Ask HN: What single book is the best intro to your field for laypeople? - capocannoniere
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jamessb
The same question was asked on Ask Metafilter a decade ago, and received 237
answers: [http://ask.metafilter.com/71101/What-single-book-is-the-
best...](http://ask.metafilter.com/71101/What-single-book-is-the-best-
introduction-to-your-field-or-specialization-within-your-field-for-laypeople)

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yitchelle
[http://dilbert.com/](http://dilbert.com/) \- for the management activities of
my work.

~~~
kleer001
and budding climate change deniers and misogynists /s

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e9
The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing By Steven W.
Smith, Ph.D.

[http://www.dspguide.com/](http://www.dspguide.com/)

[http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm](http://www.dspguide.com/pdfbook.htm)

~~~
derstander
I also enjoyed Lyon's "Understanding Digital Signal Processing" when I went
from a dual CS/Physics undergrad to working as a radar engineer.

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garyfirestorm
Noise and Vibration Analysis

[http://www.abravibe.com/book.html](http://www.abravibe.com/book.html)

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jbonniwell
When I was doing Bluetooth Low Energy development for IoT devices, this book
was the goto reference for both the embedded firmware and mobile app folks:

[https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Low-Energy-Developers-
Handb...](https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Low-Energy-Developers-
Handbook/dp/013288836X)

~~~
stefanpie
May I also ask if you have any more books on embedded devices or IoT devices
not specific to just Bluetooth. I'm worked on a research project I led last
summer where I fist learned about software and hardware development for small
embedded devices like microcontrollers and this year I'm working on another
research project using the same technology. I feel as if I understand the
technology but am not proficient with it at all. If you have any other
resources let me know.

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imauld
[https://books.google.com/books?id=jpVHAQAACAAJ&dq=what+is+a+...](https://books.google.com/books?id=jpVHAQAACAAJ&dq=what+is+a+computer&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwieooqkw6PUAhVM6mMKHaizCmEQ6AEIJDAA)

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lasoandrade
Rebel Buddha by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

[https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Buddha-Guide-Revolution-
Mind/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Buddha-Guide-Revolution-
Mind/dp/1590309294)

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SirLJ
"More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite" by Sebastian
Mallaby - this is a great read and motivator for someone interested in
quantitative trading systems - started as a side project for me, but looks
like it will give me my early retirement + my legacy money to leave behind one
day...

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Amogha_IO
Hands down the best book to give an intro into my field: "How to win friends &
influence people" by Dale Carnegie.

(I am a startup CEO, w/ technical background. Learnt a LOT from this book.
Would probably not be in the same job if I hadn't read this)

Other good books that will give an intro into tech startup management for
laypeople:

-Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

-The hard thing about Hard things (Ben Horowitz)

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santoshmaharshi
One of the first books many many years back, introducing me to software
business and open source culture The Cathedral and the Bazaar Musings on Linux
and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary By Eric S. Raymond-
[http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-
bazaar/](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/)

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3131s
For pure linguistics I'd recommend _Transformational Grammar_ by Andrew
Radford and _Metaphors We Live By_ by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

And for NLP, Dan Jurafski and James H. Martin's _Speech and Language
Processing_ is excellent, and there are great projects like spaCy, NLTK,
WordNet, FrameNet, COCA. etc.

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brudgers
_48\. The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman._ \-- Alan J.
Perlis

[http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-
alan/quotes.html](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html)

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jachee
As a systems administrator with an eye toward DevOps principles, I highly
recommend (the possibly cliché) _The Phoenix Project_ by by Gene Kim, Kevin
Behr, and George Spaffor.

It's a novel that reads like a thriller, but is infused with IT info.

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true_tuna
"Getting started with Raspberry Pi" is a wonderful introduction to systems,
Linux, and IOT projects. Super approachable language, but also quite complete.

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cm2012
Being Direct by Lester Wunderman is a great intro to the world of direct
marketing.

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bkohlmann
For aspiring fighter pilots: The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.

