1. An anonymous poaster in an image board who was very very passionate about SWE to such a degree it made me passionate about it too.
Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
31–40 of 91 posts
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#32* Beyond Java, by Bruce Tate
Convinced me to leave Java and start doing Ruby instead. Did a lot more programming languages since then.
* Javascript the Good Parts, by Douglas Crockford
Taught me how to write better js. Of course since then the language has changed so much that this little booklet is completely obsolete, but for a brief period, this book was absolutely essential.
It's hard to single out a third book. No other books come close to these two. Most books are too thick and wordy and boring, and I'm not a fast reader. I'd love to list one of the books about design patterns here, but I never finished any of them, so I think I'm going with:
* Beginning Scala
I haven't actually done any big projects in Scala, but it was captivating, showed me how beautiful a programming language could be (but also how ugly, in later chapters), and changed how I think about programming languages. I still regret never having actually begun anything in Scala, although I still fear the complexity of its type system. The world needs a cleaner Scala.
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#33= Out of the Crisis by Deming. Everyone ought to read and absorb Deming. It's hands-down the most life-changing read I've ever come across, by a wide margin. Dealing with life statistically rather than overreacting to randomness means it's possible to achieve much higher levels of effeciveness and productivity. Working with people to unleash their inner motivation is vastly superior to trying to carrot-and-whip them…
In his later years Deming consulted with Gallery Furniture in Houston, and "Mattress Mac" has been one of the most respectable local entrepreneur/philanthropists for some time now.
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#34= Out of the Crisis by Deming. Everyone ought to read and absorb Deming. It's hands-down the most life-changing read I've ever come across, by a wide margin. Dealing with life statistically rather than overreacting to randomness means it's possible to achieve much higher levels of effeciveness and productivity. Working with people to unleash their inner motivation is vastly superior to trying to carrot-and-whip them…
I love "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" and recommend it at least once a month to someone working on non-greenfield projects with inadequate documentation and test coverage.
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#35- The BASIC book that came with my TI-83+ calculator
All the essentials of programming
- The C Programming Language
The book to start getting serious
- Mathematics for 3D Game Programming & Computer Graphics
The book that finally helped me understand the university math I had never managed to grasp
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#361. 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 am a mathematician, too and trying to learn physics in my spare time. I don't like the 1000 pages tomes targeted for undergraduates, the Halliday book is well-liked, but since you already have a degree in mathematics, you may get a bit bored.
I like the No-Nonsense Series by Jakob Schwichtenberg a lot. I worked through the Classical Mechanics book already and found that it teaches the conceptual framework very nicely. I plan to go through the Electrodynamics and Quantum Mechanics books in the series and then work through some other books with exercises (there are no exercises in the Schwichtenberg books, which usually is a no-go for me, but I am reading them to get the concepts in an uncluttered fashion.).
The best classical mechanics book IMO is the one by John R. Taylor, I have worked through 2/3 of it with nearly all exercises years ago, I can heartily recommend it.
For Electrodynamics I would recommend the book by Griffiths and for QM there is a very promising new book by Barton Zwiebach which has been created based on a course he is giving at MIT.
I wish you good luck with your learning journey!
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#371. Amiga Assembly Language Programming (1987) - The book that tore me away from the Commodore BASIC I learned on my PET 2001 in 1978.
2. The Architecture of Symbolic Computers - (1991) - I didn't read this until the 2000s, but boy, what a book! It's about Lisp and Lisp Machines, but it covers everything that is still applicable to computers. A great example of a dense, readable textbook compared to all the fluff written nowadays with too many pictures and repeated explanations.
3. The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition - you know what I am talking about!
4. Genetic Programming (1992)- John Koza - Really got me into early machine learning and more into LISP!
5. The Handbook of Neuroevolution Through Erlang (2013) - Gene Sher - Great intro to ANNs in general, and Erlang even if you don't program in Erlang or want to!
Honorable mentions:
A. The Book of Shen - Mark Tarver - It's a LISP, but the history of computing and Lambda Calculus is nice, and Shen is an amazing language.
B. Building High Integrity Applications with SPARK 1st Edition - Great intro to SPARK, and Ada subset, used in the book for the CubeSAT program at VTC (Vermont Technical College).
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#38* Godel Escher Bach
An ambitious work that's hard to describe, Douglas Hofstadter weaves history, maths, geometry, music, fictional Socratic dialogue and a hell of a lot of recursion into a investigation of Godel's infamous paradox at the heart of mathematics. I read it as an undergraduate and it was mind blowing at the time.
* The Poignant Guide To Ruby
A weird and captivating journey that I found in my early years as a programmer. Though I never actually wrote much Ruby in the end.
* Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum/Bos
The most normal textbook. It's a doorstopper that covers a lot. I just liked it for some reason (I loved the course too) and I've kept it around.
Many more that I'm sure I've forgotten.
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#39Thinking in Systems by D. H. Meadows The Secrets of Consulting by J. W. Weinberg Understanding SEO by F. Enzenhofer (wrote it myself, changed a lot for me)
Hehe nice self promotion
Re: Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?
#40* 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…
My dad gave me a copy of K&R when I was a senior in high school and that was quite the spiral into developing my love for computers even more. A true classic.