When I was first getting into Drupal back in 2006, the Pro Drupal Development book by Matt Westgate and John VanDyk for Drupal 5 was an eye opener. I ended up doing Drupal development professionally for 10 years after that.
Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
171–180 of 515 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#172Gilbert 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+.
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Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#173I 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 (incre…
Others find belief in the “goodness” of a supernatural creator impossible because of their knowledge of the natural world:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/494183-i-don-t-know-why-we-...
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#174I 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.
As a companion to this, I grew up somewhat militantly Atheist (and consumed Dawkins like skittles), and had a very hard time accepting faith in a reasonably way until I read Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan Peterson. I know he's unfortunately become quite the provocateur, but that first book is worth a read, and crystallized to me what it could mean to have a world view with a supernatural force.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#175A Common Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms by Jay Wengrow was pivotal in me understanding the topic as a self-learner. Its non-esoteric approach was something I really needed before moving onto the Stanford and Princeton courses.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#176https://www.coursera.org/learn/programming-languages - recursion, and how to apply it, and functional programming in general clicked for after this course. Also Code Complete - after reading I finally understood what good code should look like.
Code Complete made me see the difference between scripting and engineering.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#177I 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?
There are no real prerequisites. In fact, in the introduction, Jaynes suggests that readers might be better off not having any previous introduction to statistics.
That being said, there is an assumed level of general mathematical sophistication to the presentation.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#178I 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 (incre…
Mathematicians I personally know well are stoutly religious. They describe the world of number and form and structure with the same kind of language the clergy describe God, and so there is some sense in which these are felt as aspects of the same thing.
I also know a number of engineers who are deeply religious, perhaps encouraged by recognizing "design" in nature, seemingly requiring a designer.
In my conversations with these people, their faith, while socially speaking is Christian, the specifics have hardly anything to do with traditional or orthodox theology. It's, as I perceive this, the only acceptable social structure available to them to live out these deep feelings of beauty and harmony in community.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#179I sucked at chemistry in school I just did not get it, partly because I was lazy, partly because I was a few weeks out of school due to an injury, partly because the whole structure of the classes were a total mess.
At university we had to take one chemistry course and suddenly it all made total sense. Everything was explaned logically from the ground up. I got a perfect score and really, really enjoyed the course. Now my son has chemistry in school (he is much better than I was) and I regret not having kept the manuscript for the course to give it to him.
Re: Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?
#180I read The Rootkit Arsenal[0] while I was taking my first assembly language course and operating systems class. The author did an amazing job of making the material interesting, approachable, and as clear as machine code hex can ever really be. Highly recommend if you have any interest in the guts of operating systems and how to tear them apart.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Rootkit-Arsenal-Escape-Evasion-Corner...