* Fooled By Randomness (NN Taleb): Taleb is a complicated personality, but this book gave me a heuristic for thinking about long-tails and uncertain events that I could never have derived myself from a probability textbook.
* Designing Data Intensive Applications (M Kleppmann): Provided a first-principles approach for thinking about the design of modern large-scale data infrastructure. It's not just about assembling different technologies -- there are principles behind how data moves and transforms that transcend current technology, and DDIA is an articulation of those principles. After reading this, I began to notice general patterns in data infrastructure, which helped me quickly grasp how new technologies worked. (most are variations on the same principles)
* Introduction to Statistical Learning (James et al) and Applied Predictive Modeling (Kuhn et al). These two books gave me a grand sweep of predictive modeling methods pre-deep learning, methods which continue to be useful and applicable to a wider variety of problem contexts than AI/Deep Learning. (neural networks aren't appropriate for huge classes of problems)
* High Output Management (A Grove): oft-recommended book by former Intel CEO Andy Grove on how middle management in large corporations actually works, from promotions to meetings (as a unit of work). This was my guide to interpreting my experiences when I joined a large corporation and boy was it accurate. It gave me a language and a framework for thinking about what was happening around me. I heard this was 1 of 2 books Tobi Luetke read to understand management when he went from being a technical person to CEO of Shopify. (the other book being Cialdini's Influence). Hard Things about Hard Things (B Horowitz) is a different take that is also worth a read to understand the hidden--but intentional--managerial design of a modern tech company. These some of the very few books written by practitioners--rather than management gurus--that I've found to track pretty closely with my own real life experiences.
>gave me a heuristic for thinking about long-tails and uncertain events
If it's possible to summarize and share the heuristic in this forum format, I request you to please do. Am always learning from Taleb's books and ideas.
I'm hard pressed to summarize the book because it introduces so many ideas. Perhaps I can point you to summaries other folks have written, like [1]. That said, I can rattle off some heuristics from Taleb that I've applied in real life:
1) Look out for fat tails and rare events in real life. Don't obsess over trying to predict them (you cannot -- rare events are such that they are inherently difficult to predict. They're rare!); instead protect yourself against their downsides by designing the appropriate defenses for when they do happen (e.g. having some form of insurance, setting up legal clauses that limit liability, etc.) For instance, contracts can be set up to limit liability from very rare events that have damages that scale infinitely. This can be done by adding a clause that says if said rare event happens, one will only pay damages up to $x, which contains the downside. (Insurance companies do this a lot)
2) When to take risks? In situations where there are low downsides if you're wrong and high upside if you're right. When to not take risks? When the opposite is true.
3) Don't mistake individual risk for systems risk. The startup community valorizes risk-taking (after all, nothing ventured nothing gained). However never fall into the trap into thinking that risk-taking makes everyone stronger. When individuals fail, they don't always get stronger (many are destroyed) -- instead their failures make the system/ecosystem stronger. It's like airplane crashes, which are themselves unrecoverable failures. But each airplane crash actually improves airline safety for everyone through learnings obtained from post-mortems and blackboxes, which lead to new FAA guidelines.
4) Don't obsess over probabilities alone -- pay attention to payoffs (or better yet, focus on "expectation", which is the sum/integral of probabilities times payoffs). (everybody learns this in statistics class but no one has thought about how to apply this). You want to maximize expectation, not probability.
Wonderful. I am such a Taleb fan boy but have been putting off Designing Data Intensive Applications. I am starting on it this afternoon from this post.
I just started on Daniel Kahneman's Noise. It will be disappointing if it isn't one of these type of books.
I hear that it's probably not as relevant these days, since it's been nearly 20 years since the 2nd edition was released, but the attitude towards professionalism it instilled in me was invaluable, and the fact that all the recommendations were backed up by studies made it so that I could back up my decisions with facts.
Never Split the Difference - a negotiation book by famous hostage negotiator.
It's so immediately useful and practical, my entire team used it to collect massive amount of debts and enact other business changes. It was invaluable, and I make everyone I know read it.
