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Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

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Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#101

Post by mewpmewp2 »

skydhash wrote: post #64
pbrw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 2. is interesting. Is it your personal experience or you have some sources to explore that topic?

Personal POV: I mostly read Fantasy books and a little bit of SF, but the main points I would say is better visualization. Reading textbooks gives you understanding, but being able to reconstruct scenes and characters just from a few lines is a nice plus. When reading story from a ticket, it's become much easier to visualize a concrete use case. Also empathy building. Manuals and documentation are very dry and text i…

Do you mean visualising a mental imagery? Because I wonder if I never could enjoy fiction and anything with long descriptions of a scene or what something looks like because I couldn't see the image and other people do? E.g. I might have aphantasia?

I like the idea of learning about human psychology though.

Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#102

Post by mewpmewp2 »

alok-g wrote: post #63
pbrw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 2. is interesting. Is it your personal experience or you have some sources to explore that topic?

Am not the OP, however, I have similar observations too. I noted that people who read fiction often handle various life's situations better. My hypothesis is that this would be because they get broader exposure to life's situations than what non-fiction books deliver in practice. I wish there were a lot more non-fiction books dealing with common and uncommon life's situations, which step out of the theory towards wha…

Could you give some more specific examples of such situations?

Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#103

Post by mewpmewp2 »

almostgotcaught wrote: post #12

Controversial take: reading books to get better at software is like reading books to get better at swimming. Like people don't get better at math by reading books about math... So you should go read code. But reading code is boring if you're not also writing code (same goes for math) so my real recommendation is to go find a big OSS project in an area you're interested in and start contributing. If you don't know how…

I do think sometimes reading books about coding might actually make you worse since you might misunderstand the rules gained from there and try to use them everywhere even if they don't make sense.

So you need some sort of built experience that will allow you to consider those rules critically, and only add them to your toolset if it does seem to make sense for you and you understand why, you have past experience where you think "oh - that would have helped me a lot".

Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#104

Post by 2143 »

[Off-topic]

I'm getting an eerie sense of Deja Vu.

I remember reading this exact thread (exact question, exact replies) a few days ago.

But right now it says this question was posted just 6 hours ago (right now the time is 2:35 pm 1st September UTC).

Either I'm going crazy or there's a bug with the time here.

@dang please tell me that I'm not going crazy, or at least that it's just a simple glitch in the matrix.

Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#105

Post by keiferski »

2143 wrote: post #104

[Off-topic] I'm getting an eerie sense of Deja Vu. I remember reading this exact thread (exact question, exact replies) a few days ago. But right now it says this question was posted just 6 hours ago (right now the time is 2:35 pm 1st September UTC). Either I'm going crazy or there's a bug with the time here. @dang please tell me that I'm not going crazy, or at least that it's just a simple glitch in the matrix.

Popular topics sometimes get reposted, with the "submitted" dates reset to reflect that. You aren't going crazy.

Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#106

Post by detaro »

2143 wrote: post #104

[Off-topic] I'm getting an eerie sense of Deja Vu. I remember reading this exact thread (exact question, exact replies) a few days ago. But right now it says this question was posted just 6 hours ago (right now the time is 2:35 pm 1st September UTC). Either I'm going crazy or there's a bug with the time here. @dang please tell me that I'm not going crazy, or at least that it's just a simple glitch in the matrix.

the thread was boosted, which makes it appear as if it and the old comments were posted more recently than it actually was. search "second-chance pool" to find comments from dang explaining it in more detail.

Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#107

Post by 2143 »

detaro wrote: post #106
2143 wrote: post #104

[Off-topic] I'm getting an eerie sense of Deja Vu. I remember reading this exact thread (exact question, exact replies) a few days ago. But right now it says this question was posted just 6 hours ago (right now the time is 2:35 pm 1st September UTC). Either I'm going crazy or there's a bug with the time here. @dang please tell me that I'm not going crazy, or at least that it's just a simple glitch in the matrix.

the thread was boosted, which makes it appear as if it and the old comments were posted more recently than it actually was. search "second-chance pool" to find comments from dang explaining it in more detail.

Oh! Okay! That's reassuring, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#108

Post by 2143 »

keiferski wrote: post #105
2143 wrote: post #104

[Off-topic] I'm getting an eerie sense of Deja Vu. I remember reading this exact thread (exact question, exact replies) a few days ago. But right now it says this question was posted just 6 hours ago (right now the time is 2:35 pm 1st September UTC). Either I'm going crazy or there's a bug with the time here. @dang please tell me that I'm not going crazy, or at least that it's just a simple glitch in the matrix.

Popular topics sometimes get reposted, with the "submitted" dates reset to reflect that. You aren't going crazy.

> with the "submitted" dates reset to reflect that

Huh. Okay.

Re: Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?

#109

Post by riwsky »

Two of the best books for software engineers are actually not specific to software engineering:

  * “The Design of Everyday Things”. Have you ever pushed on a pull door, or vice-versa, because it was unclear how it worked? Designers call those doors “Norman Doors”, now, after the author of this book Donald Norman so effectively dissected and criticized them (among plenty other objects). Too many APIs suffer similar problems—and if you don’t want yours to, this book is a great place to start.
  * “On Writing Well”, by William Zinsser. Good code and good prose have a lot in common: they know what they’re trying to do, are stripped to their clearest components, and have internal structure that supports understanding. Add to that the fact you’ll be writing lots of prose anyway (design docs, postmortems, etc), and the value of writing well should be clear.
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