

Ask HN: Are there any good self development/hacking books out there - lewi

I'm looking for any good hacking or self dev books.<p>Something like "Emergency" by Neil Strauss but more technical and less story. Sorta like a collection of how-to's and general knowledge stuff.<p>Suggestions appreciated!
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zdw
For programming, I like "The Productive Programmer"

<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596519544>

And for Sysadmin, it would be hard to beat "The Practice of System and Network
Administration"

<http://everythingsysadmin.com/>

~~~
TomLimoncelli
As the co-author of TPoSaNA I am flattered but for the question at hand, I'd
recommend a different book. Time Management for System Administrators from
O'Reilly is more in line with what he's looking for.
<http://www.tomontime.com/> and
<http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0596007833/tomontime-20> for more info. (Of
course, since I wrote this other book, I don't mind recommending it :-)

\--Tom

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aaronblohowiak
make big changes gradually, make small changes frequently. respect that self-
control is a limited resource. measure your progress.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
This is a great sentence which sums up the sort of things that many self help
books will drag out to 400+ pages.

I'd seriously encourage anyone who wants to improve their life to spend the
time sat down with a pad scribbling out what they're happy with about their
lives, what they're not happy with, what they want to change and coming up
with their own plan for doing so.

For the most part anyone on this board is smart and more able to solve their
own problems than a generic self help book which will generally take a couple
of bits of common sense and then string them out into a whole book.

Don't get me wrong, I love books and I love reading but in the case of self
help books I think more often than not they're targeted procrastination and
the time would be better spent addressing the things you're not happy with.

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serpent
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt

[http://pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-
lear...](http://pragprog.com/titles/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning)

Worth a look.

~~~
grigy
As more technical from Pragmatic series:

<http://www.pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer>

I love this book.

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newsisan
<http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html>

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bombs
eHow have a book called How To Do Just About Everything.
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Just-About-Everything-
Ehow/dp/00...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Just-About-Everything-
Ehow/dp/0007172303)

Lifehacker have Upgrade Your Life. <http://lifehackerbook.com/>

They seem to be collections of articles from their websites.

~~~
lewi
That eHow book looks sorta cool. Thanks!

~~~
lenary
i have a copy. it's not as good as it looks.

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wizche
Hacking: The art of Exploitation by Jon Erickson
<http://nostarch.com/hacking2.htm>

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hotmind
Try <http://www.zerotosuperhero.com>

~~~
lachyg
Just bought this on your recommendation, what do you think of it?

~~~
hotmind
Thank you. I wrote and published the book Zero to Superhero after four years
of research and self-experimentation (I thought my profile bio was disclosure
enough. I guess not).

If you're not completely happy with the purchase of the book, let me know and
I'll refund your money immediately.

~~~
semanticist
I suppose that you know your own conversion rates well enough, but I
personally am not going to click a PayPal 'buy now' button just to find out
how much the book costs. In fact, not listing the price screams of scam to me.

~~~
hotmind
I'm confused. The e-book costs $10, and it's prominently stated. Are you
referring to something else on the site? Let me know and I'll fix it.

~~~
photon_off
I just visited the site and scanned it 3 times, couldn't find the price. I'm
sure it's there somewhere if you say it is, but I couldn't easily find it.
Just a heads up

~~~
hotmind
Thanks guys. The site is old and needs a complete overhaul.

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to_the_top
four steps to the epiphany

~~~
c1sc0
While that book is a great classic on product development, it's not strictly
about hacking.