The course: Object Oriented Programming at the University of Minnesota
The book: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
This was back in the early 90s, we learned OO with Scheme. SICP is where I credit my programming ability even today. I think that if I'd taken OO via C++ my eyes wouldn't have opened like they did with Scheme and SICP.
I was, at the time, programming products in C++ for my father's software company while taking classes and I remember a student ask the professor (Dr. Maria Gini, an amazing instructor) why we were learning OO with a dead language instead of a language we'd actually use like C++. And I remember thinking to myself "I'd like to learn something other than C++ anyway". Dr. Gini simply said "because this is how I choose to teach the subject." (something like that).
It was an amazing experience, definitely one of my top 3 classes taken at University.
I dont have an exact book or course to recommend, but rather how to approach school courses...
I'm Canadian, and went thru post secondary in Canada. This is coming from someone who did not program for fun in highschool, had no family support/introduction to IT, no extra curricular programming introduction, etc.
I went to a collage instead of university. My first year computer courses had lab sessions where our teacher helped with programming assignments. There was ~10 kids in class. Uni classes were a few hundred kids in a single class and lab sessions were ~30 kids. They had TAs (teaching assistants, graduate students with no industry experience) instead of their professors during programming lab sessions. I got the same course credit, much cheaper tuition, and a much more practical programming education. I transferred to a university to finish my degree and I was embarrassingly ahead of everyone else when it came to programming.
Whatever course you do take, look for passionate people with a teaching background and a small class size.
Most books by Bob Wilson, particularly Prometheus Rising, which set off a world of self-discovery when I picked it up first in high school.
Nowadays, on weird books or ideas, I’d say:
* The technique of Focusing by Eugene Gendlin
* Shinzen Young’s writing on his See-Hear-Feel noting meditation technique
* Or, similar to focusing but much, much weirder: Jack Willis’s Reichian Therapy for Home Use (available free on the internet)
Every single book here has its own issues, but they all elaborate on listening to the body, and the subtle ways we hold stress in our bodies. They’ve helped me understand too that there’s a difference between being emotionally fat and emotionally expressive: the former is like a McDonald’s meal, the latter like a fine dining meal.
I’ve struggled with generalized anxiety all my life, and this stuff has really helped me deal with it without pushing it away. On the actual real reduction-of anxiety I still feel fairly clueless.
Prometheus rising was such an instrumental book for me. At that point of my life I was dabbling into the occult which is why I ended up getting the book. In made me realize that there are multiple side to any story and you can easily get stuck in echo chambers that re-inforce your own pre-conceptions.
Ironically it's the book that drove me away from the occult. It also create a lot of uncertainty in my life, which at times even today, 20 years later bothers me. I am never 100% sure about anything, because it's all a "maybe". It has also led to a constant evolution of my thinking process because I am always open to new ideas and mindsets.
I remember the last section of the book was totally unrelatable to me. Still own the book, I should probably re-read it, twenty years later.
Thanks for the suggestions, I think I will get some very good use out of these. For real reduction of anxiety you might be interested in reading about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which I think would fit well with the resources you mentioned. It’s an evidence-based therapy with a focus on mindfulness and meditation. A big part of what it taught me is how to unconditionally accept my unpleasant emotions which paradoxically leads to experiencing less of them. That’s easier said than done of course but ACT gives exercises and concrete advice for how to get there. The book I liked is called A Liberated Mind, a self-help book by the creator of ACT, Steven Hayes.
Pro Git(https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2). You'd be surprised how many people in our professional community try to get by in life having never just sat down and read the documentation on their tooling. Obviously the git man-pages are terrible enough that we have goofy parody generators, but its okay because this book exists.
Seriously, after reading this book I have never had any doubt or fear using git. I have to google all the commands that I don't use everyday due to the peculiar lack of consistency in the TUI, but my understanding never wavers.
So much this. I’d absolutely recommend everyone read the internals chapters, since they’re approachable and really give you a sense for how git thinks. I feel like after reading that chapter, all the superstition around git faded away for me
The Great Gatsby taught me the folly of silent sentimentalism.
