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Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?

#64

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

chubot wrote: post #32
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #21

I don't know about _eye opening_, but The Art of PostgreSQL really changed the way I work for the better. Like a lot of people, I used to be one that would pull all my data into Python for processing, Pandas-style. Once I learned how to do it all directly in PG everything became trivial. [0] https://theartofpostgresql.com/

Do you have some examples of that ? I always found that SQL is better for data extraction -- selecting and filtering approximately what I want to analyze. But for in-depth analysis, R or Python is better. They're just much better languages with more control than SQL.

Even just learning how to use CTEs effectively has been a major improvement for my daily work. Building up a dataset iteratively in clearly defined steps and performing aggregations, transformations, orderings, etc along the way is just a very clean way to work. And it's easy to short-circuit at any step for debugging if you're not getting the results you expect. I often work with datasets larger than the amount of memory on my computer so has benefits there as well instead of trying to load it all into Python memory to work with it.

[0] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/queries-with.html

Re: Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?

#65

Post by TheFreim »

wffurr wrote: post #49

How to Design Programs: https://htdp.org/ I already had a strong programming background in Java, C, JavaScript and PHP. I thought an introductory programming class at the Master’s level would be a waste of time. Going through rigorous program design in Racket was a mind expanding experience. I was amazed how much programming we did before reaching the assignment statement (set!) otherwise the first thing taught in ty…

> I was amazed how much programming we did before reaching the assignment statement (set!)

Reminds me of my programming languages course, probably my favorite class in college. Spent nearly a quarter of the course just learning scheme, didn't know if it would pay off even though I was interested, but when various language constructs were introduced through the use of a metacircular interpreter it was eye opening.

Re: Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?

#68

Post by juujian »

mecsred wrote: post #8
juujian wrote: post #4

Probably not what anybody here is looking for, but Steven Seidman -- Contested Knowledge: Social Theory Today

I always wonder when I see this, do people learn to lay comments out like a reverse psychology bait from these books, or are people who are already predisposed to that just drawn to owning them. Any chance the book goes over that? Not disparaging, I appreciate you sharing a recommendation. I just found the observation funny.

Ironically enough, I have a textbook for that: Jeff Pfeffer -- Power: why some people have it -- and others don't. It's good, and not what you would expect from the title.

Re: Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?

#69

Post by juujian »

zvolsky wrote: post #62

The Elements of Statistical Learning. This book features some of the most interesting applications of mathematics. It was the likely reason why I started enjoying maths after many years of studying it. https://hastie.su.domains/Papers/ESLII.pdf

Second that. Great to have a no-nonsense textbook in the space.
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