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Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

#51
post #11

Ray Tracing in a Weekend( https://raytracing.github.io/books/RayTracingInOneWeekend.ht... ) is an incredible guide to work through to write a basic functioning ray tracer.

Was going to mention this myself. Can recommend this book, it's great fun and you can indeed get through it in a weekend.

Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know the name of this book, sounds perfect for learning about combustion engines.

I'm hoping someone else remembers it and furnishes the title. I was a kid when I read it, and the book was already old, so publication date circa 1970-80. Best I can do. I trawled through book cover images but no love. - - - - edit to add: It's probably "Auto Mechanics Fundamentals" by Stockel. I'm still looking for pictures of the insides of the book, but going by what I can see here, it's very likely: https://archi…

How Cars Work by Tom Newton OR Auto Mechanics Fundamentals by Martin T. Stockel

Maybe?

Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

#57

I've been making my way through "Writing an Intepreter in Go" and "Writing a compiler in Go" https://interpreterbook.com/ The Go stuff is really just a means to an end, the real value comes from the practical learnings of how to build a functioning interpreter and compiler (and virtual machine!) for a programming language the author made up called Monkey. It's not a book full of theory but it lays some nice foundatio…

On a similar note, Go Programming Blueprints, which just takes you right into practical affairs - project organization, template loading / rendering, a little bit of testing, REST apis, oAuth, image handling (via oauth, gravatar and file upload), databases, CLI's, external APIs, App Engine, microservices, gRPC and Docker. The main gripe I've had with it so far is that the bit of HTML / JS that is in there seems rather dated, but on the other hand, it's good old jquery from CDNs instead of bothering the reader with setting up nodejs, webpack and all that.

I really should kick myself up the arse and go beyond chapter 3, I'm doing Go in a real project now.

Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

#58

Not quite what you're talking about but the best book on car mechanics I ever read... It was red, and textbook-sized, hardcover. Lots of drawings. It literally started with an explosion in a can, and then progressively enhanced that idea step-by-step: add a lid to the can to capture the energy, add a lever to keep the can lid from flying away, and then attach the lever to a wheel so that it returns the lid to the top…

Commenting to save this one.

Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

#59

NAND to Tetris? https://www.nand2tetris.org/

+1. The projects in this class are extremely well defined and build upon each other. And they have a framework and test cases for validating your work, so you know if you have the right answer before moving on.

Re: Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building projects?

#60

I'm currently writing a book for PragProg called Building Distributed Services with Go (though it mostly applies to other languages too) that's walks you through building a distributed database from scratch. You can sign up on this mailing list to know when it's available: https://travisjeffery.us4.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=1e3ff7... .

1. that link returns a 404.

2. Do you have a TOC or expected date for this to be out? Extremely interested!

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