
My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part Three - shafiahmedbd
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-three/
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benjaminmikiten
Very much looking forward to the rest of this list. Obviously there are tons
of lists on the topic, but his list has been slightly different so far, and
his personal takes have been nice.

Here are the other two posts in the series:

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-
one/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-one/)

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-
two/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-two/)

And here are a few more links on this general topic in case anyone's not seen
them before:

[http://cspray.github.io/my.so-archive/100-most-
influential-p...](http://cspray.github.io/my.so-archive/100-most-influential-
programming-books.html)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-
single-m...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-
influential-book-every-programmer-should-read)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38210/what-non-
programmin...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38210/what-non-programming-
books-should-programmers-read?lq=1)

[http://blog.codinghorror.com/recommended-reading-for-
develop...](http://blog.codinghorror.com/recommended-reading-for-developers/)

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deciplex
Your link to "What is the single most influential book every programmer should
read?" is broken. It appears the page has been deleted.

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kenjackson
Good books it seems, but the one book I'd never seen before was the
Thermodynamics book. He makes this claim:

"From my own experience this book can be worked through in two full nights"

Really? In my experience there's no way I could make it through a 150 page
physics book in two nights, unless I already knew the material. And even then
I think it would be tough.

That said, if this is a book I could do in two nights, and actually learn
Thermodynamics -- then I'm all in!

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jeffwass
I had a quick skim of the Project Gutenberg link another poster gave. I
wouldn't recommend this book if you are looking for a modern
understanding(from within the past 50 years), as it only covers classical
thermodynamics, and not statistical mechanics. This book feels like it's over
a century old, and while classical thermodynamics may seem simple and pure,
it's not at all how scientists in the past 50 yrs would think about, model, or
analyse such systems and processes.

It's really ironic that it's authored by Fermi but doesn't touch on quantum
mechanical distributions, for example his own Fermi-Dirac distribution for
ensembles of fermions such as electrons in a metal.

Modern approaches typically derive the thermodynamic laws from the underlying
statistical properties of large system sizes. And are much more powerful since
you can handle variances and higher moments beyond just the mean. And also let
you apply quantum mechanics and to see how Fermions differ from Bosons, and
derive cool things like the Blackbody spectrum, or Fermi energy of an electron
gas.

Decent books are Reif, Kittel & Kroemer (we've used both these at undergrad
level classes), or Landau Lifshitz volume 5, and one by Feynmann at the grad
level.

Disclaimer - I TA'd stat mech / thermo four times during my PhD.

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classicsnoot
Share what you are reading with the HN bookclub.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636361](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636361)

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grghk
Kind of wish he'd pick up the pace a bit...

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celticninja
just a placeholder for later

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bgilroy26
Check out [https://delicious.com](https://delicious.com)!

~~~
simi_
Or [http://pinboard.in/](http://pinboard.in/)

