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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?

#121

Post by Buttons840 »

jhbadger wrote: post #5

I liked "Deep Learning and the Game of Go" (by Max Pumperla and Kevin Ferguson). You actually create an AI Go player, one which may not be quite on the level of AlphaGo, but one that is probably better than any traditional min-max based player that was the state of the art until recently.

I skimmed that book. I already knew some machine learning and AI techniques, so it was a bit to verbose for me, but was a good book.

I never did get a working Go AI though. I'm a Go beginner and never created an AI that was close to challenging to me. I didn't follow the book exactly though, I did my own thing loosely guided by the book, so my failures do not necessarily reflect poorly on the book.

Did you ever get a working Go AI?

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

#122

Post by Gunax »

carapace wrote: post #17

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…

There is a great WW2-era training film from the US military on how rifles work.

Don't want to link it as I am at work, but it's on YouTube.

It follows the same philosophy--start with a tube. Add a bolt. Add a trigger. Add a magazine. Etc.

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

#123

Post by colechristensen »

SadWebDeveloper wrote: post #109

Whats the best book for learning about electronics, soldering, pcbs, fpga... m looking for something more project based rather than here is 500 pages of theory and some illustrations (like most of the books outhere) better if start slow (with protoboards) and ends with fpgas.

I'm not sure there is a best, but different styles that appeal to different people.

One prominent candidate is Horowitz's Art of Electronics. Learning the Art of Electronics is a hands on lab oriented course with one project per chapter.

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

#124

Post by celnardur »

In my compilers class we used a book that my professor wrote that takes you through all the steps and algorithms for making a compiler for a c like language. You can find it online for free at: https://www3.nd.edu/~dthain/compilerbook/

I really like this book because it really takes you through all the steps. However, it's very readable and provides great examples of how to actually implement some of the components.

I also like it because it explains how to use tools like Yacc and Bison, while explaining how they work underneath and the motivation for using such tools.

I leaned on this book heavily in the class where the main assignment was writing our own compiler from scratch in C, and I'm currently using it now to make a compiler in rust for a custom language.

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

#125

Post by HomeDeLaPot »

carapace wrote: post #33
muhammadusman wrote: post #21

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…

Nice! My parents have this book, and I read some of it as a teen!

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

#126

Post by truncate »

djhworld wrote: post #26

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 similar topic, back in school we followed "Modern Compiler Implementation using ML" by Andrew Appel. Pretty good book, which teaches good amount of theory, but also has a project where you implement pieces of compiler as you progress through the book. Its fairly challenging, as you will generate assembly (MIPS) instead of just interpreting and apply various optimizations (and register allocation) in the end.

Its not exactly from scratch as there is some boilerplate code to keep you focused on concepts. It was quite fun, except I didn't really like working with SML (OCaml would have been nicer IMO, and I think you can choose to use that by finding the ported boilerplate on Github). Also has C and Java versions of this book.

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

#127

Post by j_m_b »

larrywright wrote: post #66

I know you specifically asked for books, but I think these are too good to not mention. Ben Eater has a series of Youtube videos that explores how computers work, starting from first principles, and in the process you build an 8 bit computer (or a 6502 computer in a different series). He actually sells kits of the parts to build it yourself, or you can buy the parts yourself. It’s a deep dive into how computers work,…

One thing I like about Eater is that he keeps mistakes that he's made in the content. He's not some rockstar, just a curious guy whose made a lot of very interesting videos.

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

#129

Post by larrywright »

j_m_b wrote: post #127
larrywright wrote: post #66

I know you specifically asked for books, but I think these are too good to not mention. Ben Eater has a series of Youtube videos that explores how computers work, starting from first principles, and in the process you build an 8 bit computer (or a 6502 computer in a different series). He actually sells kits of the parts to build it yourself, or you can buy the parts yourself. It’s a deep dive into how computers work,…

One thing I like about Eater is that he keeps mistakes that he's made in the content. He's not some rockstar, just a curious guy whose made a lot of very interesting videos.

Agreed. Watching him debug something is very enlightening. The whole idea of setting things up so that he can manually trigger clock cycles to step through what the processor is doing was awesome.

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

#130

Post by dceddia »

rckoepke wrote: post #106
dceddia wrote: post #44

I don’t know if it’s alright to mention my own work, but the book I wrote to teach React is project-based. It’s got a bunch of very small projects and exercises rather than a single massive one, and the later projects review concepts from the earlier ones. It’s called Pure React and it’s digital-only right now (maybe one day I’ll get it printed!) https://daveceddia.com/pure-react/

I'm glad you did! Additionally, is there any reason that I should learn React using Node.js rather than python? I'm not particularly anti-Node.js but I'd rather learn Django simultaneously if it was all the same difference.

Nope! The choice of backend is entirely independent from the choice of front end. React pairs nicely with Django, Rails, Elixir, PHP... anything that can serve static files, basically :)

The only time it could start to matter is if you want to do server-side rendering of the React app, in order to serve complete static HTML for the first page load. It can matter for SEO and page load speed. If you need SSR, you need a backend that supports it. It looks like it's at least possible with Django, according to a 30-second google search: https://github.com/nielslerches/django-react-ssr (ymmv, that repo has 4 stars, so I dunno :)

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