Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh hey this is my site, I’m glad you like it!
Cool site! Thanks for building it. Heads up: In your 'reccomendations' should be 'recommendations'
Fixed, thank you!
The Hacker News Top books of 2023
71–80 of 118 posts
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#72It's nice to see Blindsight by Peter Watts on the list. Superb "hard sci-fi" book that includes a bibliography of real world publications that justify/motivate the flights of imagination. The story is told backwards in time, which may take some getting used to, but it's a great read.
I did (very little, but some) follow up reading from the bibliography, and there are definitely some worthwhile "truth is stranger than fiction" topics in there. I don't recall it being told backwards in time, or at least in a way that was confusing. Might need to revisit it. The (semi?)sequel Echopraxia didn't quite grab me as much, and I think the concepts were a bit 'higher' and so my level of intellect got a bit…
If you enjoyed Echopraxia, you may want to read it twice. I thought I got it the first time, then I read a Peter Watts commentary and realized how much I missed. Planning to reread both soon.
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#73Great 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.
That one's a classic. Have it right next to me.
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#74Read/use 13 of them. The Phoenix Project is however used as toilet paper. This is a symbolic gesture after working in a very fucked up company who decided the management restructure wasn’t at fault and maybe if they bought a copy and gave it to everyone and we used it as a religious text then everything would be fine. It was a painful read at best. Surprised to see Euclid’s elements. I have a volume from 1742 on the…
Where did you get that? Rare bookstore? Care to share?
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#75Seeing my book Crafting Interpreters on this list is really really gratifying. :)
I recommend it whenever I give a talk about compilers at conferences on Python or Go.
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did (very little, but some) follow up reading from the bibliography, and there are definitely some worthwhile "truth is stranger than fiction" topics in there. I don't recall it being told backwards in time, or at least in a way that was confusing. Might need to revisit it. The (semi?)sequel Echopraxia didn't quite grab me as much, and I think the concepts were a bit 'higher' and so my level of intellect got a bit…
If you enjoyed Echopraxia, you may want to read it twice. I thought I got it the first time, then I read a Peter Watts commentary and realized how much I missed. Planning to reread both soon.
No, he said he did not like it as much
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#77Seeing my book Crafting Interpreters on this list is really really gratifying. :)
The description of the Vigil language is really funny :)
Very cool idea.
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#78Read/use 13 of them. The Phoenix Project is however used as toilet paper. This is a symbolic gesture after working in a very fucked up company who decided the management restructure wasn’t at fault and maybe if they bought a copy and gave it to everyone and we used it as a religious text then everything would be fine. It was a painful read at best. Surprised to see Euclid’s elements. I have a volume from 1742 on the…
Where did you get that? Rare bookstore? Care to share?
eBay!
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#79I’m surprised to see Carnegie’s book rank so highly. I couldn’t finish the book, it’s a boatload of anecdotal bull and I regretted spending my money on it.
Re: The Hacker News Top books of 2023
#80More 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:/…
Glad to see I helped get Rudin into the top 10. :D
More seriously, I remember many of these questions and it’s important to understand sentiment matters. Many of the mentions of SICP are not glowing. Indeed, they’re specifically written by people who want to puncture the bubble of worship around the book.
With all of that said, I think this list is fun.