Awareness of your emotional state is like a super power, or a Cassandra complex. Awareness that you've arranged your fortunes around a one-sided attachment to an illusion is the last bulwark against self destruction, especially when the marketing department eggs you on. Being able to identify it in others can be useful and alienating.
Yes, there's much to reflect on in The Great Gatsby. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.
* Thinking fast and slow - how to think and make decision and how to consider bias.
* Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth - specialisation is for insects.
* Propaganda - 1928 book by the inventor of public relations and modern media. Know how they influence you.
* The war of art - being a professional. Honesty I don't think this book was written by a human this book completely changed my life and any other person I for to read this book had a similar experience.
I have more but I don't want to information overload anyone.
Nand2Tetris, the book, and actually coding the entire project. It earned me a prestigious internship, from a no-name school, which subsequently lead to a FANG position.
This may be unusual but in my business school, we had a department that focused on Psychology and Org. Behaviour. They offered a free evaluation (they used the California Psychological Inventory [1]) and consultation for all students. The main upshot of what I discovered from that interaction was that relatively shorter term, expertise based project style work is what suited my personality the best. I only applied to consulting style jobs out of college and joined what was effectively an internal consulting arm of a large multinational and am now a globally recognised expert in some domains within the company. Compared to my peers, this knowledge did help me avoid a lot of angst finding a role fit.
This book taught me so much about how to manage my life, and taught me how to review my own systems.
* SICP, On Lisp, and Let over Lambda
It's hard to pick one exactly, because really it's about opening your mind to radically different programming paradigms than what's popular.
Learning lisp well enough gives you confidence to attempt to create new programming languages, through code generation, or even mentally thinking about an API as a language rather than just a series of functions.
My main criticism of GTD is that it's a bottom up approach. It proposes that if you get enough things done, your purpose will emerge. But frequently you make progress in the wrong direction. E.g. for me it was a year trying to set up a coffee stand or starting a blog. There was progress and it felt really important at the time but wasn't.
When it's usually the opposite. Once you have a purpose, you will know the right things to do.
And sometimes you have to let go. There's a book, The Perfect Mess (Freedman, Abrahamson), which proposes that mess is more efficient than order.
Another approach is several lists based on your life priorities. I'd recommend the book The 1 Thing (G. Keller), which can combo very well with GTD or even without it.
Another good pairing to GTD is "How will you measure your Life?" [1], by Prof. Clayton Christensen (also author of "Innovator's Dilemma", another excellent book).
It gives you a framework to think about life and your value system, which is a great complement to GTD.
I loved Let over Lambda, but I always hesitate to recommend it, any more than I'd recommend TAOCP Semi-Numerical Algorithms, although that totally blew my mind. Even just the first chapter or two; I don't care that much about class implementations, but the power and the elegance and bootstrapping so high from such simple beginnings of lexical closures, all a true pleasure of life to learn such things.
I've had a copy of this book for so long, but it reeks to me of something that should be a blog post I can read in 5 minutes, and so I've never been able to muster the interest to crack it open.
I find many "productivity" books tend be easily summarizable... but reading the book is really to drill the concept in your head so that you're conscious of the tips/advice in your day to day.
Plus, if you spread out the reading over a few days/weeks, you can apply what you've learned throughout the day as you read along.
OED. Growing in the Soviet Union, where English proficiency was pretty low, I learned English in a specialized school. I chose to improve and maintain my language skills by procuring and reading English books and taking additional classes. When computers become popular, I had an instant advantage by understanding user interface and documentation and having access to books that were unaccessible to my peers unless translated to Russian.
I love the OED. I have a paper copy of the older edition (the 2 volume one with a magnifying glass). The histories of words is so interesting. I always tell people (English non-native speakers or my kids learning English spelling etc. in school) that in English the spelling of a word is telling you the history of the word. But the ways meanings slip around and so on is infinitely interesting.
E603, Research Methods, in the writing department.
Among other things, I learned how to read academic papers and how to think like a researcher.
