Thanks for this thrrad OP! Lots of great recommendations for the rest of us
Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
101–110 of 140 posts
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#102I can recommend a Philosophy of Software Design Paperback by John Ousterhout. I've been programming for 15 years and it closely parallels my own current beliefs about programming. He stands above the lower aspects of programming/code/modules, raising the discussion to a conceptual level, that you seem to be wanting. I think there were only 2 areas out of approximately 10 that I thought I had a few better ideas but a)…
His idea to keep interfaces small and powerful bothered me - I don’t think it expresses any truth about programming despite being a good rule of thumb. I kept feeling frustrated while reading. The lambda calculus has the best interface to functionality ratio possible but you don’t see humans using it to program. This objection led me to the conclusion that a better heuristic would be: programs should try to communicate intent primarily to another reader, and then to the computer. He does touch on this a little by saying aim for ease of reading over ease of writing, but I don’t think it was a main point. I agreed with almost everything else he had to say including the “taking it too far” chapter (I don’t actually think we should be using lambda calculus to program lol). Curious to know which parts you disagreed with. I am only 2yoe
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#103I've just purchased Richard Hamming's "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering" but haven't read it all yet, it looks pretty great.
It is a great book, and it includes an amazing essay by him titled You and Your Research [0][1] - which explains why it is important to "always be learning". 0 - https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3msMuwqp-o (lecture version)
> [Richard Hamming's] You and Your Research
Add Edsger Dijkstra's The Humble Programmer (1972 Turing Lecture) as a companion read for software engs: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340... / https://archive.is/U8GwX
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#104Florman's _The Existential Pleasures of Engineering_.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#105Don't overlook books that are critical of engineering as it is often practiced and how it fits into our society: Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum (1976). Weizenbaum wrote Eliza, the first AI chatbot, almost sixty years ago and was appalled at the reception. This book is still very pertinent, especially the Introduction, Chapter 1 On Tools, chapter 9, Incomprehensible Programs, and chapter 10, Agai…
I need to read Illich. I've been following The Convivial Society, a newsletter whose author is very influenced by Illich.
My introduction to tech criticism was To Save Everything, Click Here by Evgeny Morozov. He describes a lot of tech culture as "solutionism" which I think is a great lens to have in your pocket.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#106The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch is more broadly about science and epistemology, but I think it has a lot to say about how we do engineering.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#107To Engineer is Human by Petroski. It's about engineering failures and responsibility.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#108Richard Hamming’s The Art of Doing Science and Engineering is one that’s really shaped my philosophy on CS. It pushes for the importance of reasoning from first principles, experimentation, and taking on extraordinary work. There’s also a fascinating and prescient section on AI and the limits of computers and how we think about them. Stripe Press makes a nicely bound hardcover edition of the book, too: https://press.…
Oh Hamming is amazing to read! His "the art of probability" too is an amazing read. As the title says, he explains why probability isn't math but an art and philosophy!
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#109I can recommend a Philosophy of Software Design Paperback by John Ousterhout. I've been programming for 15 years and it closely parallels my own current beliefs about programming. He stands above the lower aspects of programming/code/modules, raising the discussion to a conceptual level, that you seem to be wanting. I think there were only 2 areas out of approximately 10 that I thought I had a few better ideas but a)…
His idea to keep interfaces small and powerful bothered me - I don’t think it expresses any truth about programming despite being a good rule of thumb. I kept feeling frustrated while reading. The lambda calculus has the best interface to functionality ratio possible but you don’t see humans using it to program. This objection led me to the conclusion that a better heuristic would be: programs should try to communica…
Most so the book is meant to be taken as a rule of thumb. I personally think simple interface hiding deep functionality is a really good one. I was looking at the langchain codebase last year after having read the book and the point was struck home. Many of the functions in Langchain are one line wrappers of other functions. I try to think of functions as atomic units of knowledge. Very short functions are a good indicator that you're not organizing that knowledge effectively. When you have a simple interface with deep logic, you're encapsulating logic in a single place. This is very good for reducing the cognitive load of a developer. Shallow functions fragment that knowledge across multiple classes/functions/files. The developer needs to hold more of the world in their head to make sense of things. This increases complexity.
Additionally, you can sort of intuit this by looking at very successful commercial products like Google Search, the iPhone, and ChatGPT. Search is a single text input. The iPhone is a screen with a very small number of buttons. Chatgpt has a simple chat interface. All of these systems are incredibly complex, but they're able to present a simple interface to the public to allow most people to leverage that complexity without having to think about it.
Just my 2 cents.
Re: Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
#110Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I've never understood what engineers find in this book. It looks like a shallow kitchen philosophy of a guy next door to me. What you think is so good about this book for engineers, in a nutshell?
Pirsig's book is not really about engineering, but about how we engineers relate to the world.
In engineering school I was taught to see the world in a special and unique way, to be able to solve engineering problems as a professional. In the book, this worldwiew is very well laid out.
An example:
> Precision instruments are designed to achieve an idea, dimensional precision, whose perfection is impossible. There is no perfectly shaped part of the motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these instruments take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the countryside under a power that would be called magic if it were not so completely rational in every way. It's the understanding of this rational intellectual idea that's fundamental. John looks at the motorcycle and he sees steel in various shapes and has negative feelings about these steel shapes and turns off the whole thing. I look at the shapes of the steel now and I see ideas. He thinks I'm working on parts. I'm working on concepts.