Communications / Media studies: Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan
Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
41–50 of 58 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#42In software: Could plausibly have read, but also likely to blindly recommend without having read them (I've done that myself, only ever skimmed either): The Mythical Man Month, Code Complete. Very unlikely to have read: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. (I'm moderately sure Donald Knuth has read these, but beyond that, dubious. Personally I've read their titles on a shelf three times now.)
I read Code Complete twenty years ago and it was a revelation. Revisiting it recently, it seemed dated and bordering on irrelevant. It wasn't that the ideas weren't good, they were just incorporated into modern language and API design. It won. People code like that now.
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#43Gödel Escher Bach? Or maybe that’s just me! Gonna get through it one of these days…
It's not a good book. The metaphors are tortured and unrelatable.
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its a short and approachable -- and turns out wrong in parts -- book, so I'm not sure why its readership is doubtful?
I will admit I bailed half way through, as I felt it was just repeating itself over and over with slightly different words and examples. That plus the fact that by the time I started reading it it was becoming more and more clear that much of the experimental evidence presented didn't stand up to scrutiny. All the being said the parts I did read were interesting and I buy the overall framework presented, if not all t…
Agree, maybe I'd already heard it's central premise too much before I read it but it seemed like a book on stating the bleeding obvious again and again. It also felt like a blog post rather than a full book. I tend to think that about a lot of these kind of books though.
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please add double line breaks between each point or question as your comment just renders as a big block of text.
In Computers? The Mythical Man Month Fred Brooks In Management? Turn the Ship Around David Marquet In literature? Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad In Philosophy? The Republic Plato In Religion? The Confessions St. Augustine In Mathematics? The Elements Euclid In History? Parallel lives Plutarch In Physics? Principia Isaac Newton
Heart of darkness is very short and fits into those great books like L'Etranger and the Old Man and the Sea that can be usefully read in an afternoon and give back way more than they demand from you.
Republic is quite long but very approachable and I really enjoyed it.
Again the mythical man month still holds true and it very readable. It's interesting for anyone interested in computing history as well as for it's key points on management.
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#46Gödel Escher Bach? Or maybe that’s just me! Gonna get through it one of these days…
It's a tough one. I took it as my only distraction on a week long meditation course. I had no technology, phone signal etc and this was the only book I had with me. I managed to read about a quarter of it and would really need to be in that kind of situation to finish it I think. A great desert island book though, I think.
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please add double line breaks between each point or question as your comment just renders as a big block of text.
In Computers? The Mythical Man Month Fred Brooks In Management? Turn the Ship Around David Marquet In literature? Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad In Philosophy? The Republic Plato In Religion? The Confessions St. Augustine In Mathematics? The Elements Euclid In History? Parallel lives Plutarch In Physics? Principia Isaac Newton
Why would anyone pretend to read Heart of Darkness? At 40k words it's one of the shortest novels ever written. The writing absolutely slaps. Anyone with any interest and experience in literature would find their first encounter with this book to be pleasant (except for the racism and colonialism).
And it's falling out of favor because of the racism and colonialism, so it's perfectly acceptable (in most literature circles) to say that you just didn't want to read that kind of crap and leave it at that.
I'm re-reading Heart of Darkness now and not likely to mention it to anyone because it's so regressive.
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#48In software: Could plausibly have read, but also likely to blindly recommend without having read them (I've done that myself, only ever skimmed either): The Mythical Man Month, Code Complete. Very unlikely to have read: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. (I'm moderately sure Donald Knuth has read these, but beyond that, dubious. Personally I've read their titles on a shelf three times now.)
I read Code Complete twenty years ago and it was a revelation. Revisiting it recently, it seemed dated and bordering on irrelevant. It wasn't that the ideas weren't good, they were just incorporated into modern language and API design. It won. People code like that now.
Code Complete needs a new addition similar to how The Pragmatic Programmer released a new addition after 20 years.
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#49The House of God
Re: Ask HN: What's the book that people in your field pretend to have read?
#50The Phoenix Project.
That's the opposite of dry and long. Not exactly a page-turner but I think I read it in 3 or 4 sessions.