a disappointment. If I'm going to spend that much cash on a book, I expect it to be written by professionals. Security Warrior is not a professional book.

If you're into Linux-hacking and don't understand the merits of non-open technologies, perhaps you'll enjoy Security Warrior more than I did. But then again, if this is your kind of book, then you're probably an unemployed/unemployable anti-establishment nut and don't have enough cash to foot the ridiculously expensive bill for this book.

The above was a one-sided, anti-nerd rant. I openly acknowledge that it's possible I'm completely missing the point and Security Warrior is actually a great book. However, I can't recommend this book on any grounds I can think of. If you want to learn about secure programming, there are better books (Writing Secure Code). If you want to learn about securing Linux, there are better books (Building Secure Servers in Linux). Security Warrior boasts, "this is the only book to discuss reverse engineering for Linux or Windows CE." <sarcasm> So if you ever need to reverse engineer open-source software or figure out how Windows Solitaire "Mini" works, this is the only book for you. </sarcasm>

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