Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 515 posts

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

#81

Post by shp0ngle »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #14

I had a very poor model of what people meant when they spoke of divinity, god, and religion until reading the Tao Te Ching. Whenever I heard god, I just thought of sky daddy. The key is to understand that religion is a map, not the territory. All religions are essentially different paths to the same destination, mixed with varying levels of human interpretation.

DDJ was honestly very very confusing book to me. And the different translations vary SO wildly that I don’t really know what to take from it.

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

#85

Post by rex_lupi »

mgoetzke wrote: post #54

The Selfish Gene --- It finally gave me all the answers my teachers could not. An amazing book

TSG and the other two books (The Extended Phenotype & The Blind Watchmaker) in the series are the most influential books I've yet read on evolution.

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

#86

Post by halfbrite »

I wanted to learn the basics of OOP (classes and objects) back when C++ first appeared, but the topic was too heavy and too dry - and I was young.

A magazine article (remember those things?) described it using post office analogies, including a postal train. It just clicked.

I have no idea what magazine or writer, or why that set of analogies worked when there are far simpler explanations for classes and objects, but I owe my career to that article (and my lack of friends in high school .. but it's all good!)

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

#87

Post by mrkeen »

zwkrt wrote: post #72
mrkeen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it about that book that made it click? There's an awful lot of people who believe in sky daddy. What did they miss?

Not GP, but I have a similar experience. The Tao Te Ching presents a kind of supreme entity which is the unity underpinning all things. It questions dichotomy and difference and scarcity and control, as these things are only possible in a world of differentiated objects. We can’t always be present to this Unity because sometimes we need to eat a sandwich. But the book is a nice reminder—“hey, we all come from the sam…

Yes yes but this is a longer version of what I inferred from parent post. God is Love is The Force is 42, etc.

Instead of asking "What attracts you to this idea?", I want to ask: "What made you think it was true?"

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

#90

Post by pixvi »

As a software engineer, I was alway curious about how computers really work on electronics level and how code gets compiled and assembled and finally executed by the machine. I followed the free courses from Ben Eater about building a 8-bit computer from scratch https://eater.net/8bit and building a computer using the 6502 cpu https://eater.net/6502. Following these 2 courses made 4 topics click.
Post reply on HN