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Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

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Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#101

Post by squeaky-clean »

I just finished "How to Fly a Horse" by Kevin Ashton. It was a fun and inspiring read on the history of creativity and innovation. The book continually makes the point that creation is the product of effort and persistence, rather than random flashes of genius or inspiration. Though I mostly bought it for the historical anecdotes and stories within it, I love those sorts of things. The author posted this excerpt on HN before it was released, and this is what made me buy the book. [0]

[0] http://www.howtoflyahorse.com/what-coke-contains/

Now I'm starting "The Naked Sun" by Isaac Asimov, having read "Caves of Steel" a few months ago. I don't know why I've never read Asimov before, but wow, the worlds and characters he creates are amazing.

As far as technical books go, I'm working on "Build Your Own AngularJS" by Tero Parviainen. I'm only a few chapters in, but enjoying it.

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#102

Post by pnathan »

"Guns of August", Barbara Tuchman

I am particularly interest in rereading it and paying particular attention to the question of judgement and how poor judgements were formed. World War 1 is notable for its poor judgements. This interest is sparked by my recently listening to [1], which was very enlightening.

The essential question in our field often is not how fast we work, but if we're working on tasks worthy of attention - in other words, we have to judge the systems and features and determine what brings us the best outcomes. I've had some number of technically successful projects that were nulls when released. Avoiding that is part of significant improvement for me going forward.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFcHX0Menno , "Stranger than Fiction Case Studies in Software Engineering Judgment" Steve McConnell

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#103

Post by ryanSrich »

iheredia wrote: post #16

I'm starting to work from home some days, so I just started reading Remote, office not required http://37signals.com/remote/

I read remote almost two years ago shortly before starting my first remote job. I'm a huge 37signals fan but the book just didn't do it for me. I found the advice to be mostly obvious. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad book but I was really looking for more well tested industry specific advice. It would have been great to also hear of any remote working failures they endured during their 16 years in business.

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#104

Post by bemmu »

pierrec wrote: post #80

Greg Egan renewed my faith in Science Fiction. I just finished reading Diaspora, and I am now a fan. It's an incredibly well thought out extrapolation of the future of the human race, much less phantasmagorical and much more grounded in science than pretty much every other SF I know of, while still going off into mind-bending tangents. I think the most common critique of his work might be about the occasional digress…

Diaspora and Permutation City put totally new questions in my head.

If consciousness is only a series of states in your brain, does it matter what the order of running that sequence is? In Permutation City there is an experiment where brain states are played back backwards or in a random order, but to the person perceiving it, it seems like just business as usual.

I always assumed that after my brain is destroyed there would be just nothingness. But maybe if the "next state" will again exist some time in the future (or past?) from my perspective it will still be a totally continuous experience. Death might seem like just a bad dream.

He plays a lot with this stuff. In Diaspora consciousness is just a piece of software. Since this software can be run at a much higher speed than wetware can, each moment of real time seems much longer to the uploaded. But when they want to, for example when waiting for an interstellar trip to complete, they can "skip forward" and let the brain emulator run them at a much slower pace to make the trips more bareable.

I thought running a consciousness backwards or in random order would be as far as he goes, but in Diaspora they even go a step further, having every state be a completely separate structure in a completely separate universe. The book assumes that to the participants even that would seem like a continuous experience.

It really makes me question what I really am, how malleable is this "me"?

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#105

Post by twosheep »

Intermernet wrote: post #84
twosheep wrote: post #5

I just read Andy Weir's The Martian in one day -- it was (obviously) fantastic. I highly recommend it.

Freaky. I'm reading this on another tab in this very browser session. Did you by any chance have any involvement in a recent /r/kerbalspaceprogram thread? Or is this just crazy coincidence?

Just a coincidence! I bought the book a few weeks ago but didn't pick it up until I was finished with something else.

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#106

Post by jon-wood »

lostphilosopher wrote: post #75

I'm a huge believer in going back to primary texts, and understanding where ideas came from. If you've liked a book, read the books it references (repeat). I also feel like book recommendations often oversample recent writings, which are probably great, but it's easy to forget about the generations of books that have come before that may be just as relevant today (The Mythical Man Month is a ready example). I approac…

That reminds me, I'm due a re-read of The Pragmatic Programmer. I re-read it about once a year, and every time seem to get something new from it.

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#107

Post by anilmujagic »

Rapzid wrote: post #83
anilmujagic wrote: post #30

Programming F# 3.0, 2nd Edition While not reading it right now (read it 4-5 yrs ago) I recommend The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. One of the few non-technical books that I really enjoyed :)

How are you finding the F# book? I have read/skimmed many F# books, including this one, and haven't really been satisfied with any of them.

As I'm just 50 pages in, so far it's basically all familiar stuff, because I already have read most of the article series on fsharpforfunandprofit.com.

I was searching for recommendations online and people on reddit were recommending this book, together with Expert F#.

There is also this article recommending those two books: http://jorgetavares.com/2015/01/01/reading-list-for-f-learni...

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#109

Post by teh_klev »

twosheep wrote: post #5

I just read Andy Weir's The Martian in one day -- it was (obviously) fantastic. I highly recommend it.

One of the best books I read in 2013, hugely enjoyable and very funny. Was also lucky to get the 99p Kindle self published one before he got picked up by a publisher.

Re: Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?

#110

Post by ckoepp »

AngrySkillzz wrote: post #82

Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. He is most famous for remarking that "the medium is the message." The media we use influence the way we think, the way we act, the political narrative of our times, etc. by placing limits and incentives on the messages we convey through those media. As an easy example, consider Twitter: you cannot have a coherent and intellectually involved conversation on Twitter. If Twitter…

I also read some of his books. He does make a great introduction to the topic of media philosophy.

If you're interested in his topic, you might want to read some books of Vilem Flusser. "Post-History" and "Does Writing Have a Future" are great texts which I think are highly relevant to computer scientists like me. Sadly, Flusser is almost unknown to people not taking classes in philosophy. I would never have read any text of him without taking philosophy as my minor subject ^^

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