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

The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

dev-books.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–256 of 256 posts

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#251

Post by setr »

mrkgnao wrote: post #235
andrepd wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Mozart? He is popular for a reason: he is freaking great. I hate that some people smugly dismiss things that are popular as beneath them, or conversely, that you have to like hyper-obscure artist or else you're not into real art. Bullshit, Mozart is great.

It might be that, in GP's experience, people who straightaway reply "I love Mozart" are less likely to actually have heard a substantial amount of his work, perhaps to have sat with them for some time, and (for lack of a better word) pondered over them, than someone who says they like something else but replies in a manner that sounds more sophisticated, e.g. "I enjoy the structure inherent in Bach's music" or what-h…

Really what it comes down to is that if the only person you can bring up is Mozart, then you clearly don't know shit.

It takes a simple man to like a popular idea. It takes a mediocre man to like popularly unpopular ideas (ie cult classics, big only within certain circles). It takes a good man to knowingly like unpopularly popular ideas (ie liking spielberg and bay, popular directors everyone [in the know] loves to trash).

A great man will tell you why.

And only the greatest of men actually like whatever the hell they're talking about.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#252

Post by rwallace »

lebca wrote: post #191
JelteF wrote: post #79

Although not directly development related. The most impressive book I've had the pleasure of reading is "Gödel Escher Bach: An eternal golden braid" (also known as GEB) from Douglas Hofstadter. It's hard to explain what it is about exactly, but it contains ideas and concepts from mathematics, computer science, philosophy and conscience. All of it is explained in very clear and interesting way. I can recommend it to a…

While I have not read the book, when I've spoken about it to reputable Bach musicologists and logicians, one group says Hofstadter misinterprets Bach's work and tries to create something that actually isn't there while the other says he oversimplifies Gödel's work to the point that it is uninteresting and misleading. I haven't found a visual artist who's read it to discuss the Escher parts. These opinions steered me…

I can't comment on the Bach or Escher parts, but he does a very creditable job summarizing Gödel's work for a lay audience. Of course if you want to take up this stuff professionally, more in-depth study will be required, that goes without saying - GEB doesn't claim to be a textbook - but it is one of the best popular science books around.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#253

Post by ComputerGuru »

randcraw wrote: post #115
ComputerGuru wrote: post #54

Can someone recommend a good book on linear algebra for somebody that took it in college but needs a refresher plus some advanced linear algebra concepts for machine learning?

The texts that I hate least (LA and I have a long and rocky relationship): - Coding the Matrix, Klein https://www.amazon.com/Coding-Matrix-Algebra-Applications-Co... This has a strong emphasis on LA's utility in CS, and includes concepts outside traditional LA that enrich the narrative. - Intro to Linear Algebra, Strang https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Linear-Algebra-Gilbert-S... Strang approaches LA from a practi…

Thanks for taking the time to write that out. I'll check them out.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#254

Post by dj-wonk »

kod wrote: post #220
xpe wrote: post #210

The results from the "Compiler-Construction" are not good. You'll find better results from a search engine, Q&A site, or bookseller: Here are the top 10: #1 Design Patterns - Ralph Johnson, Erich Gamma, John Vlissides, Richard Helm #2 Clean Code - Robert C. Martin #3 The C Programming Language - Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie #4 CLR Via C# - Jeffrey Richter #5 Modern C++ Design - Andrei Alexandrescu #6 Large-s…

#20 Lisp in Small Pieces This is absolutely relevant to compiler construction.

Thanks for pointing that out. Here's a snippet about it:

> This is a comprehensive account of the semantics and the implementation of the whole Lisp family of languages, namely Lisp, Scheme and related dialects. It describes 11 interpreters and 2 compilers, including very recent techniques of interpretation and compilation.

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#255

Post by black2 »

munificent wrote: post #113
hbex5 wrote: post #3

Ah, the good old Design Patterns book, responsible for more atrocious over-abstracted, unreadable, hard to maintain Java code than anything else before or since.

> responsible for more atrocious over-abstracted, unreadable, hard to maintain Java code I have the misfortune to remember what some object-oriented codebases looked like before "Design Patterns". While people—generally those who haven't read the book or completely glossed over the section on the consequences of each pattern—have certainly over-used design patterns, I'll still take that over under -use of them. An ov…

It's all in my phone. I read it all.I NEVER GAVE PERMISSION for this to be placed on my Android I decided to look one of the 50or so things like this on my phone.. I never had e permission j believe i can tell you what state and what address this man is doing this from!

Re: The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow

#256

Post by antoaravinth »

JelteF wrote: post #79

Although not directly development related. The most impressive book I've had the pleasure of reading is "Gödel Escher Bach: An eternal golden braid" (also known as GEB) from Douglas Hofstadter. It's hard to explain what it is about exactly, but it contains ideas and concepts from mathematics, computer science, philosophy and conscience. All of it is explained in very clear and interesting way. I can recommend it to a…

I had never read this book. But I can sense how well the book would have been written by reading its summary from here[1].

[1]:https://www.quora.com/Book-Summaries-What-are-the-main-ideas...

Post reply on HN