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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?

#361

Post by yamtaddle »

rednerrus wrote: post #322
WillPostForFood wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

"Political Bile" = things I don't agree with.

I dunno—another if-anything-even-more-right-wing economist seems to be the poster's point of comparison, so I too am curious what rubbed them the wrong way about Sowell. I certainly get a right-wing tone from the preface and first few pages of this book—I'm hoping later chapters will moderate the "if you're not maximizing economic utility you're definitely screwing up and must just be too stupid to realize it because there can't possibly be a good reason" subtext, and it just seems so strong at the beginning because he's trying to present the very-basics without nuance at this point, but I can't see that striking a Hazlitt fan as anything but a point in its favor.

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

#362

Post by scotty79 »

JackFr wrote: post #213
leephillips wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found Donald Knuth’s professed Christianity somewhat curious. Then I watched a small bit of his interview with Lex Fridman, and happened to catch the part where he speculates that maybe God is a big computer. So, OK.

> where he speculates that maybe God is a big computer. I cringe at phrases like that. It's empty theologically and technologically. It represents a complete inability in imagining what God could be, and a naive, childish pride in our little creations, these computers. While in his internal driven world view it might make sense, to me it has no more or less truth than "maybe God is a big steam engine"

> It represents a complete inability in imagining what God could be, and a naive, childish pride in our little creations [...]

Aren't all religious statements just like that?

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

#364

Post by vermaden »

These:

- Absolute FreeBSD - have everything needed to learn and understand FreeBSD.

- ANSI C by Kernighan/Ritchie - the C language.

- Forever Fat Loss - why we get fat and what to do about it.

- Why We Sleep - everything you wanted to know about sleep.

Regards.

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

#365

Post by hungryzebra135 »

gwd wrote: post #297

On a completely different topic: After watching my first marriage degenerate and my wife asked me to move out, I was fairly well mystified about what was going on. We'd read lots of books about marriage and communication, planned for it to be tough, intended to see it through... so what happened? "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work" by John Gottman was a book that I read after we'd separated that first sta…

His book presents very reasonable advice but his statistics are made-up. Doesn't mean it's not a valuable book but can be a bit annoying for people who care about being accurate.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/02/27/book-review-the-seven-...

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

#366

Post by SquareWheel »

philip_roberts wrote: post #347
luuuzeta wrote: post #148

I've been struggling with wrapping my head around asynchronous programming with callbacks, promises and async/await in JS, however I think it's finally clicking after watching these YouTube videos and creating a document where I explain these concepts as if I'm teaching them to someone else: * Philip Roberts's What the heck is the event loop anyway? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ * The Story of Asynchr…

Thanks for the shout out! I'm still amazed how well that talk struck a nerve and it's a real kick seeing people getting something out of it 8 (!) years later.

I watched the video just recently, and almost immediately put the knowledge to use in a project. Finally the setTimeout(0)'s make sense.

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

#369

Post by scotty79 »

geocrasher wrote: post #308

I tried learning Borland Turbo C++ in the early 90's on my 286. I had the SAMS book "Learn Turbo C++ in 24 Hours". 15 year old me dutifully worked through it until I got to Pointers. 20 years later, a dev I worked with: "Oh, pointers are just a reference to a memory address". GAH.

Ah, I was lucky because I learned Turbo Pascal. After that Turbo C++ was just the exactly same thing just with really weird and bit cryptic syntax.

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

#370

Post by tflinton »

Discrete mathematics was mind blowing for me. It did a great job connecting algebra and propositional logic (think if statements, things being true or false) into a single math theory by showing how binary algebra or set theory accomplish both… then there’s the universal operator which is mind bending in itself.
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