Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

Mastery - Robert Greene (2012).

At the point in my life where I read this book, I was a recent ComSci grad, I had already started working and it was clear to me that I needed some framework to understand where I was going. Not just in terms of software, but in general, I needed some north star as far as a process and an ideal to achieve were concerned.

Reading this book gave me exactly that. A clear, understandable framework that explained the progression from understanding how to do something, to being good at doing something, to being a master. While it didn't give me a step by step guide, the lessons in this book gave me ideals by which to work out my own trajectory, whether or not I felt at any given point as though the efforts I was putting in were guiding me towards mastery, but more so than anything, this book gave me patience. I read somewhere that (maybe just in my country, I can't remember) once you've been a software developer for 5 years, you have crossed over the median age of experience in the industry. As a younger engineer, I was impatient, in a rush to do Interesting Work™ and had no appreciation for how whatever I was doing at the current moment was perhaps exactly what I needed to do to get to what was important, which is mastery. That is to say, getting past the point of good to the point of exemplary, not just being a consumer or repeater of skills but a creator of them. I read this book in Year 1 of my software career, I am now in year 5 and I know that because of this book, years 10, 15 and 20 will bring more reward and more joy in deepening skill.

Compiler theory is a wide topic, here the focus is on static analysis, while the Dragon Book is more wide-spectrum.

However, I can tell you that this book is so much better than the Muchnick (Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation). The way data-flow analysis is explained in Muchnick sucks, while in POPA it's vertical but once you get over it, everything clicks and you are able to design new analyses in a sound way.

My neuroscience professors referred to Principles of Neuroscience as "the Bible" as well. I think that's testament to how good these recommendations are.

> does not show as understanding

That you are saying I didn't understand the book when presumably you didn't even read the book is true irony. I merely explained that it dissects various religious fallacies, that is not throwing stones, as it would be the same as taking a book about mathematical logic and asking why it does not ponder why P ^ ¬P in a philosophical sense; it is not the purpose of this book. It may be the purpose of another one, but not this one.

Not my field per se, but in a college course they had us read "All I Need to Know About Manufacturing I Learned in Joe's Garage"

The entire book was a short, simple allegory about Lean manufacturing that walks you through exactly why Lean is so powerful, in a direct comparison to traditional methods. The book was written to be handed out to dumb auto executives.

I still think about the book a lot today even in the software world.