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The Hacker News Top books of 2023

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51–60 of 118 posts

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#51

Post by shizcakes »

phlipski wrote: post #49

Great list. I picked up "Introduction to Algorithms" by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein for the first time in 20 years since undergrad. Still a useful! The classics never die. I get a kick when I see "The Art of Electronics" and "The C Programming Language" still being recommended on the regular. Nice to see that my undergraduate education from 20+ years ago is still relevant!…

I picked up electronics a bit this summer, got my amateur radio license & upgrade, and I find The Art Of Electronics to be astonishingly good.

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#52

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

Caveat Emptor: Some of the links to books are bad. For example, number 24, The Phoenix Project links to a cliff notes style summary of the book, with this warning buried in the description: "Please Note: This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and not the original book."

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#53

Post by all2 »

munificent wrote: post #16

Seeing my book Crafting Interpreters on this list is really really gratifying. :)

It's there because it is an amazing book. I sent you an email saying "thank you" and I will echo that again here; thank you for sharing your passion and your pain with the world.

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#54

Post by runevault »

ruddsky wrote: post #36
munificent wrote: post #16

Seeing my book Crafting Interpreters on this list is really really gratifying. :)

My hope is that you make a similar book on databases. :) Crafting Interpreters is one of my favorite technical books ever and serves as a masterclass is technical communication. Thank you!!!

It is not from Bob but I highly recommend Designing Data Intensive Applications from O'Reilly.

Edit: Which is number 2 on this list hah.

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#55

Post by mindcrime »

svat wrote: post #21

More accurately, this could be titled "most frequently mentioned books in replies to 'Ask HN' posts that have 'book' in their title". (Like "Ask HN: Math books that made you significantly better at math?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34439828 and "Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35929112 and "Ask HN: Sci-Fi Book Recommendations" https:/…

'Ask HN' posts that have 'book' in their title".

Yeah, that kinda puts a damper on it for me. Only selecting "book" Ask HN's leaves out a lot of stuff. Just to illustrate: I was initially surprised not to see The Four Steps to the Epiphany on the list. Heck, I probably mentioned it 6 or 7 times last year on my own. But when I went back and searched, it seems like all the times that I mentioned that book were in threads that weren't about books per-se. And I'm sure plenty of other people will have similar anecdotes.

For example, it would also make sense to exclude such threads, to get a more representative idea of what books HN comments tend to talk about in natural contexts.)

Yes, exactly. I'd like to see a similar analysis done, but excluding those threads for the same reason.

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#56

Post by karmasimida »

Nice report.

One nitpick of mine would be, majority of books made on the list are actually timeless, they are classics. There isn't too much 2023 about the list. Not really a fault on your side, but inevitable if mining such recommendations in a crowd sourcing way.

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#57

Post by kristianp »

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #52

Caveat Emptor: Some of the links to books are bad. For example, number 24, The Phoenix Project links to a cliff notes style summary of the book, with this warning buried in the description: "Please Note: This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and not the original book."

Thanks for that, fixed the Phoenix Project link.

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#58

Post by hammock »

mindcrime wrote: post #55
svat wrote: post #21

More accurately, this could be titled "most frequently mentioned books in replies to 'Ask HN' posts that have 'book' in their title". (Like "Ask HN: Math books that made you significantly better at math?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34439828 and "Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35929112 and "Ask HN: Sci-Fi Book Recommendations" https:/…

'Ask HN' posts that have 'book' in their title". Yeah, that kinda puts a damper on it for me. Only selecting "book" Ask HN's leaves out a lot of stuff. Just to illustrate: I was initially surprised not to see The Four Steps to the Epiphany on the list. Heck, I probably mentioned it 6 or 7 times last year on my own. But when I went back and searched, it seems like all the times that I mentioned that book were in threa…

It seems like with LLMs this year it ought to be easy to look at the whole comment base and pull out the book titles without having to use a “book” keyword

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#59

Post by jackthetab »

kaycebasques wrote: post #18

Just finished The Three-Body Problem trilogy. What a saga. I finished the last book a month or two back and I still find myself randomly thinking about various ideas that I picked up in those books. If you're "serious" about sci-fi, I would say that you really do have to read those books as part of your "curriculum".

The other two books are _that_ good?

I just finished the first book. The three body problem and its ramifications was interesting, as was the social background. Other than that, it was a decent YA novel, nothing more. If the other two are that much better, I'll give 'em a shot but otherwise...

Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023

#60

Post by encomiast »

Amazon drives me absolutely nuts. I clicked on the link for Polya's 'How to Solve It' and it took me to a page with a $69.99 paperback and a link to a $10 e-textbook. I click the textbook link and now the paperback link is to an identical looking $16.45 book, the only difference I can tell is that it is the "reprint" edition (aren't they all reprints given the original was published in 1945?). The reviews and most information other than weight and size are the same. Which do I choose? Will I regret not having whatever was worth $53.54 in the original link. There doesn't seem to be anyway to know if I am buying some fly-by-night poorly printed edition for $16.45 or getting a good deal because they all seem to be the same product. I've seen so much garbage on Amazon lately, I just don't trust anything, not even the books.
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