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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?

#411

Post by dhosek »

Going back to the 90s, it wasn’t until I read Mark Nelson’s book on STL that object-oriented programming made sense to me. Part of it also was that the people writing books on C++ back then probably didn’t understand OOP either, so most of the books were essentially talking about C, but with different syntax for comments and I/O. With STL, suddenly the whole concept of OO made sense to me.

When I started picking up functional programming later in my career, it was all so much easier for me to grok, largely because it was stuff I’d wanted to do earlier in other languages but didn’t have the capability in the languages I was using to support it.

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

#412

Post by digitalsushi »

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…

i finally got callbacks this year when i pictured someone tossing a yo-yo into an elevator going down a few random floors and rolling out. the elevator leaves but i am still yanking on that yo-yo some random floor.

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

#413

Post by thatmiddleway »

itsgrimetime wrote: post #332

Zed Shaw’s “Learn Python the Hard Way” was what really got programming to click for me after trying and failing to wrap my head around C, Java, and Pascal many times in my teenage years. It taught me enough to start having a lot of fun with programming, and gave me enough of a foundation to end up actually learning those other languages in university.

I learned so much from the C and python versions. Real gems that presented the critical information succinctly.

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

#414

Post by xkgt »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #149
gwbas1c wrote: post #119

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It (Michael E. Gerber) What it taught me is that effective organizations invest heavily in training newcomers how to do their jobs / processes. I see this everywhere; when I walk into a business and something's "just off," it's almost always because management is dropping the ball on training newcomers how to do their jobs. In my specific…

My first question for recruiters is always about how a company trains/mentors employees. I have gotten maybe 5 good responses out of the 100's of times I've asked that question. It's shocking to me. Every employee you hire is going to have to be trained on SOMETHING that is new to them or specific to your company. Why dont companies spend more time developing onboarding and training programs that actually work?

Do you have any tips or guides for creating good training programs? I find it challenging to think from a newcomer point of view and I significantly underestimate their challenges. Consequently I feel the learning curve I set for the team is either too steep or too shallow.

This happens to me irrespective of whether I went through the painful learning curve just recently or several years in the past. Once I am comfortable with a topic, I cannot approach it from a newcomers perspective.

So I think having a systematic approach to KT and training will help.

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

#416

Post by reducesuffering »

kylestlb wrote: post #374
datavirtue wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While slogging through an economics course in college I was frustrated that there were not teaching me anything. Then I discovered Sowell and Friedman and started watching every video I could find. Such a relief. I just did what they wanted me to do for the rest of the economics courses but basically just ignored it all. No one in academia or the media wants to hear what Sowell and Friedman have to say. I should have…

I majored in econ. Friedman is as mainstream as it gets. Not sure why your econ courses ignored the guy. He made quite a few appearances in my 200 and 300 level courses.

Yep, even Fed Chair Bernanke was lauding him:

"I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."

https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/20021...

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

#418

Post by diehunde »

DeathArrow wrote: post #240
peterhadlaw wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being somewhat skeptic myself in my younger years and coming closer to God through my relationship with my girlfriend (who isn't even a believer herself)... I just recently came up with a hypothesis why so many Math and CS people were famously Atheist. I grew closer to God through just observing the natural world, and my natural relationship (affection, friendship, etc.). My hypothesis is that so many of these (incre…

Most of the great mathematicians were religious. As to why is that, we can only speculate. I personally think that while exploring the beautiful worlds of numbers they discovered order and perfection and that got them thinking about Divinity.

I think it's because they hadn't heard of evolution or big bang theory yet. There are probably way less religious scientist today than there were in the previous centuries.

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

#419

Post by SantalBlush »

datavirtue wrote: post #353
rednerrus wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Quoted post unavailable.

Jesus, the constant martyrdom being spewed on this site is nauseating.

Sowell isn't tucked away; the book under discussion is famous and known by pretty much all economists in the US.

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

#420

Post by tonto »

I had a hard time learning react. I was a reasonably proficient developer but really struggled. Reading "learning react" (O'Reilley) really helped me. Not sure if it's what I'd recommend to others but reading it, offline and not distracted by the web, it helped me. A tldr blog post https://cmdcolin.github.io/posts/2020-07-04
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