Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 281 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#212

Post by rbonvall »

spatulon wrote: post #146
allenleee wrote: post #14

In functional programming: [0] The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [1] The_Little_Schemer [2] Programming in Haskell - Graham Hutton [3] Types and Programming Languages-Benjamin C. Pierce --- PDFS [0]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Func... ) [1]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Func... ) [2]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Fu…

I just finished re-reading SICP. If you're going to read it on a screen, I recommend this version: http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/ I'm 1/3 of the way through The Little Schemer. So far, it's not taught me anything I didn't already grok from SICP. I hope it picks up!

I cruised through most of it. But the last three chapters really twisted my brain (continuations, the Y combinator, and the metacircular interpreter). I was familiar with the concepts, but figuring out the programs by myself was a tough exercise (I haven't read SICP though).

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#214

Post by libertine »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #166
maroonblazer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His framework for how to think about bringing a product to market is what I found most valuable. What's the competitive environment? Who is the customer (in the most specific sense)? How will the product compete against other offerings? How is it priced relative to the competition? How do you talk about the product - i.e. communicate its value? How does one think about growing the market for the product? These are qu…

I'd argue that these fundamental questions are elaborated upon in most contemporary textbooks. In practice, however, young entrepreneurs creating business models around apps need to deal with a whole range of both general and specific issues that need to be addressed and Kotler is of limited use here.

This book lays the foundation - and I've worked with FMCGs, tech, media, pharma and I've yet to find an industry where Kotler's principles do not apply.

That's why a good marketer should be able to work within any industry - it's pretty much: product, price, promotion and placement. This has been reinvented, rebranded, and expanded - but in reality this is the ultimate reduction you can get your marketing to.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#215

Post by nigealj »

cloakedarbiter wrote: post #189

Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann [0] [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449373321/

Couldn't agree more. One of the best distributed data systems book! A must read for anyone dabbling in that part of the stack!

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#216

Post by atroyn »

snovv_crash wrote: post #68
atroyn wrote: post #46

In Robotics / Computer Vision: - Thrun et. al, Probabilistic Robotics - Multiple View Geometry, Hartley / Zisserman - An Invitation to 3D Vision, Ma - Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, Bishop -Convex Optimization, Boyd

We've recently replaced Hartley/Zisserman (which was getting a bit long in the tooth) with: Photogrammetric Computer Vision: Statistics, Geometry, Orientation and Reconstruction by Wrobel and Förstner.

Thanks for the recommendation, ordered. Hartley is very valuable to know how we got to where we are, from hand tuned features and RANSAC to more modern full photometric optimization and ML. It answers a lot of "why don't we just... " type questions while still providing the foundations.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#217

Post by libertine »

maroonblazer wrote: post #12

Kotler's "Marketing Management" remains the most definitive text on the practice of marketing. Many people - including some on HN - mistakenly equate marketing with only advertising or, more broadly, marketing communications. In truth that's only a small portion of the discipline. https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Management-14th-Philip-Kotl...

This is it.

And you're completly right - self proclaimed marketers reduce marketing to tools of one of the areas of marketing like you said : Promotion/Communication .

SEO, PPC, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Social Media Marketing... the list goes on... are just tools. They serve part of 1/4 of what marketing is broadly speaking.

Now I'm not saying those shouldn't be areas of expertise - they should! But a marketing manager should build/maintain a strategy taking into account everything - not just a specific part.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#218

Post by dajohnson89 »

Yadi wrote: post #7

In machine learning, hands down these are some of the best related textbooks: - [0] Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (Information Science and Statistics) and also: - [1] The Elements of Statistical Learning - [2] Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction by Barto and Sutton - [3] The Deep Learning by Aaron Courville, Ian Goodfellow, and Yoshua Bengio - [4] Neural Network Methods for Natural Language Processing…

>[5] Introduction to Linear Algebra by Strang

People seem to love this textbook - and understandably so because it's very approachable. But I really struggled with how informal the tone was, and how friendly it was. Perhaps I'd grown too accustomed to the typical theorem -> proof -> example -> problem set format.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#219

Post by pmiller2 »

Graph Theory:

Introduction to Graph Theory by Douglas West. If you're taking a first course in graph theory, this is where you should start. There is more than enough material here for 3 semesters, and, should you finish it all, you will certainly know more than the average grad student. The only disadvantage of this book is that it's getting old. I've asked Doug when there was a new edition coming out and not gotten much of a response, so don't hold your breath. This is a solid intro to the entire field.

Topological graph theory:

Graphs, Groups, and Surfaces by Arthur T. White. Dr. White is one of the leading experts in this subfield. His previous book, Graphs of Groups on Surfaces is also recommended, if a bit pricey. Obscure and OOP mathematical monographs tend to run that way though, so, I suspect if you're interested in this book, that's not much of a problem to you.

This book is the standard textbook in topological graph theory. As I recall, the topology prerequisites are fairly minimal. For algebra, you want some basic familiarity with groups, but I don't recall anything to heavy hitting being used here. One of the main results is an outline of the proof of the Haywood map coloring theorem, which establishes the chromatic number of all orientable and non-orientable surfaces except the sphere/plane.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#220

Post by dig1 »

1. SICP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o...)

2. Generative Programming (https://www.amazon.com/Generative-Programming-Methods-Tools-...)

3. PAIP (https://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Artificial-Intelligence-Pro...)

4. Lisp In Small Pieces (https://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/...)

5. The C Programming Language (https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Dennis-M-Ritchie...)

Post reply on HN