I read/listen to a lot of books and the only book on there I’ve read so far is The Managers Path, which is about the transition of the software engineer in his/her career. It’s a great book for any software engineer, it’s short too. Given that I haven’t heard of many of the other books on the list, I’d say this is a good list I’ll be checking out a few of the titles. One trick about “reading” (listening) to a good ch…
Looks great but "Not available in your country". ?!?#@!!?
Shhesh, for a while there we thought we had achieved Cyberspace - now we're moving back to thousands of fuedal kingdoms all guarding their borders....
Counterpoint: while I agree that audio is useful for learning, I’d encourage everyone to not consider mental downtime wasted. And that we should resist the urge to fill it with content constantly. We must be able as humans to simply sit alone with our own thoughts. It’s as important for creativity and mental output as anything learned in those “dead”, “wasted” times.
Makes sense actually.. we all need time to think. I thinn walks where one could just let their mind wander are great. If I didn’t spend some time thinking I would’ve never built this thing :) Still though on these busy commutes, especially while standing, I find the time much better spent staying informed and learning but that’s just me.
That's why I prefer to listen to podcasts when taking walks etc, rather than full-on audiobooks - if my mind wanders and I start thinking about something else, it's not a big deal if I missed an episode of some tech podcast. With an audiobook, I have to try and find where my mind left off! (which is usually a lot more cumbersome than when the same thing happens while eye-reading)
Disagree. Some proofs are very straightforward and standard. Those are easily checkable with a solution guide.
Yes, some are straightforward. Most are not. For example, suppose a student shows that T: V --> W is bijective and linear on the way to proving a solution to an exercise. The textbook solution shows dim( V ) = dim( W ) and T is injective instead. Another student shows that dim( V ) = dim( W ) and T is surjective, and still another student simply uses the rank-nullity theorem directly All of these solutions are equiva…
Yes, which is why you include "several proofs of this could include..."
Disagree. Some proofs are very straightforward and standard. Those are easily checkable with a solution guide.
When you hit upon a proof like that, you know it. If you're struggling and need feedback, then your solution is probably more complicated than the elegant one in the book, and the question you're asking is, okay, my solution isn't great, but is it even a solution? There's a reason these books declare some level of "mathematical maturity" as a prerequisite. By the time you get to certain content you have to either be…
Think you missed my entire point of including solutions for the beginner, i.e., someone that lacks math maturity and the reasoning of how easily such a person could fool themselves into thinking their thought process is valid.
If you managed to read the Recognitions, J.R. will be a piece of cake and will reward you very well.
Besides being long, I didn't find "The Recognitions" exceedingly difficult. I was occasionally lost as to which character was speaking/being described, but the characters were mostly distinct enough to reason out. Pynchon's penchant for stringing along train-of-thought can be a bit more challenging. But, I definitely felt some proto-Pynchon vibes with Gaddis' writing.
That's a good assessment. I think my difficulty stemmed more from knowing that my Father could extract quite a bit from the text--especially since he is the son of a pastor/read the KJB at age 4 and could quote scripture to me seemingly at random. He is also the most interested out of my social group in art history, and is an english professor. Right up his alley!
Maybe I know too many physics grad students who self-consciously model themselves on him, but wouldn't recommend the Feynmann books to young people. It's too easy to end up as a pile of somebody else's quirks without his unique brilliance and humanity. Wait to read Feynmann until you have a fully formed ego.
another good reason is that he sexually harassed a lot of women and is a bad role model in at least that one very important way, so it should be read pretty critically.
Maybe I know too many physics grad students who self-consciously model themselves on him, but wouldn't recommend the Feynmann books to young people. It's too easy to end up as a pile of somebody else's quirks without his unique brilliance and humanity. Wait to read Feynmann until you have a fully formed ego.
The same could generally be said about anyone under 25 and philosophy books. Read the literature classics, sure (they're about philosophy and politics too), but reading treatises on someone else's hard-won idiosyncratic view of the world without the emotional barriers and critical filter erected by years of trial and error may just turn the young person into a parrot, or worse, a nihilist without a cause.
Out of curiosity, what would a nihilist with a cause look like?
I can't believe someone could read Feynman's sandwich story and still recommend that book.
agreed. part of breaking from the legacy and tradition of massive sexism and misogyny is critically evaluating things that subtly reinforce it (like Feynman's book).
but tech culture is pretty averse to doing that and will insist that it doesn't matter and we can ignore the sexism which is safely "in the past" (as if).
When you hit upon a proof like that, you know it. If you're struggling and need feedback, then your solution is probably more complicated than the elegant one in the book, and the question you're asking is, okay, my solution isn't great, but is it even a solution? There's a reason these books declare some level of "mathematical maturity" as a prerequisite. By the time you get to certain content you have to either be…
Think you missed my entire point of including solutions for the beginner, i.e., someone that lacks math maturity and the reasoning of how easily such a person could fool themselves into thinking their thought process is valid.
Someone who is a beginner will be working on easy material with a textbook that has very mild expectations of "mathematical maturity." Textbooks mostly (with a few intentional exceptions) calibrate the mathematical maturity they require according to how much work a student will have done in order to be ready to tackle the book's subject matter. Some people might think they can be ready to do problem sets in an advanced math textbook while skipping the work that would have given them the maturity it requires, but they are kidding themselves. They can't advance on the spectator track and then make a horizontal move over to actually doing the math. There's nothing wrong with people passively reading the material if they enjoy it, but if they want to tackle the problems, they are going to have to work through the earlier material by solving problems as well, and if they do that, they'll find that their sophistication increases along with the demands on it.
Think you missed my entire point of including solutions for the beginner, i.e., someone that lacks math maturity and the reasoning of how easily such a person could fool themselves into thinking their thought process is valid.
Someone who is a beginner will be working on easy material with a textbook that has very mild expectations of "mathematical maturity." Textbooks mostly (with a few intentional exceptions) calibrate the mathematical maturity they require according to how much work a student will have done in order to be ready to tackle the book's subject matter. Some people might think they can be ready to do problem sets in an advanc…
The way you were arguing makes it sound like you are against beginners having access to solutions, or that you completely misunderstood my initial argument. I am not arguing about anything other than that. If you want to address that in particular sure. I am not saying anything about people skipping material and getting bitten by it later.