Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 91 posts

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#11

Post by the_third_wave »

Baden-Powell's "Scouting for boys", Jack London's "The Call of the Wild", The Commodore 64 Reference Manual... just to name a few. The first one because it lured me to the great outdoors, the second one because it pointed me where to go - I paddled the Yukon from Whitehorse to the Bering Strait with a water- and most likely bulletproof solar-powered "Virgin WebPlayer" and a hat/canoe-mounted camera to record it "all" (the camera was not totally waterproof so it died just before Eagle, the border town between Canada and Alaska...), the third one (which I actually destroyed way before I paddled that river) because it laid bare the soul of the new machine.

For the rest I just read whatever I can get hold of, I don't really have any "cornerstone books" - probably because I've seen too many of them rise to fame to later decline when the fad they promoted got out of fashion...

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#13

Post by idontwantthis »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #10

Probably not the answer you are looking for but Carnegie's 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'. So much of our career path is decided on relations more so than deliverables, also self-promotion is key but it doesn't come naturally for everybody. The idea that I shouldn't self-promote (because somehow it felt like bragging) and that people will notice if I do amazing work but stay silent was probably one of the…

I’d recommend reading this and then immediately reading Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

Carnegie opened my eyes to how to communicate productively, but it’s also a really manipulative way of being.

Nonviolent communication comes from a position of love and understanding instead of just getting what you want.

There is significant overlap, but where they differ, NVC is going to lead to better relationships especially with family.

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#16

Post by tootie »

throwaway0asd wrote: post #2

As a self taught developer there are only a few books I read early in my career that seriously impacted how I write code. 1. XML Schema by Priscilla Walmsley - https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-XML-Schema-Priscilla-Walms... 2. DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith - https://www.amazon.com/DOM-Scripting-Design-JavaScript-Docum... 3. CSS Pocket Reference - Eric Meyer - https://www.amazon.com/CSS-Pocket-Reference-Visual-Present…

Oh yeah, have to dig back the to heyday of O'Reilley. I think Webmaster in a Nutshell and Learning Perl were the ones I loved most dearly.

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#17

Post by sedeki »

rg111 wrote: post #7

1. Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker 2. Quantum Mechanics by Eisberg, Resnick 3. Mathematical Physics by Arfken, Weber, Harris 4. Introduction to Statistical Learning with R by Hastie et al. 5. Deep Learning for Coders by Jeremy Howard

I want to self-learn physics from scratch. I have a degree in mathematics, but my understanding of physics is embarrasingly shallow.

Is Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday et al a good starting point for me?

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#18

Post by vmilner »

sedeki wrote: post #17
rg111 wrote: post #7

1. Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, Walker 2. Quantum Mechanics by Eisberg, Resnick 3. Mathematical Physics by Arfken, Weber, Harris 4. Introduction to Statistical Learning with R by Hastie et al. 5. Deep Learning for Coders by Jeremy Howard

I want to self-learn physics from scratch. I have a degree in mathematics, but my understanding of physics is embarrasingly shallow. Is Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday et al a good starting point for me?

I would start with the Leonard Susskind Theoretical Minimum series (books and YouTube Videos) and then see if you need to try other texts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theoretical_Minimum

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#19

Post by spapas82 »

* The C Programming Language. 2nd Edition. nuff said.

* Learn C++ in 21 days. May seem strange from the title, but this was the book that helped me really grok OO design. It's examples about mammals horses dogs and unicorns (!) have stick to me for ever.

* Digital Computers (this is a greek-only book, publish date was 1979 or something): We had this book for a course at our first year on the University. It introduced everything from transistors to logical gates to flip flops, to more complex circuts to a complete (teaching) ALU to writing ASM for that ALU. Understand everything was a revalation to me.

Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?

#20

Post by dccoolgai »

"Adaptive Web Design" by Gustafson. This is how the Web _should_ be made.

The Network one by Ilya Gregorik. There's just not a lot of other material that covers this and certainly not this thoroughly. This one is probably responsible for me "looking smart in front of others" more than any other book on the list.

"100 things every designer should know about people" by Weinschenk (sp?). Actually I take it back: _this_ is the most "look smarter than everyone" book you can read if you work anywhere around the web. Especially if you have to argue with designers.

I have a few more, but I'd start with those.

Post reply on HN