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

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

#261

Post by [deleted] »

peterhadlaw wrote: post #152
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 (incre…

[deleted]

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

#264

Post by mayankkaizen »

luuuzeta wrote: post #148

I've been struggling with wrapping my head around asynchronous programming with callbacks, promises and async/await in JS, however I think it's finally clicking after watching these YouTube videos and creating a document where I explain these concepts as if I'm teaching them to someone else: * Philip Roberts's What the heck is the event loop anyway? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ * The Story of Asynchr…

I wish someone can suggest me similar links for Python. Asynchronous programming has always been elusive to me.

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

#265

Post by thoughtpalette »

solarmist wrote: post #189
thoughtpalette wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commenting for later. Wish you could "favorite" comments.

You can. Click on the time for the comment. Then you can favorite it.

great tip! thanks!

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

#266

Post by sph »

cmehdy wrote: post #106
sph wrote: post #73

"The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts. In its first chapter there's the best and only compelling argument I've ever read in favour of spirituality and why people believe in God. Even an ultra-atheist like me finally got why people have faith. There are obvious blind spots in science and logic that can't be explained away with more theorems. If logic is pointed thought, it's good to recognize there's some things that can onl…

Perhap similarly, on an arduous journey to better my mental health and character I have found much to learn with paradoxical situations arising in zen koans. A good book with plenty of koans was Mumonkan/Gateless gate, in a compilation like this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/593516.Two_Zen_Classics They've been helpful as a reinforcement (and contrast) to more logical things, as well as therapies (DBT, CBT).

Thanks for the recommendation.

I really want to get into Zen Buddhism (as a form of spirituality that meshes better with my atheism), but after that first chapter the Alan Watts book becomes pretty dense and I need serious time and dedication to unpack its arguments. I probably need something easier to digest.

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

#267

Post by lawxls »

mayankkaizen wrote: post #264
luuuzeta wrote: post #148

I've been struggling with wrapping my head around asynchronous programming with callbacks, promises and async/await in JS, however I think it's finally clicking after watching these YouTube videos and creating a document where I explain these concepts as if I'm teaching them to someone else: * Philip Roberts's What the heck is the event loop anyway? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ * The Story of Asynchr…

I wish someone can suggest me similar links for Python. Asynchronous programming has always been elusive to me.

https://superfastpython.com/python-asyncio/ - Python Asyncio: The Complete Guide

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

#268

Post by nickelcitymario »

"Scientific Advertising" by Claude C. Hopkins. This book is turning 100 years old next year, but what I loved about it is that because it predates the Internet (and even TV and the mass proliferation of radio), it doesn't get bogged down in specifics.

But, the principles laid out in this book almost entirely apply to online marketing.

So when I read this book, everything clicked. The closest I can compare it to is when you first learn multiple programming languages and develop an abstract understanding of the concepts. Once you have that abstraction, you can generally pick up any language pretty quickly. It's mostly just semantics.

Similar to this book's impact on my understanding of digital marketing. With the basic concepts of scientific advertising under my belt, I can pretty confidently hop into any platform and learn the syntax, as it's the same ideas, simply reimplemented with better tech.

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

#269

Post by cassepipe »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #149
gwbas1c wrote: post #119

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It (Michael E. Gerber) What it taught me is that effective organizations invest heavily in training newcomers how to do their jobs / processes. I see this everywhere; when I walk into a business and something's "just off," it's almost always because management is dropping the ball on training newcomers how to do their jobs. In my specific…

My first question for recruiters is always about how a company trains/mentors employees. I have gotten maybe 5 good responses out of the 100's of times I've asked that question. It's shocking to me. Every employee you hire is going to have to be trained on SOMETHING that is new to them or specific to your company. Why dont companies spend more time developing onboarding and training programs that actually work?

Because companies prefer offloading the cost of education onto society but then endlessly complain on how formation is too broad, that is not catered specifically to their needs while not be willing to pay for it. Ok I (hope I am) exaggerating but there seems to be something like that going on in my country

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

#270

Post by hiq »

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…

Also called "syntopical reading" in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book.
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