What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#151

Post by bsder » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 12:59 AM UTC

drhayes9 wrote: post #35

The first three books of "The Wrinkle in Time" series. The first three books of the Earthsea cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin. These both skew young but I valued re-reading them as I got older: The Dot and the Line: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dot_and_the_Line The Phantom Tollbooth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_Tollbooth

You need to be careful recommending LeGuin.

Personally, LeGuin bores me to tears because I like more action/idea driven in my reading and LeGuin tends more toward character driven.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#152

Post by ashark » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 1:05 AM UTC

eitally wrote: post #83

MFK Fisher's The Art of Eating. It's currently my favorite book. :) I would actively point teenagers away from Atlas Shrugged. While it might be enlightening, and they might enjoy the story, it has the potential to be quite destructive if they interpret her philosophy of objectivism & egoism in a way that leads them to apply it to their own lives. I just don't think this is a good idea. Her other novels, whether The…

Atlas Shrugged is probably OK so long as a viewing of The Mosquito Coast is arranged first. Should temper any urge to take Rand too seriously.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#153

Post by jeffreyrogers » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 1:08 AM UTC

johan_larson wrote: post #32

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, the more math I learn the less useful I think it is for most people, but if you enjoy it it can be rewarding to study on its own. I think some more practical stuff would be great, unfortunately I can't remember ever coming across a good introduction to programming. The way I learned was just by finding example programs and then modifying them to do something different. That's a hard skill to teach though.

I wonder what a clever 14-year-old would make of an advanced introduction to programming, such as SICP. It's written for students only four years older, although those are very important four years. Has anyone tried pointing a highschool student at that book?

I tried reading it in high-school. I think I made it about 2 chapters in. To be honest I'm not a big fan of SICP, though I seem to be in the minority.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#154

Post by nkoren » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 1:20 AM UTC

"Gödel, Escher, Bach" was near the top of my reading list as a 14-year-old. "A Pattern Language" was another. Also: "The City and the Stars".

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#155

Post by A_COMPUTER » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 1:40 AM UTC

portablenuke wrote: post #127

2600 and its back catalog, Hacker's Manifesto, Anarchist's Cookbook, The old philosophers (Marx, Nietzsche, etc.), The Federalist Papers, History Books, The C Programming Language by K&R, Absolute FreeBSD. Really, a blank slate and a promise to help them with whatever they want to learn.

Anarchist's Cookbook is a horrible suggestion, unless you want your 14 year old maimed or permanently jailed in a flawed pipe bomb building exercise. It is filled with dangerous and incorrect information.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#156

Post by freehunter » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 1:43 AM UTC

dreamweapon wrote: post #140

gorkemyurt wrote: post #63

- play sports - have as many friends as you can, girlfriends/boyfriends, don't be shy, drink beer before its legal most importantly have self discipline. If you manage to have self discipline everything else is easy in life

drink beer before its legal My own advice would be: don't bother with alcohol until you're well beyond drinking age. And definitely don't bother with heavy drinking of any sort, in those years. A lot of this has to with the observation being a student really is a 24x7 game, in those years (if you've chosen to go the student route, that is). While I definitely wasn't a "grind", I have to say that the only reason I mad…

I disagree. You'll have plenty of time for learning, for thinking about the content of your studies, for the library, for dedicated focus later. You're only young once.

Now I'll agree that getting wasted every weekend is a very bad idea. You will end up dying a painful death very early in your life. But it's a good idea to go to parties. It's a good idea to have fun, to live. Doing what everyone else is doing isn't always the best advice, but sometimes it's the best advice. You have to use your (unimpaired) judgement. I wouldn't have half the friends I have now if I hadn't spent nights puking right beside them. Now as an adult with a professional job, if I want to make new friends, the only way to do that is to have kids and set up playdates. Instead I find myself studying, reading books on the couch next to my wife. When you get older, you lose your ability to party like a college kid. You lose the opportunity to have that kind of bonding experience with your peers.

Young people drinking is a serious issue. You're right, it's harmful to brain development, it gets people in all kinds of trouble, and it can be seriously deadly to the drinker or to someone else they might meet while drunk. That's what makes this really hard to write, because to be honest, I'm not a drinker now but I was in college. And I attribute everything I have to the nights I spent not in front of the books, but in front of the crowd, dancing with a lampshade on my head.

So don't drink. You don't have to. Don't do drugs. Don't put yourself or others at risk like that. But seriously, if you're in college DO SOMETHING SOCIAL. Don't, DON'T sit in the library while your youth passes you by. Sit in the library Monday-Thursday. When Friday rolls around, go hang out with your friends. Because trying to make college-style friends as an adult is 100% impossible.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#157

Post by freehunter » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 1:48 AM UTC

yial wrote: post #49

I would recommend " What is Zen" by Alan Watts, Siddhartha. "Ready Player One". I would also suggest, "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson, and would echo "Cyptonomicon". Approaching Zero: The Extraordinary Underworld of Hackers, Phreakers, Virus Writers, and Keyboard Criminals by Paul Mungo and Bryan Clough is excellent. The American Boy's Handy Book: What to Do and How to Do It, Centennial Edition Daniel Carter Beard Sk…

I've never read Ready Player One, and there's a reason for that: people compare it to Snow Crash and I found Snow Crash to be entirely insufferable. I cannot stand that book. The worst part is that the main character is named Hiro Protagonist. The book just tries to be too cool.

Maybe the problem is that it was written in 1992 and so much has been inspired by it that now the book seems tired and cliche. But if you're recommending it to a 14 year old, they're already going to be familiar with some of the works that have been inspired by Snow Crash, and they will likely find it as insufferable as well.

And isn't Ready Player One heavy into the 80's pop culture? A 14 year old was born in 2001... they don't know what the 80's means.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#158

Post by angersock » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 2:10 AM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #97

doctorpangloss wrote: post #53

I wish when I was 14 I was exposed to more contemporary literature, instead of great classics. And I have no regrets about missing out on math books—most of my friends went to math camp for that kind of knowledge. I'd recommend David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest; Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her; The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis; Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I wis…

I'm 25 and I have no understanding of human, sexuality, rich people, old people etc... How do I catch up?

Go outside and talk to humans, old people, rich people, and get laid.

No reading necessary.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#159

Post by kaitai » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 2:12 AM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #24

I'm glad to see Cryptonomicon on the list. Looking back, that book has probably had the single greatest influence on my life so far. I've always liked computers, but don't think I'd be nearly involved with them as I am now had I not read it. I've also heard great things about Measurement but haven't read it myself. Another great math book that I have read is Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Differential Forms , t…

Cryptonomicon and The Diamond Age.

Newer: Ancillary Justice. Really interesting ideas about the self. Over the years: Octavia Butler. Some very challenging ideas.

Honestly, though, I think 14-year-olds should read a lot of random crap from the library. Legal thrillers and historical romance and linguistics texts and home repair manuals and history of Thailand and books about sneakers, and the Tao Te Ching and that famous book about Buddha. Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. That blew me away in 9th grade.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#160

Post by amichal » Fri, Mar 27, 2015, 2:23 AM UTC

- Chaos: Making a New Science - Down with these mean streets - thinking in pictures: my life with autism - in code: a mathematical journey - Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem - The Ringworld Engineers - Dune - Pattern Recognition (Gibson)