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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?

#91

Post by adamddev1 »

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…

Yes, big second from me. HTDP taught me how to how to work with through complex data structures/problems in a really clear and simple way.

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

#92

Post by fm2606 »

mk67 wrote: post #46

Gilbert Strang's "Introduction to Linear Algebra" made it all click for me. I read it at the beginning of PhD studies and in a few weeks it all made more sense than during all of my Master's studies before. Coincidentally to this question, he will live stream his final lecture on Monday: https://grinfeld.org/strang/ I was amazed reading that, as I wasn't aware he even lectured anymore. And after googling a bit and fi…

His linear algebra lectures on youtub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVKj3LADCnA&list=PL49CF3715C...

M.I.T's OCW containing the same videos: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010...

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

#93

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

"Crafting Interpreters"

A physically beautiful book, carefully crafted and written in a style that's entertaining and brilliantly separated into distinct "phases" such that each chapter adds substantial functionality and doesn't leave the codebase in a broken state. The attention to detail and meticulous documentation of the code is no small feat, and this book delivers like no other.

An absolute joy to work through and provides enough technical detail to provide a good foundation without having to slog through compiler textbooks.

Hands down my favorite programming/software related book.

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

#94

Post by nrclark »

Don Norman's "The Design Of Everyday Things" was very eye-opening for me. It introduced me to a lot of ideas about the human brain, and about how/why we make mistakes.

This will sound stupid, but that book was the first time I encountered the idea that a brain can just straight up miscalculate and make a mistake. No reason, no explanation. Just your thinking meat did the wrong thing.

Really great book. Very entertaining, and a pretty quick read. I'd recommend it to anybody.

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...

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

#95

Post by Scarblac »

dstroot wrote: post #47
nindalf wrote: post #3

The books that taught me computer science - Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces ( https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/ ) - Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann ( https://dataintensive.net ) - Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom ( http://craftinginterpreters.com )

Second on Martin Kleppman’s book - really good. I have it on my nightstand as type.

It's amazing. One, I learned a lot about database internals.

But more importantly for me, it was an eye opener about all the differences between all those database engines out there.

There are lots of tradeoffs involved in trying to address the problems of distributed databases (obviously), but seeing that database A takes that choice, B another, C leaves out some common feature entirely and therefore doesn't have to care about this, D optimistically ignores the problem hoping to fix it later if it does happen, et cetera - very helpful.

They're not just trade offs, but serious useful databases actually exist that take the different options. Before reading the book I didn't understand how fundamental the differences between all those databases were, I think.

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

#96

Post by skybrian »

probablypower wrote: post #87
kortilla wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is helping someone with a solution “status and confrontation”?

When you're in a transactional environment, it is expected. For example, if you are a car salesman and someone comes to you with a problem like "what car should I buy?", and your response is, "you should buy X because Y", that is helpful. Most communications are not contained within a transactional context. If your mother asks "what car should I buy?", responding with "you should buy X because Y" might be 'correct' b…

This sounds a bit like "suggesting a solution too soon means you cut off a fuller discussion about someone's problems, and their surrounding context." Do you think that's an adequate summary?

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

#97

Post by cwillu »

okaleniuk wrote: post #84

Calculus on Manifolds by Michael Spivak. http://www.strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/spivak-calc-mani... For me, the eye opening thing was that any n-dimensional body is a transformation of the n-dimensional standard cube. This brings some mathematical consequences I don't understand, but what's important for me is that equations get much easier for the standard cube transformations because your corners are just ones…

I'm entirely failing to envision the process. I want to ask why is the first step (?mapping the book photo to a face of the cube?) is not just restating the original problem, but it's obvious that that question must be missing the point.

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

#98

Post by memling »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #52

Not a textbook but when I actually read the Bible I realized it was total nonsense and left religion.

Can you point to something specific or was it more an overall sort of rejection of the contents? An old or new testament thing?

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

#100

Post by maxFlow »

electriccatblan wrote: post #56
jdreaver wrote: post #35

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles [0] [1] Easily one of the most interesting and engaging textbooks I've read in my entire life. I remember barely doing any work for my day job while I powered through this book for a couple weeks. Also, another +1 to Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces [2], which was mentioned in this thread. I read this one cover to cover. Lastly, S…

Would Statistical Rethinking help me interpret web app metrics? E.g. if I have a canary out and the response times are longer after x requests, is that significant?

I've found that Statistics is one of those topics that changes your world view about everything. You can consider pretty much any issue statistically, and that will enrich your perspective significantly. In that sense, Statistical Rethinking will help. However, it's a book on Bayesian stats, it's quite dense, and examples are coded in R. It may be overkill for web app metrics interpretation. For that you may be better served with basic stats & inference, frequencies, descriptive statistics, percentiles, basic distributions, data visualization (e.g., trend lines, scatter plots, boxplots, histograms), etc.

To be clear though, Statistical Rethinking is a beautiful piece of work. You can check out the author's lectures[0] and see how much they suit your needs.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDcUM9US4XdPz-KxHM4XH...

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