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Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

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Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#371

Post by cindycindy »

austin-cheney wrote: post #348
cindycindy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for putting these heuristics into words. My only question here is that a lot of what you wrote seems like best practice from the perspective of a person within the tech industry. Outsiders might call it common sense. So if everyone knows what they 'should' be doing, then why do so few actually follow through? One answer to that question might be character. Angela Ducksworth has a book called, "Grit"…

I suspect there are a number of factors that eliminate people from these steps like objectivity, persistence, and other virtues. The biggest single discriminator that the Y Combinator people talk about, which I agree with, is doing the right things first without regard for scale. Most developers will immediately jump to some framework so that they can prop up some web app in the shortest time and immediately go into…

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Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#372

Post by vik0 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #161
mmkos wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my problem with a lot of the literature on building successful businesses. They all seem to be offering a white glove path and don't talk about all the tactics ranging from shady to downright illegal that helped many of the biggest companies today to be where they are now.

Unorthodox suggestion - look at the documentaries and lit on mob tactics. The mob is basically a corporation, held together by a charismatic CEO. In its later years, violence was (I think?) less common, so politics and deal-making became the norm. However, given the subject matter, they likely wouldn't whitewash the reality of it.

>Unorthodox suggestion - look at the documentaries and lit on mob tactics.

You got any documentaries and books/articles to recommend?

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#373

Post by thruway516 »

epolanski wrote: post #177
piokoch wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how Bill mom (IBM board member) helped him to win the contract for... IBM, despite better options on the market. Thanks to that we were all rewarded with such gems like Windows 98 ME or Windows Vista.

Why reason in hypotheticals? Microsoft has been crucial into bringing compute in people's homes, the evolution of video gaming, the internet etc. They fluked a lot, they used their advantageous position like most companies try to, but assuming that we would have gotten better alternatives is not a given. Also, in hindsight was IBM wrong to bet on Microsoft? They sure have done multi hundred billions $ together.

Yes. If you look at the Alto, the Unix OS or the original mac (which itself was a kind of inferior ripoff of the Alto), Microsoft's domination was very much a case of bad products driving out the good and setting back personal computing by decades. Not until Linux, the Internet and the Iphone did we start to get a taste of where most people in the 70s and 80s thought personal computing was headed.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#374

Post by thetanka »

Maybe a bit off-topic if you are less interested in people and character studies, but it is one of the books I have read the most.

The Age of Uncertainty by Tobias Hürter

It’s about the minds who redefined our understanding of the universe, and I would say they were people who did a hard thing or two.

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL37331178M/Age_of_Uncertainty

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#375

Post by thruway516 »

squeedles wrote: post #127
ahazred8ta wrote: post #3

Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World http://www.simonwinchester.com/exactly Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(book) Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38840.Boyd

I loved Longitude, and Harrison was a determined guy, but the most interesting part for me was seeing the “rewrite from scratch” and “never ship” dynamics are old indeed! He had a MVP with his first iteration.

Unfortunately I got this as an audiobook and the author, who is born in the Bronx, decided for some reason to read it in a British accent which made it really hard for me to get through. Might have to get the book itself and give it another try.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#379

Post by joyeuse6701 »

ashoeafoot wrote: post #327
nickff wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not being sarcastic. The revolution and subsequent wars caused extremely high casualty rates among French men, while the country isolated itself from international trade, and suffered negative economic consequences.

Have you held the nations that stayed aristocratic and the havoc they caused next to france? Getting rid of parasitic waterhead bodies of government is always a pro birthong pains included. PS : Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.

Can’t replay the counter factual, but for those that lived it, there were regrets… and most reasoned there was a better way about the changing of power.

Also, it’s not like it was all happy republicanism after the terror, there was a new elite replacing the old (Napoleons) and he was a petty noble anyway, plenty of the aristocracy stuck around, and said emperor did his best to marry into Europe’s aristocracy. Seems a bit like musical chairs, don’t you think? Plenty of France was still royalist too anyway after it all. I don’t think the narrative is so clear, except everyone realized you can’t beat down your peasants too hard.

Even Peter the Great, traveling through France in the 1700s, wondered how long the wealth disparity could last, having seen Versailles and the peasants from the road.

Re: Ask HN: Books about people who did hard things

#380

Post by joyeuse6701 »

jimbokun wrote: post #361
ashoeafoot wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you held the nations that stayed aristocratic and the havoc they caused next to france? Getting rid of parasitic waterhead bodies of government is always a pro birthong pains included. PS : Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.

> Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation. And you think this helps your argument?

I think he means to say that had the other European nations not declared war on France with all the grand coalitions, the casualty rate wouldn’t be what it was.

I think that is partially true.

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