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Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

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Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#41

Post by Jtsummers »

hyperman1 wrote: post #36

There was one about Mockingbirds I read a few decades ago. I think this is the one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird Nothing explicit computery or even technical in there. Only all kinds of invented birds with specific weird behavior. You need to know nothing above what a 10 year old knows (and be interested in logic). And yet, when you're at the end, it turns out you know what 'Y combinator' actua…

Pretty much everything by Smullyan is interesting (probably all, but I haven't read it all yet).

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#42

Post by eatonphil »

mindcrime wrote: post #40

Maybe Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes [1]. These techniques might not be useful to everybody, all the time, but they can be very handy in places. Edit: A couple of other suggestions. Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images [2] Mining of Massive Datasets [3] Algorithm Design Manual [4] Network Algorithmics [5] Neural Network Design [6] I think all of these fall into the…

That looks good! Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#44

Post by eatonphil »

Jtsummers wrote: post #41
hyperman1 wrote: post #36

There was one about Mockingbirds I read a few decades ago. I think this is the one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird Nothing explicit computery or even technical in there. Only all kinds of invented birds with specific weird behavior. You need to know nothing above what a 10 year old knows (and be interested in logic). And yet, when you're at the end, it turns out you know what 'Y combinator' actua…

Pretty much everything by Smullyan is interesting (probably all, but I haven't read it all yet).

What else have you read of his that you recommend (related or not to this thread)?

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#46

Post by Jtsummers »

eatonphil wrote: post #44
Jtsummers wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everything by Smullyan is interesting (probably all, but I haven't read it all yet).

What else have you read of his that you recommend (related or not to this thread)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Smullyan

Under "Logic Puzzles", through To Mock a Mockingbird (about to reread it because I read it years ago and a lot of things didn't stick at that point). I picked up his books to flesh out my home library (I'd read some of them back in college) and started rereading from the beginning. Have a notepad and pencil to help puzzle through the problems (or index cards, I have a few stuck in the books).

They span from riddles, to logic puzzles (the classic Knight & Knave puzzles), to computation-based puzzles with combinators.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting, mildly impractical, well-written books on software?

#48

Post by tjr »

The requirements seem a bit unclear to me, but I'll toss a couple of titles into the ring:

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum (Alan Cooper) makes the case that user interfaces can and should be easier to understand. I think in the years since this book was written, there has been much improvement in the UI world overall, but still worth thinking about.

Expert C Programming (Deep C Secrets) (Peter van der Linden) goes into some fascinating technical (and historical) tidbits related to C.

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