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

Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 515 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#151

Post by 2143 »

For me, even though I had a superficial understanding of git, it was finally after going through the first few chapters of the Pro Git book that things finally clicked, and I literally sat there wondering how I managed to code anything at all without using git for years.

> For programming it was How to Design Programs at www.htdp.org

I already have over 4 years of professional software engineering experience (mostly backend web development). And before that I've been coding as a hobby for like 8 years prior to that. I'm pretty good with C, python, and PHP, though I'm familiar with plenty of other languages. I also know a little bit of Haskell.

For a person like me, is HTDP worth it? I had started with it previously but I found it a little boring. But I know the book is well regarded so I'm wondering if I should take another shot at it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#152

Post by peterhadlaw »

xutopia wrote: post #97

I know this is a little out of left field but I couldn't understand why anyone was Atheist until I read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan... quickly followed by The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Those two books together crystallized in me what it could mean to have a world view absent of supernatural forces.

Being somewhat skeptic myself in my younger years and coming closer to God through my relationship with my girlfriend (who isn't even a believer herself)... I just recently came up with a hypothesis why so many Math and CS people were famously Atheist.

I grew closer to God through just observing the natural world, and my natural relationship (affection, friendship, etc.).

My hypothesis is that so many of these (incredibly genius, and logical) people maybe dug a little too deep into man-made reality. Numbers, computers, etc. Everything that goes through a processor is the result of a human invention. It's easy to think you are God, or at the very least, see YOUR creation and totally discredit and influence of God as a result. However if you just look away from the pixels or numbers for a second. The seemingly random, yet beautiful grain, in wood. Or the way tree leaves rustle in the wind.. etc etc, you can see an immense beauty and goodness, not possible without a divine, all-giving power.

No malice on my end towards Atheists, just my opinion (faith) <3

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#153

Post by vavooom »

olalonde wrote: post #139

"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Helped me gain a more intuitive understanding of economics. On a side note, the man is a machine. He's been writing close to a book a year since the age of 80 (he's 92 now).

Incredible summarization on the topic. Chewed through this during Covid and gave me a new appreciation for the high-level implementations of economic concepts in society. Second-order thinking is a crucial skill in economics, and Sowell makes it clear that incentives drive everything. Most notably, incentives must actually encourage behavior that they were designed to implement, not 'promise' they will, something government and politicians fail to grasp even today (e.g. rent control, stimulus, etc.)

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#154

Post by redog »

stagger87 wrote: post #140

How much of a topic clicking is just reading from several different sources, rather than one source being particularly "good"? I often joke with a coworker that we don't fully understand a topic until we have read several textbooks/papers on it. It doesn't really matter how good any one text is. I've always wondered what the mechanism is for this. Is is just a certain amount of exposure to a topic? Or is there truly…

It's just focused practice. Something about the brain requires frequent breaks but with repeated focused practice it seems to reach almost an autopilot like ability.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#156

Post by luuuzeta »

olalonde wrote: post #139

"Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Helped me gain a more intuitive understanding of economics. On a side note, the man is a machine. He's been writing close to a book a year since the age of 80 (he's 92 now).

I've read the book partially (which reminds me I need to pick it up and finish it) and it's amazing yet frightening to realize how naive I am when it comes to economics. I like his arguments about how politicians use people's naivety and ignorance to peddle policies that aren't possible if we're to believe that economics is about "scarce resources with alternative uses".

In my book, Sowell is a national treasure.

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#157

Post by shp0ngle »

curious16 wrote: post #121
shp0ngle wrote: post #98

I didn’t understand probability, until I read E T Jaynes Probability Theory: Logic of Science It defines the base blocks of probability very, very slow. And never hand-waves anything. But it’s the “bayesian” view of probability; but it’s honestly the easier one to understand. https://www.amazon.com/Probability-Theory-Science-T-Jaynes/d...

What is the prerequisite to read this book?

It is quite math heavy, but I guess you can skip the proofs.

You can see the book for free, I think it’s scanned online, it’s from mid-20th century I think

Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?

#160

Post by dkarl »

mridsole wrote: post #29

Type Theory and Formal Proof: An Introduction A ground up walk-through for using dependent types for formal proof. What I liked about this book is that it's presented more as mathematics than as computer science: you can work through the whole thing with pen and paper. It doesn't really have any specific prerequisites, just a general degree of mathematical maturity and exposure to proofs. After reading this book, I f…

> it's presented more as mathematics than as computer science: you can work through the whole thing with pen and paper

There's so much in software development that is shallow if you understand the motivation, or a key bit of context, because you already understand all of the hard parts. You "learn" a hundred things like this every week, mostly without trying, and there's a formula for helping people who get stuck: you find a concept that most people find trivial but a significant minority get stuck with, you figure out the bit of context that they're missing, you write a blog post or a Tweet or a HN comment supplying that bit of context, and bingo! Everyone who takes a few seconds or minutes to read it has an "aha!" moment and is suddenly, irreversibly enlightened.

Math has this kind of learning, too, but most of the effort in teaching and learning math concentrates on concepts that require a slower approach: the concepts that take some time to build up, or that require repetition for your brain to achieve the level of fluency needed for an idea to be useful. The "aha!" moment when it finally clicks is just the cherry on the top. It's a dramatic moment, but it has no value that can be separated from all of the prior work put in.

It's good to be able to recognize when you've been looking for the first kind of explanation for the second kind of concept.

Burritos, anyone?

Post reply on HN