Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?

Post by haydenlee » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

Jach wrote: post #291

In reverse chronological order.. The Earth is Enough (recommended if you like trout fishing) Clean Code (recommended if you want to invigorate your desire to write better code, there was a lot to both agree and disagree with though for me anyway) Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D (recommend if you want to study the details of an early 3d game engine, or details about the 386 that made it so hard to do games with…

Post by theSealedTanker » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 6:03 AM UTC

lscore720 wrote: post #322

emit_time wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah... How much time do you spend reading? Also, what do you do in general?

I'll guess it avarages out to roughly 3-4 hours on weekdays and 10-20 over a weekend. I also love longform journalism, which can eat up a few hours per week. I do little in general haha :/ My own reclusiveness combined with a relatively severe mental illness have kept me inside my apartment around 23/7 for years. I'm self-employed and try to hit 10-20 hours/week of work. Aside from that, my free time is endless and b…

Post by granjoz » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

ncphillips wrote: post #294

granjoz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started 'Introduction to General Systems Thinking' but I abandoned because I couldn't find anything interesting in it. I think I didn't really get it even though I had big expectations. What would you said it's the main idea?

Mathematics is useful for modelling systems of small numbers (mechanics) and large numbers (statistics), but most of the systems we engage with are systems of medium numbers. For medium number systems we must rely on heuristics. General Systems Thinking is about finding heuristics that can be applied to medium number systems. This idea is examined from different angles in both Pirsig's and Taleb's books as well. That…

Post by reflectionist » Mon, Dec 17, 2018, 4:51 AM UTC

bluejay2 wrote: post #53

1. The Feast of the Goat by Vargas Llosa - fast paced, fictionalized account of the last days of the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic 2. 100 years of solitude - currently 70% through but the writing and story is superb. 3. Death in the Andes — another Vargas Llosa book. Not as good as Feast of the Goat in my opinion, but gives a good idea of the situation in Peru in the 1980s during the Shining Path insurrec…

Post by rexaliquid » Tue, Dec 18, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC