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Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?

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Re: Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?

#61

Post by devilsavocado »

saasinator wrote: post #11

I'll add my current three, 1) "How to Win Friends and Influence People" 2) "The War of Art" 3) "The Pragmatic Programmer"

Can you explain what you liked about The War of Art? I read it because I have seen it mentioned on this site many times, but I did not enjoy it at all. I found that the first two sections contained very little useful information, and the third got somewhat silly when it started evoking angels and muses. I could see it being a motivational read for some?

I find it strange that it's mentioned in the same context as your #1 and #3, which I think are absolutely essential.

Re: Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?

#62

Post by legodt »

ohgh1ieD wrote: post #60
legodt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your last paragraph not degrade women as goal based objects. This is disgusting and I can not believe you are feigning ignorance to the meaning of the words you posted.

Slow down, I didn't post anything from the Redpill, I just mentioned it, you can't determine my personality, my mindset or my opinions in just one post.

You mentioned women coming to you as a result of working hard. How is that not objectifying towards women?

Re: Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?

#63

Post by brudgers »

As a reader of books, one of the good things about growing older is that the books the younger version of myself read are books that this older version of myself hasn't and there is great pleasure in rereading the books the younger version of myself read as the older person I am.

And that makes this exercise impossible for me. The books I would tell the younger version of myself to read wouldn't resonate the same way (or not at all) with that other person I used to be. Picking books that might have appealed to the younger version of myself accurately would mean picking the books I actually read -- e.g. The Fifth Discipline -- and not books that the younger version of myself tried to read but couldn't but that I read and recommend today: e.g. TAoCP.

Part of the complexity is that the world in which I read books today is radically different from that of my younger self. Today I can get a MIX interpreter from the internet [1]...there's even help on StackOverflow. My younger self couldn't because even in the time when there was an internet bandwidth was low and Google didn't exist.

Like I said it's great to pick up a good book and realize it is better than I remember when I remember it being really good, but it's hard to see how it could have been better for my younger self.

1. Neuromancer

2. Blood Meridian

3. A Pattern Language

[1]:https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/precise/mixal/

Re: Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?

#64

Post by ohgh1ieD »

legodt wrote: post #62
ohgh1ieD wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slow down, I didn't post anything from the Redpill, I just mentioned it, you can't determine my personality, my mindset or my opinions in just one post.

You mentioned women coming to you as a result of working hard. How is that not objectifying towards women?

No I didn't, that's what you wrote.

Here is what I wrote.

> Don't focus on woman but on your dreams, if one can manage to take control over those things, woman will come naturally.

It's about order. So many people are so much obsessed with dating and woman that they lose focus on the really important things.

Listen, I'm not here to argue with some guy over the internet, if you don't like ignore it.

Re: Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?

#66

Post by ohgh1ieD »

diplomatpuppy wrote: post #37
ohgh1ieD wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this going to make me sad if I read it by the age of 32 ?

Perhaps not. I'm 42 and I'm tend to think of my station in life as just being delayed by 15 years - I had to get over a rather crappy childhood and a protracted adolescence. (That said, I'd admonish anyone your age that if you don't have children, have them now rather than a series of compensating house-pets for the rest of your life)

> (That said, I'd admonish anyone your age that if you don't have children, have them now rather than a series of compensating house-pets for the rest of your life)

I should give up my dreams in order to have kids ?

Two years ago, I had an idea ( that failed but that's not the point here ), I wanted to finish it so I simply walked into the office and quit.

I worked 6 months on my project, I didn't care about someone else, just me and my project.

I value your opinion and if you think that you should have kids, do it but for me, right now it would be like a prison.

Re: Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?

#68

Post by theincredulousk »

msluyter wrote: post #19

1. Godel, Escher, Bach -- Because it sparked my interest and got me started down the path. 2. The Pragmatic Programmer -- a classic. Reminds me that I need to re-read it. 3. Effective Oracle by Design, by Tom Kyte -- Not that I use Oracle any more, thankfully, but really provided a lot of insight about how databases function and how it pays to deeply understand their internals when writing webapps.

+1 on the Pragmatic Programmer.

For anyone that is ready to stop consuming themselves with all things esoteric and start writing generally good code by default.

If more devs followed the relatively simple patterns and practices in this book the phrase "legacy code" might not be a curse-word.

Re: Ask HN: What three books impacted your career the most?

#70

Post by gregn »

legodt wrote: post #25
ohgh1ieD wrote: post #13

1. Ego Is the Enemy - Ryan Holiday 2. sidebar from /r/theredpill 3. The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime Book number 3 has probably the most 'click baity' and the most douchey title of all times. It sounds like one of those self help books or one of those get rich fast schemas but in fact, it's an eye opener and it encourages hard work.

Is #2 a joke? I sincerely hope it is. Such a hateful ideology has no place on Hacker News

Pretty sad this got flagged. Honestly, I would flag the Bible before it. I think I understand your reasoning. While I don't agree with it, it's no worse than Ayn Rand or Timothy Ferris.
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