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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?

#141

Post by gjm11 »

sterlind wrote: post #66

Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skeina. CLRS has all the nitty-gritty but I didn't jive with it at all. Skeina won't tell you line-for-line how to balance a red-black tree, but it gets the idea across with clarity. Also, the war stories are both interesting and useful. Not the book for everyone; most important is to pick one you enjoy reading.

I think Skiena + CLRS is a particularly fine combination. CLRS is dry and intimidating for all but the most theoretically inclined. Skiena is sloppy and handwavy. Put 'em together and you have something really excellent.

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

#142

Post by dlkinney »

minhazm423 wrote: post #94
akjssdk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McGee has a very methodical way of discussing food. It is basically like a scientific textbook in that regard, with deeper dives into almost every topic. It is also incredibly information dense, which makes it a truly a 'bible' in my opinion. And for what it is worth, many other of the more methodical chefs on the internet think so too.

>many other of the more methodical chefs such as? is there a community for this?

Serious Eats Food Lab [1] Egullet [2]

I can also recommend Modernist Cuisine, which is a sort of text book version of On Food and Cooking. Though it has a lot of industrial equipment and ingredients that aren't applicable to home cooks, it has excellent photos and diagrams that illustrate the cooking process from a biological and physical level. (Modernist Cuisine at Home isn't nearly as comprehensive, though it shirks a lot of the weird/expensive equipment and additives.)

Also Modernist Bread for breads is fantastic and comprehensive.

1. https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab

2. https://forums.egullet.org/

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

#143

Post by sideshowb »

dvlsg wrote: post #76
sethhochberg wrote: post #61

Putting my mostly-retired audio engineer hat back on for a minute... The Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reinforcement-Handbook-Gary-Dav... This is basically the soundman's bible. Sold for an aspiring live sound engineer, has much more than just advice for live sound guys - covering everything from microphones to acoustics to basic electronics to handy rules of thumb to MIDI, all writ…

Does it touch on mixing / mastering at all? I have a suspicion that some of my friends will be looking to me to put together some demos in the near future, so I'd be very interested in some beginner/intermediate knowledge around that.

I read an enormous amount on mixing/mastering and was still rubbish. It's hard to write about perception of sound.

I would recommend instead finding a well reputed mixing/mastering engineer who offers lessons and pay for some. Bring them your best mix (in the DAW on your laptop) ask them where it is wrong and how to improve it. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. In my case this cost around £100 (http://oood.net/mastering/about-stooodio-mastering) and helped enormously. My friends now think I'm great at "mastering" by which they mean mixing, I have nothing even approaching mastering engineer ears & I suspect Colin still wouldn't think much of my mixes either but that's why I'll happily pay him to master them if I ever have time for music again :)

I know there are online practical courses these days, in theory these could be better than a book as they would have audio/interactive examples. No idea if they actually are any good though.

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

#144

Post by gjm11 »

kamaal wrote: post #121
vinayms wrote: post #108

(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++ Progr…

>>Algorithm Design by Kleinberg and Tardos. Which other Algorithms book would you recommend?

I recommend getting two.

Introduction to algorithms, Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest/Stein. Rigorous, detailed, thorough. Dry, technical, intimidating.

The algorithm design manual, Skiena. Friendly, informal, heuristic, insightful. Sloppy, handwavy, gappily incomplete.

They fill one another's gaps very nicely.

[EDITED to add:] I haven't read Kleinberg & Tardos, recommended above; it sounds like it may fill much the same niche as Skiena.

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

#146

Post by spatulon »

allenleee wrote: post #14

In functional programming: [0] The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [1] The_Little_Schemer [2] Programming in Haskell - Graham Hutton [3] Types and Programming Languages-Benjamin C. Pierce --- PDFS [0]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Func... ) [1]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Func... ) [2]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Fu…

I just finished re-reading SICP. If you're going to read it on a screen, I recommend this version: http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/

I'm 1/3 of the way through The Little Schemer. So far, it's not taught me anything I didn't already grok from SICP. I hope it picks up!

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

#147

Post by eatonphil »

ekr wrote: post #49
allenleee wrote: post #14

In functional programming: [0] The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [1] The_Little_Schemer [2] Programming in Haskell - Graham Hutton [3] Types and Programming Languages-Benjamin C. Pierce --- PDFS [0]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Func... ) [1]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Func... ) [2]( https://github.com/allenleein/brains/blob/master/Zen-of-Fu…

I would also add "ML for the working programmer", which is, perhaps surprisingly, more about functional programming than the particularities of ML. In any case, it is a great book.

It is one of the only accessible texts on Standard ML, I'll give it that... But it goes neither deep nor wide in content. I did not find it very useful.

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

#148

Post by sideshowb »

sideshowb wrote: post #143
dvlsg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it touch on mixing / mastering at all? I have a suspicion that some of my friends will be looking to me to put together some demos in the near future, so I'd be very interested in some beginner/intermediate knowledge around that.

I read an enormous amount on mixing/mastering and was still rubbish. It's hard to write about perception of sound. I would recommend instead finding a well reputed mixing/mastering engineer who offers lessons and pay for some. Bring them your best mix (in the DAW on your laptop) ask them where it is wrong and how to improve it. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. In my case this cost around £100 ( http://oood…

Basically forget learning to master though. For your friend's demo, learn to do a reasonable mix then slap a limiter on the main output and boost the loudness as much as you can without losing quality.

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

#149

Post by amelius »

sethhochberg wrote: post #61

Putting my mostly-retired audio engineer hat back on for a minute... The Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reinforcement-Handbook-Gary-Dav... This is basically the soundman's bible. Sold for an aspiring live sound engineer, has much more than just advice for live sound guys - covering everything from microphones to acoustics to basic electronics to handy rules of thumb to MIDI, all writ…

Does this book tell me how to compute e.g. when a physical object hits another physical object, what the resulting sound will be like?

Or if object X (e.g. speaker cone) moves through air with velocity v(t), what will the sound be like at position P?

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

#150

Post by Loic »

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…

And if you are into fluid phase equilibria, "Thermodynamic Models: Fundamentals & Computational Aspects", by Michelsen and Mollerup.
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