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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?

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in getting this book. What are the things you liked about it?

It's pretty practical so far. Right now I'm just finishing up chapter 4 (HTTP Servers, Routing, and Middleware), so I haven't completed all of it. But as it stands, a lot of what you go through, you reasonably expect you may be able to use on an actual pen test. The real power though, is when you're building out your own tooling with these things. You just set up a framework in the book, but this is all easily extend…

Thank you! I read a little bit more about it and I think I'll give it a Go ;)

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

#113
The entire book Structure and Intrerpretation of Computer Programs is like that. It explains how to implement the language Scheme in any language (by decomposing the problem to small enough atomic entities you can implement and combine them in any language). I suppose it’s excellent practice since the book uses only Scheme, so the reader must implement the primitives of the interpreter themselves. So you need to figure out how to implement tiny things yourself (which is fun) and then goes on to show how those combine together into a wonderfull whole.

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

#114
not sure if this fits the bill but Car Hacker's Handbook by OpenGarages http://opengarages.org/handbook/ helped me to understand CAN, the ECU, and mess with my car in ways I never thought possible. The security lesson is an added bonus.

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

#116
Python Crash Course [1]

This book is especially good for beginners in python, it feels as if the author is teaching you in person. All the exercises in every chapter builds to a mini project by the end of that chapter. One can skip the basics section and jump into the projects section which has: Alien Invasion (game programming with pygame), Data Visualization, and Web Development (using Django).

[1] https://nostarch.com pythoncrashcourse2e

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

#117
post #22

A Curios Moon - a data science mystery that teaches you PostgreSQL by working on projects that use real nasa data sets in a fictional setting (your role as a data science intern at red:4) https://bigmachine.io/products/a-curious-moon/

This is really nice book. It assumes you are a developer/good with computers, though, so some of the things like dev environment setup are ommited

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

#118
Not a book, but if you're looking to learn modern SQL in a hands-on way, I created Mastery with SQL (masterywithsql.com) specifically because I was frustrated with traditional SQL (and PostgreSQL) content that's lacking in high quality and challenging exercises.

Mastery with SQL has over 150 exercises, ranging from easy to very difficult, where you're primarily working with a single database and trying to answer interesting questions about a business (which months saw the highest revenue, best sales employee, most watched movie, find missing records, etc.).

I spent an enormous amount of time working on the exercises for this course (more than the actual content itself) and people who take the course consistently tell me working through the problems helped them learn SQL more deeply than they've learned anywhere else.

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

#119

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…

Boy if you could find the name of that book I'd really appreciate it

you might be interested in howacarworks.com. I stumbled across these videos on youtube earlier this year when I was researching the topic. I was unwilling to pay because it was more for my own curiosity than an actual need to learn but it seemed pretty thorough.

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

#120

Not a book, but if you're looking to learn modern SQL in a hands-on way, I created Mastery with SQL (masterywithsql.com) specifically because I was frustrated with traditional SQL (and PostgreSQL) content that's lacking in high quality and challenging exercises. Mastery with SQL has over 150 exercises, ranging from easy to very difficult, where you're primarily working with a single database and trying to answer inte…

I can vouch for this. I took the course after seeing it posted in HN and feel like among other things I finally understand joins
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