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Books I Recommend

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Re: Books I Recommend

#91

Post by dmix »

sevensor wrote: post #85
minkzilla wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on how people model themselves on him ? I have never read Feynmann. I am in university right now and was going to pick up one of his books soon.

He was anti-authoritarian to the core, a prankster, and undeniably brilliant. But copying the first two doesn't make you the third. Picking locks and doing physics problems at the strip club won't help you become the next Feynmann. He could get away with that stuff because he was uniquely brilliant. Also, being obviously-smarter-than-you is tiresome, even in people who can legitimately cop that attitude. Feynmann him…

I'm curious how much that has to do with being around students as much as Feynmann's influence.

> Picking locks and doing physics problems at the strip club won't help you become the next Feynmann.

Those also sound a lot like stereotypes of the smart wannabe-cool (or wannabe-smart cool?) people in films and TV. Just look at the awful stereotypes of smug-smarter-than-all young guy in Goodwill Hunting for example. Or any movie where people write equations on glass with a marker.

That said, I'm not around physics grads much so I'm not expert. Although the one physics grad I know well fits into your categorization well. Nothing worse than a "quirky intellectual" without the intellectual part down.

Re: Books I Recommend

#92

Post by gordon_freeman »

One of the great books I am currently reading is Meditations* by Marcus Aurelius. This book reminds me time and again not to worry about things that I don't control and only focus on things that I can. This book introduces Stoic philosophy and I am surprised it is not that popular among Tech community (rarely being mentioned in Best Books HN posts).

*There are many translations of this book and the one I feel is easy to read is the one by Gregory Hays: https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-New-Translation-Marcus-Au...

Re: Books I Recommend

#93

Post by ChristianGeek »

tejinderss wrote: post #40
kojackst wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I know about her is that she was a member of the Docker team and now works for Microsoft. She seems like a good professional and is popular among those who are into twitter, blogging and events, but I don't know if there's anything particular remarkable about her (if you are thinking about celebrities such as Ritchie, Linus, Stallman and others).

She also joined GitHub recently and left in couple of weeks.

Based on her LinkedIn, she seems to be set on short-circuiting her career before it has time to start; 8 years out of school and as many jobs, two for 4 months only and none longer than 17 months. She has some impressive credentials within the Docker/container community, but that’s about it.

Re: Books I Recommend

#94

Post by de_Selby »

sevensor wrote: post #85
minkzilla wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on how people model themselves on him ? I have never read Feynmann. I am in university right now and was going to pick up one of his books soon.

He was anti-authoritarian to the core, a prankster, and undeniably brilliant. But copying the first two doesn't make you the third. Picking locks and doing physics problems at the strip club won't help you become the next Feynmann. He could get away with that stuff because he was uniquely brilliant. Also, being obviously-smarter-than-you is tiresome, even in people who can legitimately cop that attitude. Feynmann him…

If that's all the people you are referring to took from his books there was probably no hope for them anyway, at least at that stage in their life - it does sound like it's just immaturity you are talking about.

I think there are some good lessons for a young person in his playful curiosity about the world & the anti-authority message was mostly about not taking things for granted & not to be afraid to push further for a more complete answer and question things just because they have always been done a certain way.

Re: Books I Recommend

#95

Post by ai_ia »

I recently read Shoe Dogs and boy that was an eye opening experience. I loved it very much that I re read it. You can literally feel the excitement of Phil through his words. Maybe it was because I was doing something similar i.e starting my own thing. But still it's a book, everyone can take away something. 10/10

Re: Books I Recommend

#96

Post by cjarrett »

byproxy wrote: post #46

I wish this place was a bit more hospitable to literary fiction.

I try to specialize in American authors--but If you want a random selection of my favorites to recommend in order to understand this modern era of America, I present these three:

J.R. - William Gaddis (1975)

(A very nice blog post on it here: https://biblioklept.org/2012/02/09/i-riff-again-on-william-g...)

J R, ambitious sixth-grader in torn sneakers, bred on the challenge of "free enterprise" and fired up by heady mail-order promises of "success." His teachers would rather be elsewhere, his principal doubles as a bank president, his Long Island classroom mirrors the world he sees around him -- a world of public relations and private betrayals where everything (and everyone) wears a price tag, a world of "deals" where honesty is no substitute for experience, and the letter of the law flouts its spirit at every turn.

Operating from the remote anonymity of phone booths and the local post office, with beachheads in a seedy New York cafeteria and a catastrophic, carton-crammed tenement on East 96th Street, J R parlays a deal for thousands of surplus Navy picnic forks through penny stock flyers and a distant textile-mill bankruptcy into a nationwide, hydra-headed "family of companies."

Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon (2013)

It deals with government paranoia, conspiracy theories for 9/11, It uses Computer and ‘deepweb’ Internet as the framing device for the novel—which is why I bring it up in this context. It somehow fits fairly nicely into the political thriller genre, while addressing modern concerns.

Don Delillo - White Noise (1985)

While Jack Gladney is an intellectual academic, an expert in the unlikely field of “Hitler studies” (and something of a fraud, to boot), he’s also a pretty normal dad. Casual reviewers of White Noise tend to overlook the sublime banality of domesticity represented in DeLillo’s signature novel: Gladney is an excellent father to his many kids and step-kids, and DeLillo draws their relationships with a realism that belies–and perhaps helps to create–the novel’s satirical bent.

Re: Books I Recommend

#97

Post by decebalus1 »

> The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change: Every single book list should include Camille’s book. It is a great read for managers and non-managers and has given me the tools for knowing what is normal and what is not.

Ugh.. no. If there was a book I read this year which read as if it was written for the sake of writing a book, it was 'The Manager's Path'. It was a series of insipid blog posts consisting of frequent itemizations of 'truths'. So many repetitions that I legit thought I mis-touched my kindle when turning pages a couple of times as I felt I read the same paragraph twice across a couple of chapters. Looking at the table of contents it looks as if it's fairly organized but when you're reading it, it's mostly all over the place. Also, if you spent more than a couple of years in the industry nothing in the book should be a surprise.

I was so hyped before reading the book as literally everyone recommended it but honestly it fell short for a generic non-fiction read.

Re: Books I Recommend

#100

Post by diego_moita »

ai_ia wrote: post #95

I recently read Shoe Dogs and boy that was an eye opening experience. I loved it very much that I re read it. You can literally feel the excitement of Phil through his words. Maybe it was because I was doing something similar i.e starting my own thing. But still it's a book, everyone can take away something. 10/10

> I recently read Shoe Dogs

I suspect you're referring to "Shoe Dog" (singular, not plural) by Phil Knight describing the early history of Nike.

It is a fascinating book, indeed.

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