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Alan Kay's reading list

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Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#91

Post by lintiness »

alankay1 wrote: post #87
igravious wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is too short for poor books :) I couldn't vouch for the other topics but I can say that the section on Philosophy made me raise an eyebrow! Well, that and the section on Politics & Economy is obviously US/capitalist -centric but you know that. No Communist Manifesto? Really? :) In case anyone happens to read the list you gave and also reads here, the following are not considered primary philosophical works: The…

Life is too short period! Just to remind again that the list was for people in business -- they were quite intelligent, had college degrees, but were not well read or "broad". They were very goal-oriented, and I think they did not use school or college for "general education". I tried to pick books that would be assessable and useful for them. So no "Das Kapital" or other political tracts. I would have put in Madison…

any updated misses? i'd have to say, for that audience (or any really), "fooled by randomness" taleb is required.

Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#93

Post by alankay1 »

chrisallick wrote: post #3

That's a lot of books! I wish there were a top 5.

It's a bit like the problem of comparing great composers and great music -- for example, it doesn't really make sense to try to decide whether Bach was a greater composer than Beethoven or any other great composer. Thresholds are a little better: "above the line is 'great' ", etc. But then drawing the line is tough.

In this list I didn't include quite a number of books I think of as "great" -- instead I put in readable books that I thought would help the target readers.

Just to pick one as an example: I think Newton's "Principia" is a great book. It's not easy to read, and it would not have been a good choice for this group, but it is above any threshold I would draw.

Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#94

Post by alankay1 »

lintiness wrote: post #91
alankay1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life is too short period! Just to remind again that the list was for people in business -- they were quite intelligent, had college degrees, but were not well read or "broad". They were very goal-oriented, and I think they did not use school or college for "general education". I tried to pick books that would be assessable and useful for them. So no "Das Kapital" or other political tracts. I would have put in Madison…

any updated misses? i'd have to say, for that audience (or any really), "fooled by randomness" taleb is required.

There have been quite a few books since that would be good for this group to look at (I will avoid the trap of mentioning any). Why don't you have a crack at it?

Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#95

Post by CapitalistCartr »

christudor wrote: post #78
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid, I worked my way through our local library in an orderly fashion. I only had to be able to sign my name to get a card. When mom would drop us off for a few hours, we'd pick out our six books (the limit), she'd come get us, and before we got home, she'd chide us on already reading too many of them. We wouldn't make them last until the next visit. It seemed an agonizing wait until 14, the required age…

How much do you read nowadays? What kind of stuff? (And have you got any recommendations in terms of fiction!?)

Nowadays most of my reading is online, I read about a paper book per week, like most of us. My fiction is mostly SF/Fantasy. My favorite non-fiction is history, entirely predictable. I just finished 1493 last night; it was excellent. Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk before that, also good, although Len Deighton is definitely opinionated.

I read HN with an eye to suggestions, which has worked out well for me.

Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#96

Post by jseliger »

alankay1 wrote: post #68
paulojreis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth it to try to understand what "interesting people" have thought -- it provides context for one's own thinking. This is eventually the main reason why I mentioned Bateson's work in particular (besides the depth and orthogonality of his ideas). I've read Watzlawick's work on interaction and pragmatics of communication before I've read Bateson's. I found Watzlawick's ideas easier to grasp (at least, I'm unde…

Well, Gregory missed some important ideas in that book (partly from his background I think, and partly from his personality). You might get some perspective from looking at his last book "Mind and Nature". And, in many ways, much more powerful looks at "mind" are Minsky's "Society of Mind" and "The Emotion Machine". There is also Kahneman's "Thinking: Fast and Slow" more recently ...

The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane is not really about the mind, but it is about the things that lead up to the contemporary mind and is consistently fascinating, even for me who has no biology / biochemistry background. I learned about it from the Bill Gates blog: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/The-Vital-Question.

Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#97

Post by jrcii »

alankay wrote: post #42

This wasn't actually for my students, and dates back to the early 90s. A number of people at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) asked for my "top ten" books. This is not possible for anyone who reads extensively, so I came out with that list as a bare start. I should mention that reading lots of "poor books" is also part of literacy: they help the understanding and appreciation of "good books" considerably.

Hi Alan, sorry if this is a little off topic, but since we have you here I was wondering if you have any thoughts or opinions on the recently popular discussion surrounding object-oriented versus functional programming paradigms?

Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#98

Post by lintiness »

alankay1 wrote: post #94
lintiness wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any updated misses? i'd have to say, for that audience (or any really), "fooled by randomness" taleb is required.

There have been quite a few books since that would be good for this group to look at (I will avoid the trap of mentioning any). Why don't you have a crack at it?

free to choose (friedman), guns germs and steel (diamond), fooled by randomness (taleb). essential contemporary fiction: the road or blood meridian (mccarthy). everybody should read the widely read religious texts that have been circulating for millenia.

Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#99

Post by alankay1 »

jrcii wrote: post #97
alankay wrote: post #42

This wasn't actually for my students, and dates back to the early 90s. A number of people at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) asked for my "top ten" books. This is not possible for anyone who reads extensively, so I came out with that list as a bare start. I should mention that reading lots of "poor books" is also part of literacy: they help the understanding and appreciation of "good books" considerably.

Hi Alan, sorry if this is a little off topic, but since we have you here I was wondering if you have any thoughts or opinions on the recently popular discussion surrounding object-oriented versus functional programming paradigms?

It is off topic here. But I'm happy to say something elsewhere.

Re: Alan Kay's reading list

#100

Post by alankay1 »

There seems to be a depth limit on replies: too bad.

Also, I wonder if there is a provision (perhaps in a "preferences" section I don't know about) to have an email sent when someone replies (this is a very limited format for an open-ended exchange ...)

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