A non-standard book list for software developers

Post by Turing_Machine » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

bennysomething wrote: post #52

electrondood wrote: post #23

In a similar topic of books about system design, someone on HN recommended A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander et. al. They're not about designing distributed software systems... they're a complete design language for the proper design of a city, from the grossest elements to the most granular. You can flip to a random page and understand what makes a front yard really fulfill…

I haven't heard of this book, is it actually about designing cities? I'm probably way off but all I can't think of is that once we started designing cities we built crap. Take the UK for example all its beautiful amazing places were built before we had planning offices. They seem to just have evolved.

Post by rmckayfleming » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #72

exdsq wrote: post #28

On the note of Euclid's Elements, I took a short course on Plato's "Theory of Forms" when I was just learning to really code and it's what helped OOP click in my head. It's fun when totally random subjects help you get an insight into one another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms

I learned to program, and only later read a book on metaphysics, and was rather surprised to find that the book was entirely about software design, although the authors did not seem to be aware of this.

Post by agumonkey » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

master_yoda_1 wrote: post #69

I don’t understand why old programmers are so much fascinated by lisp. If it would have been good it would have survived today.

Post by readme » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #74

readme wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Studying calculus in particular makes little sens for compsci. yeah it makes little sense if you don't want to be able to write programs that solve the world's major problems so if you are content with writing cat picture apps, skip calculus

You need a lot more than calculus to actually be useful at doing that though, unless you mean just throwing AI at the problem. If you want to write a CFD solver then you need a lot more than just blindly learnt calculus. If you want to blow up the world using fuzzily applied financial models then you might not.... (you do actually)

Post by exdsq » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #106

rmckayfleming wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you happen to remember which book that was?

I don't, i'm afraid. It was probably the shortest book on metaphysics available in my town library at the time.