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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?

#501

Post by quaunaut »

yeswecatan wrote: post #34
quaunaut wrote: post #20

I'm a software engineer, but these have been instrumental in my success in a way no coding book can compare to(though John Ousterhout's "A Philosophy of Software Design" would have, if it came out earlier in my life). Personal time/task management- The classic, Getting Things Done( https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produ... ). The power this has on people cannot be understated. Turns out that mos…

What do you use for your getting things done workflow? I just started using neovim and found the neorg ( https://github.com/nvim-neorg/neorg ) package which has a GTD module.

ATM I use Todoist, but I'm wildly unhappy in using it. The only reason I do is that since it's a web-based UI, I can use it from my Windows box. Most of the halfway good GTD tools are Mac-only.

I've had a project going to build my own but admittedly have been somewhat dumb/lazy about it.

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

#503

Post by floppydiskette »

luuuzeta wrote: post #397
floppydiskette wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this one over the course of a few months that summarized everything I could think of on the topic - https://www.taniarascia.com/asynchronous-javascript-event-lo...

I've your blog bookmarked and I'll be reading it this weekend haha. Thanks for putting it together! >Callbacks are not asynchronous by nature, but can be used for asynchronous purposes. Glad you mention this because some people make it since like callbacks are a de-facto asynchronous-based concept. Callbacks are simply anonymous functions or lambdas that you pass to asynchronous functions so you can work with the pro…

Thanks! Yeah, the callback thing tripped me up when I was learning because so many articles just glossed over the whole thing so I had to dig a little deeper and play around to understand it more.

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

#506

Post by jeffreyrogers »

bbyford wrote: post #502

computers in general–this book opened my eyes to how everything actually works... mostly :) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Sof...

I read that book when I was pretty young, maybe 12 or 13. I'm not sure if I understood everything in it at the time but it started my fascination with computers.

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

#507

Post by atribecalledqst »

oytis wrote: post #70

Anand Agarwal's edx course on electronics made me finally get some understanding of the topic after years of struggling over Horrowitz/Hill and the like. Was also free back in the day.

I self-studied his book "Foundations of Analog and Digital Circuits" a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Very accessible.

I also tried to self-study Art of Electronics first but it's not really friendly to beginners. Been revisiting it though recently, in the context of the accompanying lab course.

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

#508

Post by jerrygenser »

bmitc wrote: post #401
jerrygenser wrote: post #146

Andrew Ng's machine learning course on Coursera from almost 10 years changed the trajectory of my entire career. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-in... Statistical rethinking by Richard McElreath also helped me to understand bayesian analysis and simulation -- possibly the best hands on bayesian analysis book for beginners https://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/ edit: added links

Would you recommend his original Coursera course or his new course here: https://www.deeplearning.ai/courses/machine-learning-special... ? > Statistical rethinking by Richard McElreath Thank you for that reference! I'm definitely going to check it out. If you are able and want to, are you able to elaborate on how you changed the trajectory of your career? I'm a software engineer who was originally wanting to be a mat…

> If you are able and want to, are you able to elaborate on how you changed the trajectory of your career?

I was in data analytics at a health insurance company in more of a BI and data pulling role. Taking his course gave me the confidence to start doing more machine learning related projects in my company eventually becoming the first person in the company to be called "Data Scientist" after developing multiple models that were making an impact on the business.

edit: answer original question

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

#509

Post by jerrygenser »

bmitc wrote: post #401
jerrygenser wrote: post #146

Andrew Ng's machine learning course on Coursera from almost 10 years changed the trajectory of my entire career. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-in... Statistical rethinking by Richard McElreath also helped me to understand bayesian analysis and simulation -- possibly the best hands on bayesian analysis book for beginners https://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/ edit: added links

Would you recommend his original Coursera course or his new course here: https://www.deeplearning.ai/courses/machine-learning-special... ? > Statistical rethinking by Richard McElreath Thank you for that reference! I'm definitely going to check it out. If you are able and want to, are you able to elaborate on how you changed the trajectory of your career? I'm a software engineer who was originally wanting to be a mat…

I would do the first and classic one on Coursera first and then newer deep learning. The original one gives you better grounding in basic ML stuff that is not as "sexy" these days but is still fundamental and used for solving many problems.

I was in a similar boat but on the analytics side wrt to maths. I also took courses at a local university in Math to build up my knowledge. Learning pure math at the college level, like learning to do proofs in front of people on a chalkboard -- I think is very difficult to do unless you take it in the context of a class.

I think you should still give it a go, it's never too late!

edit: answer original question

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

#510

Post by petrusnonius »

reducesuffering wrote: post #416
kylestlb wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

They did it again
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