A fun last day of that course was considering "real world situations" through various research lenses ("If I were an anthropologist, what would I make of this situation?", "If I were trying to understand, using critical discourse analysis, why my roommate won't open the chicken door in the morning") has proven super valuable in corporate-life. There's different reasons for different things ("Why don't we have an onboarding doc?") and it's important to consider all of them and figure out what the best course forward is to achieve your objective.
* Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy. The book explains how to think of a platform systematically. It's valuable because it applies to everything else in life, any business, any industry - not just IT platforms. Based on the findings of 2 Nobel prize winners.
* Never Split the Difference. Don't even think about it - read it. The book is a life coaching chapter that everyone should learn.
* The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks. Everything is a network. From wars, to economy, to minorities, to terrorism. Understanding what truly lies behind the concept of "network" is just as well one of those life coaching chapters everyone should learn.
Okay, Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books ever, but referring to its message as if it were the message of the whole Bible is incredibly disingenuous, misleading, and unlikely to get anyone to actually read what you're talking about -- how would they know it was that _one_ section?
And quoting it in Latin with no translation is incredibly pompous.
Once you can let go of the world and everything in it, you have an amazing amount of freedom. It makes you invincible, you no longer feel like you have to grip on to wealth for your safety or your family's. You don't feel like you have to prove yourself to anyone. You focus on the things that matter, the things that do good.
I know why this crowd downvoted you, but "Try to find a Christian Mechanic, open on Sunday? No David you are bunking with us."
Line out of a movie.
If I know a person lies some of the stuff in a book that teaches honestly, and kindness; they are my first choice for anything.
Are they more talented than let's say a Zuck? No. Would I trust them with my money, or the keys to my house? Yes.
(I don't need a debate. I'm not a bible thumper. I know the bible has some crazy ideas. I do think some people need a reminder that ethics are important, or at least appreciated in some crowds. Do you need a book in order to be a respectable person-- no.)
I have no interest in the “god” concept and I think the Bible is the most overrated book around. Also, I know it’s bad form to talk about comment voting, and I’ve never done it before. But I saw the greyed-out vanitas comment and gave it my upvote to undo a bit of the damage. I mean, come on.
I think providing advice in Latin, a language almost no one on HN speaks, is a more likely reason. It started getting upvoted again after someone else provided a translation.
Having read the linked Bible passage, I think it probably means "A wise man is humble. We are all dust in the wind. Nothing you do matters anywhere near as much as most people like to imagine."
In a thousand years, the sun will still rise. The wind will still blow. Your name will probably not be remembered.
We have trouble coming up with solid info on historic kings. We know vastly less about historic commoners.
Even if you are relatively well off and important in the world today, in the grand scheme of things, you still don't really matter all that much. So check your ego at the door.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie. Old but great for an introvert on the spectrum like me. Human nature doesn't change, but I still don't understand it.
Functional Web Development with Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix: Rethink the Modern Web App by Lance Halvorsen
Elixir and Phoenix have been fantastic for my productivity. I had a fairly short, but steep learning curve in the early days, but LiveView is amazing and replaces quite a bit of
client side javascript that previously felt redundant to me. I've been getting a quicker time to completion, and correspondingly being paid faster than when I was working with more traditional stacks like Django or Rails.
As a long-time writer of networking based user-land code, I find reading the implementation of the socket API to be extremely helpful. There used to be a few "annotated source code" books that were giant but interesting, tho the last I read was from 2.4 I think or maybe early 2.6. But the general understanding of how it works is useful for using the APIs.
Zen Buddhism. I dabbled with the concepts and played with the idea of taking it seriously for about 15 years before I finally surrendered to the idea and it changed everything.
I became interested through books but ultimately if it’s something you’re interested in pursuing you’d want to find a temple or community and practice with those that have more experience.
Two books I read early on that I recommend are The Tantric Distinction and Zen Mind Beginners Mind.
"Book of the Subgenius" (various authors) but I don't recommend it. It's not for everyone.
Learn (self-)hypnosis. "TRANCE-formations" by Bandler and Grinder (and Bandler's other books as well) and "Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis?" by Steven Heller.
