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Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#281

Post by WillPostForFood »

keepquestioning wrote: post #216
olalonde wrote: post #139

"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Helped me gain a more intuitive understanding of economics. On a side note, the man is a machine. He's been writing close to a book a year since the age of 80 (he's 92 now).

I started to read this book but it seems to be full of political bile. How does it compare to Economics in One Lesson?

Can you give an example of "political bile"? Sowell is an incredibly even-keeled writer, and I'm surprised someone would find the book angry (or political, other than believing in traditional economics).

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#284

Post by ghastmaster »

The World of Carbon by Isaac Asimov started my fascination with the sciences when I was a freshman in High School(grade 9). Chemicals in general just made more sense after reading. He is incredibly clear in his non fiction writing. Prior to reading that, none of my science classes in school had captured my attention.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#285

Post by denton-scratch »

No book. Just one course.

I was a rather humble support guy for COBOL applications, so I had to learn COBOL, which I did.

I was sent by my manager for a one-off, three-day "advanced COBOL" course.

It wasn't about advanced COBOL; it was an advanced course on the seven-pass Burroughs COBOL compiler. Memory was short in those days, hence the seven passes; intermediate results were files on disk. We learned that by nulling the executable for a chosen pass, we could hack the intermediate files, to do things COBOL programs weren't supposed to do, like calling OS functions.

I learned how parsers work, and how parse trees are represented. I learned about intermediate code, optimisers, interpreters, and code generators. I got interested in compilers, and wrote a source-level debugger. It was just a three-day course, but it was incredibly valuable to me. Perhaps life-changing.

Perhaps it's not so much that that course made something click that wasn't clicking for me; rather, it inspired an interest in me that simply wasn't there before.

As I said this was a one-off course. There was about seven of us, and I don't believe anyone else ever received that training.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#286

Post by eikenberry »

For me it was Propositional Calculus in my undergrad... was being super thick headed about picking it up and failed the mid-term. A friend and I (who was also having problems) sat down with a stack of exercises and just started doing them. I can almost remember hearing the click when I finally got it and it all made sense. Was probably the original click that made me ultimately end up in programming as I found how all the rules worked together to form a way to express ideas beautiful.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#288

Post by ghastmaster »

olalonde wrote: post #139

"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Helped me gain a more intuitive understanding of economics. On a side note, the man is a machine. He's been writing close to a book a year since the age of 80 (he's 92 now).

His book "Race and Culture: A World View" was an eye opener. After being very politically naïve for many years, my reading of this book changed how I view economic, regulatory, and political consequences.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#290

Post by senko »

sph wrote: post #266
cmehdy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhap similarly, on an arduous journey to better my mental health and character I have found much to learn with paradoxical situations arising in zen koans. A good book with plenty of koans was Mumonkan/Gateless gate, in a compilation like this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/593516.Two_Zen_Classics They've been helpful as a reinforcement (and contrast) to more logical things, as well as therapies (DBT, CBT).

Thanks for the recommendation. I really want to get into Zen Buddhism (as a form of spirituality that meshes better with my atheism), but after that first chapter the Alan Watts book becomes pretty dense and I need serious time and dedication to unpack its arguments. I probably need something easier to digest.

I found "Real Zen for real life" by Bret W. Davis pretty approachable.

It's from The Great Courses, but also available as audiobook on Audible.

BTW he also recommends the same book (gateless gate + blue cliff records, same translation) as the parent poster.

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