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Secret Hacker Bookshelf

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Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#41

Post by DanielBMarkham »

ntoshev wrote: post #40
robryan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well you don't lose anything by giving someone an affiliate sale, so unless your getting tricked into clicking someones links I think people can tend to make a bigger deal of it than is needed.

I upvoted you, but the general problem with these links is that they affect author motivation, whether or not they realize it. This is especially true for subjective listings such as this one, they are simply a brain dump of whatever the list author could think of. That's why you get SICP next to "Head first HTML", and that's why you don't get "Coders at work" at all, even though it's mentioned >800 times on this sit…

This list was put together by googling "best books" on ycombinator and then picking each thread and listing the books from top to bottom.

HeadFirst appears because a commenter pointed out that it was a good book that you wouldn't think of, and this comment got several upvotes. From this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128713

There was no "thinking" that was involved in creating the list. It was a pure mechanical process. That's why there are two dupes and a lot of books that didn't make it.

I guess to be completely fair I should have written a program to scrape every book mention on HN and then cross-matched them to aggregate votes. But I was just trying to make a larger version of an HN comment in blog format, so I didn't take the time to write up a system. As it was, it took most of the day tracking down links, book references and such.

I can assure you that there was no finagling with the list or author's opinions that were inserted. I have "coders at work", and it's a great book. It would have made my list easily. There are a bunch of other books just like it. My list would have included more Java books, and books about tracking to-do items. But this wasn't my list. It was HN's.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#42

Post by kls »

ntoshev wrote: post #40
robryan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well you don't lose anything by giving someone an affiliate sale, so unless your getting tricked into clicking someones links I think people can tend to make a bigger deal of it than is needed.

I upvoted you, but the general problem with these links is that they affect author motivation, whether or not they realize it. This is especially true for subjective listings such as this one, they are simply a brain dump of whatever the list author could think of. That's why you get SICP next to "Head first HTML", and that's why you don't get "Coders at work" at all, even though it's mentioned >800 times on this sit…

Right but this is this person's list they may or may not have read "Coders at work" therefore they may not be able to recommend that works. A good book is an opinion and this post reflect his opinion and while the majority might hold the same opinion it is none the less an opinion of good. As for motivation I don't see it, he would make roughly the same amount for recommending a different book. Now if he is friends with any of the authors then that would be a different case entirely.

I up-voted you, because I though this post of yours offered an honest opinion of your view on the matter. You where down to 0 and I though your opinion was a valid viewpoint, I don't like to see opposing viewpoints suppressed just because they are not in agreement.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#43

Post by tptacek »

pclark wrote: post #2

This is a good list, but if you're a startup founder you generally only need to know 1% of each of these books. Don't buy them all. If you had to choose 3 books from that list, what would they be?

Positioning

The Innovator's Dilemma

4 Steps to the Epiphany (not listed)

Probably one of the most important things for a startup to know is that startup products are almost by design supposed to be incomplete --- even inferior! --- to existing offerings. It's inferiority that puts nascent breakout products in the blind spot of incumbents. A great way to lose is to try to match up an incumbent point-for-point.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#44

Post by tptacek »

This list is missing some pretty vital books:

* 4 Steps to the Epiphany (Steve Blank's mimeograph-quality bible of lean startup marketing)

* Growing a Business

* The Knack

* All of Seth Godin

* Blue Ocean

It's weird that the list has so many big-business suit-and-tie titles (Ogilvy, New Rules, etc) but is missing small business core titles like these.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#47

Post by gregory80 »

this list is huge and awesome. thank you!

I would say JavaScript the Good Parts is pretty much the bible of JS for the client, the definitive guide is nice, but a lot of stuff in there is very dated. It's not a good guide for DOM manipulation. The JavaScript cookbook by shelly powers (c) 2010 is much better.

Also, High Performance JavaScript by Nicholas C. Zakas is a great book for people who need to go from beginner to intermediate / advanced.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#48

Post by jseliger »

nessence wrote: post #9

Is HN really the new place for book spamming aa links? Which books don't matter. Half those are outdated or will be by the time they're read.

A buddy gave me a Firefox extension to auto-tag Amazon links with my referral: it appends this: ?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 .

Why? Because I write a book blog (The Story's Story: http://jseliger.com/ ) and usually include an Amazon link because a) the page is uniform, b) Amazon usually gives a concise, pretty decent description of the book and that description is always in the same place, and c) if you want to buy the damn thing, you're right there, which makes it easy.

So I don't think it a terrible conflict of interest to use Amazon referral links: I think of it as a convenience, and I make a little bit of money (enough for more books but not very much). I'm skeptical that it affects the books I write about, but if it does, readers are welcome to call me on BS. One has actually said the opposite: http://jseliger.com/2008/11/06/on-books-taste-and-distaste :

One thing I will say, as now a fairly regular reader of your blog, is that you don’t seem to read very much that you actually like. You seem, in some ways, doomed to be disappointed either by your tastes or the bar you’ve set up.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#49

Post by dotBen »

tptacek wrote: post #44

This list is missing some pretty vital books: * 4 Steps to the Epiphany (Steve Blank's mimeograph-quality bible of lean startup marketing) * Growing a Business * The Knack * All of Seth Godin * Blue Ocean It's weird that the list has so many big-business suit-and-tie titles (Ogilvy, New Rules, etc) but is missing small business core titles like these.

You can download 4 Steps to the Epiphany from Stanford.edu in pdf format (my preferred format anyway).

http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl...

Not sure what the legality is of that but it's there if you want it. Do buy the book and support Steve if you find it useful.

Re: Secret Hacker Bookshelf

#50

Post by dotBen »

The quality and relevance of the books on this list seem mixed at best.

Maybe I'm cynical but the original page looks like linkbait for the guys affiliate code to Amazon. I'm saddened that HN has found this so 'useful'. I think we could do a better job crowdsourcing the very best and relevant books together on a "Ask HN" thread.

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