“Answers to Modernism” by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi.
Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
51–60 of 515 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#52I had a very poor model of what people meant when they spoke of divinity, god, and religion until reading the Tao Te Ching. Whenever I heard god, I just thought of sky daddy. The key is to understand that religion is a map, not the territory. All religions are essentially different paths to the same destination, mixed with varying levels of human interpretation.
What is it about that book that made it click? There's an awful lot of people who believe in sky daddy. What did they miss?
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#53Gilbert Strang's lectures on Linear Algebra: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010... LinAlg was the only maths course I needed in my interdisciplinary study program. I had struggled to grasp maths in high school, but these lectures really made it click for me and I passed my university's class with a B+.
The first couple of lectures _alone_ are incredible to really grok raw matrix multiplication.
I found the rest of the lectures a bit less of an epiphany, I think he meanders sometimes too much, but that’s a personal note. The whole series is absolutely incredible.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#54The Selfish Gene --- It finally gave me all the answers my teachers could not.
An amazing book
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#55Recursion: SICP and later The Little Schemer.
Abstraction barriers: SICP
Continuations: The Little Schemer
Decision Trees: Uni. of. Washington MOOC about classification and retrieval and later implementing them myself in Racket and later GNU Guile.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#56Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#57I had been a web developer in the very days of the web...But then after decades away from coding, i wanted to learn python. So, i bought a book. I forget the title, but its something along the lines of python 30 minutes a day (or something aloing those lines), and the author's name was like Mark something...In any case, while the book itself was fine...The real "feature" that made things click for me (for python) was going through the online exercises associated with the book. I know, I know, my approach spounds like typical homework...But, you know what, that did the trick amazingly well! So clearly for me, i guess i learn by reading first, then actively applying what i've learned....yeah, yeah, not so revolutionary. But for me at least, such a simple - and well established by others - tactic helped me gain a new skill.
EDIT: I remember the name of the book now: "A Smarter Way to Learn Python: Learn it faster. Remember it longer." By Mark Myers.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#58I remember reading 'The C programming language' (in the train, I even remember that) and when pointers really 'clicked' in my mind - it was when I realized that (*struct).member is the same as struct->member (I don't remember the exact page but it was one of the paragraphs on pointer syntax quite early on). Weird detail now that I think back about it after programming C++ for over 20 years, but that was just one of those moments for me.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#59> Your topic of choice may be anything, not necessarily CS.
The Story of a Soul by Thérèse of Lisieux - "unless you become like little children" never really clicked with me until I read it and became her friend.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#60Obviously if you're doing anything with a computer, Patterson & Hennesy is a must-read.
Computer Systems: A Programmers Perspective by Randall Bryant and others provides a perspective of the same from point of view of building software, and is especially enlightening.