Robert Anton Wilson's books are pretty good too. Also "Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman's Guide to Reality Selection" by Antero Alli.
* Introduction to Personal Finance (I think, on Coursera)
Personal Finance is one subject that is not taught is any school across the board. Previously, my spouse and I were influenced by whatever the insurance seller peddled as the best.
Post this course, we can identify most bad investments from good ones and have a basic but solid financial plan for the future.
I have taken many courses, but certainly this one has stuck with me. And I took this one a decade back!
Geoff Hinton's Coursera course on neural networks in 2012. Today everyone knows about deep learning. Knowing about deep learning in 2012 was a superpower. And being able to take a course from a pioneer of the field, for free, was just incredible.
My doctoral level real analysis course (the one on measure theory, Lebesgue integration, etc.). Hardest course I ever took, but it was the great unification that made so much of the math in my head just special cases of the same thing.
Coder’s At Work is a collection interviews with several brilliant programmers. This book gave me confidence during a time where I didn’t have much. My main take away was that every programmer was different and have different values. There was no archetype, it destroys the notion of identity (all programmers are this, went to this school, care about these things, are good at this, wear hoodies, etc). Must read.
Read people's commits and try to understand what and why. Ask questions. The most talented people I worked with love getting good questions. With git or even CVS (ha my age) programming is a completely transparent activity, you can see what everyone is doing. You can read code 1/2 the day and probably be more productive than if you don't.
A lot. One important thing is, that it is possible to focus and work for 10-12 hours per day. Before I bought the "only 4 hours of productive work per day are possible for avg human". Not true. Hard to achieve though. You really have to have good self discipline to do it on your own.
I am sure it's not this way for everything but, for my own experience, I will answer with no. I would also doubt anyone in recent times who said they had a book or course like that.
I've found competition to be so intense that, for example, my university restricts access to course syllabi and class information of certain courses because so many people would go through it and try to get a head start on it, sometimes years in advance, so they could have a shot at an A. There are old course notes and syllabi from 2012 that float around the internet that people use now since it's mostly the same.
It's hard to picture a book that could give you an edge without anyone else knowing about it.
There are so many books that have given me an unfair advantage. I could easily list a dozen but the question asks for one.
I'd say we live in an age of overinformation. There are books that give you an edge, like Never Split the Difference, and then everyone reads it, and then everyone reads the summary of it, then everyone criticizes the summary (which the original book itself has addressed), then everyone reads the criticism and concludes that the book is bad.
You can ask people what a startup is, or what a MVP is, or TDD, and I assure you most would not have the original definitions or purposes from the books. A lot of people think TDD is 100% test coverage or that a startup is a business, but these are all wrong by definition.
* Designing Data Intensive Applications (M Kleppmann): Provided a first-principles approach for thinking about the design of modern large-scale data infrastructure. It's not just about assembling different technologies -- there are principles behind how data moves and transforms that transcend current technology, and DDIA is an articulation of those principles. After reading this, I began to notice general patterns in data infrastructure, which helped me quickly grasp how new technologies worked. (most are variations on the same principles)
* Introduction to Statistical Learning (James et al) and Applied Predictive Modeling (Kuhn et al). These two books gave me a grand sweep of predictive modeling methods pre-deep learning, methods which continue to be useful and applicable to a wider variety of problem contexts than AI/Deep Learning. (neural networks aren't appropriate for huge classes of problems)
* High Output Management (A Grove): oft-recommended book by former Intel CEO Andy Grove on how middle management in large corporations actually works, from promotions to meetings (as a unit of work). This was my guide to interpreting my experiences when I joined a large corporation and boy was it accurate. It gave me a language and a framework for thinking about what was happening around me. I heard this was 1 of 2 books Tobi Luetke read to understand management when he went from being a technical person to CEO of Shopify. (the other book being Cialdini's Influence). Hard Things about Hard Things (B Horowitz) is a different take that is also worth a read to understand the hidden--but intentional--managerial design of a modern tech company. These some of the very few books written by practitioners--rather than management gurus--that I've found to track pretty closely with my own real life experiences.