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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?

#311

Post by thatcherc »

jerrygenser wrote: post #146

Andrew Ng's machine learning course on Coursera from almost 10 years changed the trajectory of my entire career. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning-in... Statistical rethinking by Richard McElreath also helped me to understand bayesian analysis and simulation -- possibly the best hands on bayesian analysis book for beginners https://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/ edit: added links

I had a real "click" moment with Statistic Rethinking (2nd Edition) too! I never really "got" Bayes' Theorem before (could use it to solve homework problems and stuff but never appreciated it) but somewhere in SR Chapter 2 the whole point of it really snapped into focus. Good book!

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

#313

Post by orsenthil »

How to do what you want to do by Dr. Paul Hauck seems to have defined my philosophy towards life by introducing me to the concept of self-discipline. It is a self-help book that has guided me for 20+ years, even when I had failed to follow it and had clicked with me.

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

#314

Post by koonsolo »

sph wrote: post #266
cmehdy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm an atheist like you, and there is one book that clicked for me: "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching" by Thich Nhat Hanh.

It has an excellent part about "rebirth", illustrated by waves and water. I now look at the world through different eyes. That is to say, I'm still atheist, love science, and that book never conflicts with reality. But I admit I was wrong on how I saw the world, and now I see it differently.

Zen Buddhism for me is a different way on how to look at the world.

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

#315

Post by swyx »

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?

what counts to you as a good response?

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

#316

Post by rahimnathwani »

luuuzeta wrote: post #236
forbiddenvoid wrote: post #229

1. Peter Norvig's Design of Computer Programs course on Udacity probably singlehandedly changed my perspective on thinking and modeling software solutions to problems. https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--... 2. Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom is of similar quality. There are a lot of 'oh that's how that works' moments in this book. https://craftinginterpreters.com/ 3. Doyle Brunson's S…

If you liked Stephen King's "On Writing", give William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" a read. It's not a memoir but more like a manual addressing different types of writing from corporate writing to sports to academic.

If you liked William Zinsser's "On Writing Well", give Joseph M. William's "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" a read.

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

#317

Post by cudgy »

ericbarrett wrote: post #276
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…

> creating a document where I explain these concepts as if I'm teaching them to someone else Tangentially, that is a marvelous way to learn something. I often find that in explaining a complex topic I uncover gaps in my own understanding.

The Montessori model

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

#318

Post by otikik »

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…

> The seemingly random, yet beautiful grain, in wood.

Fractals, my friend.

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

#319

Post by mminkov »

6ak74rfy wrote: post #237
forbiddenvoid wrote: post #229

1. Peter Norvig's Design of Computer Programs course on Udacity probably singlehandedly changed my perspective on thinking and modeling software solutions to problems. https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--... 2. Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom is of similar quality. There are a lot of 'oh that's how that works' moments in this book. https://craftinginterpreters.com/ 3. Doyle Brunson's S…

I am reading Crafting Interpreters right now. It seems to be a solid book but I am curious how others read it? Do you reproduce all, or most, the code yourself? That’d be a great way to make everything stick but makes progress terribly slow.

Same as others. I took it as an opportunity to work with Rust and enjoyed it a ton! Crafting Interpreters has been ported to any language you can think of so try that approach out!

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

#320

Post by cudgy »

gwd wrote: post #297

On a completely different topic: After watching my first marriage degenerate and my wife asked me to move out, I was fairly well mystified about what was going on. We'd read lots of books about marriage and communication, planned for it to be tough, intended to see it through... so what happened? "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work" by John Gottman was a book that I read after we'd separated that first sta…

What was the problem you learned that caused the first marriage to spiral?
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