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Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#102

Post by jcla1 »

Introduction to Functional Analysis, R. Meise and D. Vogt.

Despite the name, that's nowhere near just an introduction, especially Part III.

Classical and Multilinear Harmonic Analysis, C. Muscalu and W. Schlag.

After reading the two volumes you will have a huge base of knowledge. The books can get quite advanced as well, containing previously unpublished results when being first printed.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#103

Post by ratsimihah »

cm2187 wrote: post #95
minhazm423 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you study? How did you apply the knowledge in the book?

I studied engineering, applied maths and finance. I structured interest rate derivatives for a while. That’s the book I recommend to new joiners, even those without a stem background.

I'm seeing the 10th edition for £230 and the eight edition for cheaper. Would you be able to tell whether investing in the newer edition is worth?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#104

Post by HaoZeke »

naedish wrote: post #85
HaoZeke wrote: post #62

As a chemical engineer (many of these go beyond the undergraduate level): 1) The principles of chemical equilibrium, by Kenneth George Denbigh 2) Mass Transfer by Sherwood 3) Process Dynamics, Modeling, and Control by Babatunde Ogunnaike and W. Harmon Ray 4) Chemical Process Industries by Shreeves 5) An Introduction to Numerical Methods and Analysis by James F. Epperson 6) Optimization: Theory and Practice by Gordon…

I thought Perry's[0] was considered the Bible by all Chemical Engineers :) [0] ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry's_Chemical_Engineers'_... )

Perry's is a good reference book, but certainly not appropriate for research work or conceptual understanding. It is invaluable for people int the chemical industry though, and it serves as a great introduction to the many subjects which chemical engineers deal with. I used to browse it in my UG days..

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#105

Post by btschaegg »

sbuk wrote: post #96

For you budding industrial designers; The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman Ways of Seeing - Jon Berger Principles of Form and Design - Wucius Wong Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work - Nigel Cross

I'm currently reading Don Norman's book and I'd like to add that to me it seems to be a very worthwhile read for everyone who designs things that are used by humans. And by that, I explicitly also mean GUIs, APIs, IDEs, programming languages & DSLs...

The book is very focused on what makes good design good, and only provides examples as illustrations. It's really more about applied psychology than design per se (in fact, Norman states in the preface that the original title was "The psychology of everyday things").

Edit: As an example in Software Engineering: His formalization of how humans interact with things (form a plan to reach a goal -> interact with the thing to advance toward said goal -> evaluate the outcome, rinse repeat) and the potential error sources on the way (distractions, unclear consequences, unclear affordances...) make it obvious why in many functional languages, the REPL is such a great tool.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#107

Post by cm2187 »

ratsimihah wrote: post #103
cm2187 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied engineering, applied maths and finance. I structured interest rate derivatives for a while. That’s the book I recommend to new joiners, even those without a stem background.

I'm seeing the 10th edition for £230 and the eight edition for cheaper. Would you be able to tell whether investing in the newer edition is worth?

Are you talking about the Sadr book? I am not aware that there are multiple editions. The kindle version is $70/£55 on amazon.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#108

Post by vinayms »

(The title of the post must be changed to something more neutral because by answering the poster self declares that they are an expert, which not only seems unlikely of most people, but also makes ones such as yours truly withhold from answering due to the connotations, and requires prefaces of this kind to address their apprehensions.)

Software Engineering

About C++: The Design and Evolution of C++ and The C++ Programming Language, both by Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++. The first one is a snapshot of his philosophy during early years of C++ and is useful to understand the motivations etc. It provides insight. The second one, after the necessary introduction to the language, shows how he uses C++, or expects to be used, which is interesting in its own way.

About algorithms: Algorithm Design by Kleinberg and Tardos. This gives the much needed insight instead of maths equations, data structure implementations or a catalog of what to apply where, which are all good, but are useless without insight.

Mechanical Engineering (ME is a large field, and I will limit to these two books.)

Stephen Timoshenko's two volume Strength of Materials is a seminal work, and still relevant, on a topic that is at the core of mechanical and civil engineering.

Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design deals with designing machine parts, which is in a sense an applied strength of materials topic, and the book addresses that part quite effectively, though not as comprehensively as Timoshenko's. More importantly, the book gives enough motivation and insight for the design process, without which engineers would just be "design monkeys" that use latest CAE packages.

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