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Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

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Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#211

Post by cholantesh »

gedrap wrote: post #22

- Introductory Statistics with R by Dalgaard, Peter. A solid introduction to stats, don't be scared by R bit in the title - it contains plenty of maths/theory so that knowledge is widely applicable. Brilliant introductory for everyone who wants to do something stats related. It's amazing how much can be done with no fancy deep learning algorithms, just plain simple stats. - Statistics Done Wrong by Alex Reinhart. Ple…

>- Introductory Statistics with R by Dalgaard, Peter.

If one is new to R, would this text be a good intro to the language?

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#212

Post by a3n »

(Some of the +below are O'Reilly DRM-free ebooks. Big fan.)

Python:

+Effective Computation in Physics. Probably the most practical full-environment treatment of Python I've seen. Write, test, package, distribute. Third party libs.

Effective Python, Brett Slatkin. Sort of an "N ways to improve your Python." Part of a series edited by Scott Meyers.

Getting my C mojo back:

I left C/C++ 15 years ago. C++ will likely stay left, but I miss C.

+Reading 21st Century C, Ben Klemens. The first half is the development environment, which is great, since there's some new stuff since I left, and lots of stuff I've forgotten or never knew.

Rereading Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets by Van der Linden. The guy's a riot. It's dated but still relevant. The inside baseball stuff on problems seen while working in Sun's compiler group is fascinating.

Rereading C Interfaces and Implementations, Hanson. Hoping this will serve as my C version of Large Scale C++ Design by Lakos. Honestly though, the literate programming style of presentation is off-putting. Are we still talking about that?

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#213

Post by sanderjd »

tartuffe78 wrote: post #74

- "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke. I usually can't read a book after seeing the movie or show, but the BBC version was so good and I read reviews that they left out quite a bit. The book definitely had a lot more detail, and was even more entertaining. - "Flash for Freedom" by George McDonald Fraser. A part of series of historical fiction starring Harry Flashman, a cowardly degenerate who always end…

If you like listening to books on tape, the version of Neverwhere read by Gaiman himself, is my absolute favorite one.

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#215

Post by jkchu »

The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg (highly recommended)

Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson (recommended)

Modern Romance - Aziz Ansari (audiobook recommended)

Boomerang - Michael Lewis (great if you have a light interest in macroeconomics)

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (recommended)

Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell (recommended)

Joyland - Stephen King (great, short read)

Creativity, Inc. - Ed Catmull (Parts on the history of Pixar were interesting)

Re: Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

#220

Post by Razengan »

Not many, sadly, but

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau, and

The Icewind Dale trilogy / Legend of Drizzt series by R.A. Salvatore.

Ember was a very nice take on post-apocalyptic fiction; a Steampunk city surrounded by absolute darkness that still managed to retain a semblance of normal everyday life. Something about the setting felt very homely despite its inconveniences.

The Drizzt series is of course a guilty pleasure full of good old-school role-playing fantasy tropes. It does a nice job of providing my Dungeons & Dragons fix while I wait for a new video game.

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