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Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

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Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#15
Design Patterns by Gamma et al. would be an example from software architecture. It catalogs a couple of dozen patterns that recur in projects regardless of their specific domains.

Open Source Software Licensing by Rosen is another. It identifies two broad categories of open source licenses and shows how various licenses fit into each.

These two books gave me a framework for thinking about large areas that had until I read them been quite confusing. They turn a chaotic jumble of special cases into a simple framework for forming hypotheses and making predictions.

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#16

I’ve been thinking I wish someone would write a mental model oriented book converting the models for git, react/frp, OO, prototypical OO, Kubernetes, blockchain, DB indexes, peer to peer networking and whatever else. Maybe each chapter is a different author. I think mental model first learning would be a lot faster. Each git command can be explained in the mental model rather than as a stand-alone thing. You could pr…

I kinda understand what you are saying, but not fully. Do you have an example of such article (or video) on one of the topics you listed?

Re: Ask HN: Which books teach mental models?

#17
1) Sources of Power: How people make decisions by Gary Klein

Introduces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_primed_decision It really resonated with me.

2) Thinking and Deciding by Jonathan Baron. Quite thorough and comprehensive.

3) There are also books on "TRIZ"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ) a technique for problem solving, which arose from the former Soviet Union.

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