My subscription on Safari Books Online...

Never did i think seriously of subscribing to Safari books online, but somehow after a really long time, i signed up for the free trial and liked it so much that i could not stop myself subscribing to it. There are thousands of books and videos out there that i stopped googling for many topics and instead started searching on safari. The results were pretty good and i have always believed in the technical depth that books offer. Never once was i disappointed.

Right now, i am inspired by:

* Inventors at work

* Making it big in Software. Get the Job. Work the Org. Become great.

* Liquid Thinking: Inspirational lessons from the world's greatest achievers

* How Google tests Software

Also, I got a new Android phone (Moto G2) and it is really good to read books in the "Safari Queue" app although it is in the beta state and requires an invite from the Safri people working on the app. This app needs many changes to get close to its Apple store counterpart, but so far, I really love the app.

One video that is awesome is the talk at OSCON 2014: Hacking the Kernel, Hacking Myself - Kelley Nielsen. 

On Dynamic programming...struggles...

I understand the term 'Dynamic Programming' comes from the initial days when Richard Bellman coined it to mean a tabular method (Programming) with the spice of Dynamic added to it to make it sound interesting. The source of this being the section title 'Dynamic Programming' course from Udacity called "Computability, Complexity & Algorithms'. This Udacity course gives a nice introduction and refers 2 interesting books: 

1. Algorithms by Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, and Vazirani

2. Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein

I started reading those books coupled with the tutorial on topcoder. Am struggling to get ahead and solve problems, especially the coin change problem on Hackerrank. Right now, it looks like recursive thinking is a huge problem for me :-)

Nevertheless, i will not give up and will try to make a video once i am able to solve it.

My subscription at Lynda.com

One learning site that impressed me a lot is Lynda.com. Initially, I took the $25 basic plan (without download of the exercises/ project files.) and after 2 months (and $50 spent :-) ), I got this email which said that at $256, I could get a full year premium access and I signed up :-). This is one service that I think is pretty useful and worth the money spent on it. Some of my friends also have subscribed by paying about $75 for 3 months of basic access. What are the courses that interested me:

* Foundations of Programming series

* Series on Networking

* Code clinics in C++, Java, Python

* Many courses on Leadership (one thing to mention - Intelligent disobedience), Management

* CentOS, SSH

* Web services

* Databases - Postgres, MySQL, CouchDB

* iOS (getting started, gaming)

and many more...just pure awesomeness. Thank you lynda.com.