Reading
My thesis work at the Knowledge Management Research Group at KTH is going to involve the Semantic Web, REST and some JavaScript. Because of that, I’ve been reading up on those technologies. These are some of the books that I’ve been reading:
A Semantic Web Primer by Grigoris Antoniou and Frank van Harmelen is a very good introduction to the Semantic Web for those new to the field. While I used it mainly to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything important, I did gain an improved understanding of some areas. Particularly the chapter on mathematical formulations of the Semantic Web was interesting to me, although perhaps not all that useful for my work.
RESTful Web Services by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby offers an architecture for RESTful web services: the Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA). What is and isn’t REST is a much debated topic. Richardson and Ruby describe what they believe is RESTful and what isn’t. Thanks to their discussions, I was able to form my own opinions on what I consider to be good RESTful web services and what their advantages and limitations are.
JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford explains which features of JavaScript are good, and which are not that good and should be avoided. Everyone who’s programming in JavaScript ought to listen to Crockford (you can watch his talks at YUI Theater). And perhaps everyone who isn’t should listen to him as well; JavaScript is actually a great language once you get past the bad parts.