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Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

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Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#21
Maybe not what the OP wanted to read but the book(s) that have had the most lasting impact on my career these past few years were some of Ellul's books, such as Le bluff technologique [1], which book builds on his entire career of writing about tech's effects on our life and our modern society.

It has "disenchanted" a lot of the tech-related stuff for me, and it has disenchanted most of our industry, for that matter (I'm a computer programmer, forgot to mention that). Still doing my small thing, getting my salary doing honest work, work which, hopefully, doesn't send anyone to prison nor enables some genocide half-away around the globe, so there's that.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/le-bluff-technologique/dp/2818502276

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#23
To be fair, I don't think 3-5 books suffice at all. So from the point of view of adding books no-one else has mentioned, from the point of view of C++ Software Engineer, a few of my favourites:

Code Complete 2 - McConnel

Professional Software Development - McConnel

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) - Sussmann et all. (main artifact: Implement the scheme interpreter, not in Scheme, but in a language of your choice)

Algorithm Design Manual - Skiena

The Timeless Way Of Building - Alexander. Software patterns often refer this book, but the concepts used in software patterns generally are far more pedestrian in scope than Alexanders timeless vision for quality in architecture. Goes really well with this older book Notes On The Synthesis of Form.

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#24
post #17
post #7

1. Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker 2. Quantum Mechanics by Eisberg, Resnick 3. Mathematical Physics by Arfken, Weber, Harris 4. Introduction to Statistical Learning with R by Hastie et al. 5. Deep Learning for Coders by Jeremy Howard

I want to self-learn physics from scratch. I have a degree in mathematics, but my understanding of physics is embarrasingly shallow. Is Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday et al a good starting point for me?

You should look at Susan Rigetti's post - https://www.susanrigetti.com/physics

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#25

"Adaptive Web Design" by Gustafson. This is how the Web _should_ be made. The Network one by Ilya Gregorik. There's just not a lot of other material that covers this and certainly not this thoroughly. This one is probably responsible for me "looking smart in front of others" more than any other book on the list. "100 things every designer should know about people" by Weinschenk (sp?). Actually I take it back: _this_…

> The Network one by Ilya Gregorik. There's just not a lot of other material that covers this and certainly not this thoroughly. This one is probably responsible for me "looking smart in front of others" more than any other book on the list.

This one https://hpbn.co/ ?

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#26
Accelerate (Forsgren, Humble, Kim) gave me a way to quantify results and talk to execs about how a development org is performing, something I always found difficult before.

Domain Modeling Made Functional (Wlaschin) provided me with concepts and techniques that I've used practically every day since I read it, especially functional design patterns and DDD/CQRS without the jargon.

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#28
For me it was "Teach yourself...Assembler" - not because it was a great book or anything, but it was the first book I purchased to learn actual programming.

I don't think I even finished the book. (assembler is tedious and hard!) But it began a lifelong love of computers and software.

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#30
= Out of the Crisis by Deming.

Everyone ought to read and absorb Deming. It's hands-down the most life-changing read I've ever come across, by a wide margin.

Dealing with life statistically rather than overreacting to randomness means it's possible to achieve much higher levels of effeciveness and productivity. Working with people to unleash their inner motivation is vastly superior to trying to carrot-and-whip them around.

Understanding that a specific process will yield a specific outcome, whatever outcome you wish for, is how to avoid getting the same result over and over while thinking you ought to see something different because gosh-darned if you aren't trying really hard!!

= Willful Ignorance by Weisberg.

This isn't that good a book, in that it doesn't cover very much content at all, but it really gave me a good intuition for what statistics and probability is about that has helped me understand more advanced things than I was able to before.

Both this book and Deming will take a few years to digest. You'll want to practise it in real life, then come back to read it again, then practise some more. Eventually the lessons will start to stick.

= Performance Modeling and Design of Computer Systems by Mor Halchor-Balter.

Despite the name, this is a book about queueing theory. You know, that branch of statistics that shows up literally everywhere, except nobody seems to understand that it does. I have been dabbling in queueing theory before this book, but the focus this book put on practical applications really made me understand it on a deeper level than before.

= Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers.

I didn't originally want to put this one in this list because it's so predictable, but I can't not. I keep coming back to it and re-reading portions of it every time I have to deal with tricky code. It's just that good at explaining clever ways to get things under test, so they can be worked on with confidence.

= How to Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard.

What I really take away from this is how powerful it is to be able to estimate ranges that are true 90 % of the time. It's hard to convince others of what a superpower this is, but I hope to work with people who understand that some day.

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