Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#1

Post by curious16 » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 1:31 PM UTC

Sometimes it takes a book or a course (or explanation from a mentor) for a topic to finally click for you that you were struggling with for a long time.

For me, it was Stanford's EE261 course that made Fourier Transform click for me. Here is the link: https://see.stanford.edu/course/ee261

Similarly for deep learning it was fast.ai courses.

For programming it was How to Design Programs at www.htdp.org.

Your topic of choice may be anything, not necessarily CS.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#2

Post by dudeinjapan » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

"Div, Grad, Curl, And All That: An Informal Text On Vector Calculus"

This was "optional" reading in my Undergrad Calculus class at Brown, I probably was the only student who bothered to read it, and it made most of engineering a breeze for the next 3.5 years, whether electromagnetism, fluid dynamics, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#3

Post by utopcell » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

Not a book or a course, but rather a blog post by Sanjeev Arora et al that made backpropagation crystal clear for me: [1].

[1] https://www.offconvex.org/2016/12/20/backprop/

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#4

Post by ergonaught » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

This has helped many people I know get some "clicks" on a variety of topics:

https://betterexplained.com/

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#5

Post by FollowingTheDao » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

"The Zen Teachings of the Bodhidharma" - It makes life click and then everything else is easy.

http://abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/C%20-%20Zen/Ancestors/T...

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#6

Post by meltyness » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

Obviously if you're doing anything with a computer, Patterson & Hennesy is a must-read.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#7

Post by neea » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

After using vim for a year, I got the book "practical vim". It made everything fall into place, whole different ballgame after that.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#8

Post by moomin » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

Brent Yorgey's Introduction to Haskell: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis1940/spring13/

Rudin's "Principles of Mathematical Analysis" is a brilliantly lucid introduction to the topic that takes a completely unconventional approach.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#9

Post by aliqot » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

Writing my firs synthesizer made calculus click. I passed my 3rd year taking it after that.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#10

Post by mewmew07 » Mon, Nov 14, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

https://nedbatchelder.com/text/unipain.html

When this came out, it made all the difference in understanding things.