

Hacker Book Club - forsaken
http://ericholscher.com/blog/2009/sep/26/hacker-book-club/

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forsaken
Interesting how often this is discussed, and it looks like there are already a
couple of efforts going on.

It was previously mentioned here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407067>

The hacker news SICP group that spawned:
[http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-
sicp?hl=en&...](http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-
sicp?hl=en&pli=1)

Also a wizard book study as well:
<http://groups.google.com/group/wizardbookstudy/>

It might almost be better to merge all of these ideas, as there appears to be
interest!

------
jcdreads
So I once happened to be at a company where I was lucky enough to have several
colleagues join me in an SICP reading group. We squatted in a conference room
once a week and plowed through as many sections as we could during lunch.

The key feature of the reading group, I thought, was that we were able to
identify, right in our production code, right there in the conference room,
instances where we used particular idioms from the SICP section under
discussion. It was that identification of actual fancy SICP concepts (in
scheme-world) in the familiar production code (java-world) that made this
particularly worthwhile; folks (including me) saw a whole bunch of places
where our java codebase would be (or had already been) improved by applying
what we were reading about in the book. It was among the more useful exercises
of my professional career so far.

So perhaps this django-based discussion group could include illustrations from
a reasonable open source codebase (django itself?).

Sounds like great fun.

~~~
forsaken
Sounds like an awesome idea. Having practical examples would really help
hammer the ideas into your head as well.

I'm glad that people think the idea is good. There is so much goodness in SICP
(I only read halfway through it). I really think adding some external context
like your suggestion kind of brings new life into the discussion. A lot of the
concepts in the book are ageless, and it's instructive that we are still
making the same mistakes today!

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pavelludiq
didn't HN have something similar? I think there was a thread and an IRC
channel and a Google group dedicated to Hacker news-ers reading SICP.

~~~
chriskelley
[http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-
sicp?hl=en&...](http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-
sicp?hl=en&pli=1)

~~~
buugs
why would people downvote the link to what the parent comment was
asking/stating?

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billswift
They are all talking about discussion groups, not book clubs. Why doesn't
someone (who knows a lot more than me, or I'd do it myself) start a Amazon
Associates bookstore with books for hackers? I would definitely be interested
in that. If anyone knows of something like that, or a good hacker study guide,
maybe leave a link? Before someone recommends it, I've already seen esr's "How
to Become a Hacker" <http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html> . I'm
looking for more practical programming study that would be useful for hackers
and programming.

------
realitygrill
You know, I have seen so many intriguing-sounding books recommended and
discussed here on HN - and not just on strictly 'hacker' topics. Like it says
in the guidelines, "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." I
want to read them. I can't keep track of them!

Would it be possible to automatically collate these books somehow, with hn-
ers' comments? Maybe with check boxes for what you've already read, and
integrate it with HN accounts?

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klocksib
Sounds good to me.

------
ilyak
If we're talking about books, I prefer fiction.

