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Unix for programmers and users by Graham Glass and King Ables. Really great book that took you through the basics of Unix, the various shells, all the way to system calls, sockets etc. All in one reasonably compact book. I love books that can explain complex stuff in few words and do it well. I got it as part of my studies and I had worked through it already by the time I got the class :)
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I am going to repeat what I always say when these book threads come up: I love all the recommendations here but please say a word or two about why you recommend said books. Sell them to me, don't make me do the work. Dumb lists of titles are so uninteresting.
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I'll counter. Don't tell my why you recommend it; tell me briefly what it's about instead and I'll decide for myself whether or not I want to read it. I like to have moments to myself without feeling like I am being sold something. I feel like I am constantly being sold things on the internet; let me do the discovery myself. Let me decide for myself whether or not it is interesting to me.
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If someone says why they really like a book, you can just... skip that part. If you post a list of titles with zero context, the only people you're helping are those who just want a list of titles, which is almost certainly the minority.
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In my line of work it's the Annual Book of ASTM Standards. In particular the handful of volumes that pertain to my established laboratory & field work, as well as possible aspirational efforts. It can really pay to keep up to date. Also, the text/content of all the standards are the work of volunteer technical people, who come to complete consensus before the well-paid journalist professionals at the nonprofit publisher send it to press. ASTM may contain some of the most statistically documented laboratory procedures for repeatabiliy & reproducibility compared to what you normally find. A lot of the books people have commented on have been influential in the past and do stand on their own today. Well even though outdated ASTM standards may have limited value, one real offsetting benefit is the past experience of using them in previous years when they were current and some standards were less fully developed. So if you think about it, the current year's publication is a snapshot, the majority of your collection from previous years is huge by comparison, and ends up proportionally more helpful on the whole, even though somewhat outdated or even obsolete. And these books are hefty, they weigh kilos per year and cost the big bucks. Not really worth it either unless you're really ready to dip deeply into the unique type of bureaucracy associated with these type of efforts. But it gets much worse, you think ASTM books are boring, how about the Federal Register? There's another ongoing publication where the bureaucracy is so thick, someone can specialize so highly at navigating it that they can more effectively win bids without any technical qualifications compared to actual practicioners, most of whom don't stand a chance on merit alone. Not for me, but if you're aiming for Uncle Sam's pocketbook you need to up your game here. I guess there are a lot of other books which might inspire people to take some action of their own, or even build a business around. Not always ones that are intended to be inspirational either. Some people think Buckminster Fuller was inspirational, one of my handful of books when I had a shelf is Earth, Inc. Title sounds almost like the name of a business or something: https://books.google.ca/books?id=l5DODQAAQBAJ&pg=PP5&source=... Only about a half inch thick, fits on any shelf with ease, not for people that dislike big words. You have been warned. Then for electronics it's Radiotron. Specifically RDH4: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_rcaRadiotr1954_9495850... Not so thin, 1523 pages mainly for people that do really like equations. If you can build projects like they have here, I guarantee you will be able to do things your peers will not. Both published decades ago, so it's up to the reader to fill in the blanks about how we got to where we are now.
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How to measure anything. I think it's targeted for actuaries/insurance, though I'm not in that field. But it did change my idea of what can be analyzed and measured. The beginning is repetitive. Some of it is very unorthodox. But it was very useful in detailing how to evaluate risk. How to talk to little kids so little kids will listen. I don't have kids and read it on a whim. I've found it's excellent for communicating with people in general during conflict (especially patients). The author is a counsellor and describes real counselling sessions with parents who want better relationships with their children. I enjoyed how the author uses the same techniques on the adults and obtains the same manner of response as when used on the kids. Understanding Complexity is not a book but a part of the Great Courses. It's hard to say what it directly changed but it did affect how I view everyday life, from traffic to physiology. Hui's Approach to Internal Medicine was very helpful for transitioning from knowing about medical facts to practical medical knowledge useful to everyday care. It's focus is on 'approach' rather than facts. It has a practical approach to medical issues. First distinguishing by ones in the same category of pathophysiology then practical approach to distinguishing issues within the category. It's a dense book but an excellent read and a good reference.
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Engineer turned engineering leader here. "Good Strategy / Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt - An awesome book on strategy, which explains very plainly how to construct a reasonable strategy, and see signs of bad strategy. It (among other things) dissects NVIDIA's rise in the late 2000's, and predicts (more or less) the next ten years of where the company went. "The Effective Manager" by Mark Horstman - All the things that no one says or tells about management and communication. "Team Topologies" by Skelton and Pais - A really good view of organizational design patterns and anti-patterns for software teams rooted in the premise of Conway's Law.
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Some favorite math books Intro to Smooth Manifolds, Lee -- sweeping intro to geometry with minimal prereqs, great at balancing the nitty gritty details with conveying intuition A Course In Arithmetic, Serre -- classically terse and elegant intro to algebraic and analytic number theory. Goes from quadratic forms to Dirichlet's theorem to modular forms in a mere 100 pgs! Princeton Lectures in Analysis, Stein & Shakarchi -- 4 books covering much of classical/modern analysis, they really shine in their discussion of applications The large scale structure of space-time, Hawking & Ellis -- The most mathematically satisfying treatment of general relativity I've found. High points include proof of singularity theorems! Spin Geometry, Lawson & Michelson -- Deep dive into the enigmatic "spin groups" and their applications in geometry. Also the only good (book) reference I could find on the index theorem
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Principles of Neural Science by Kandel et al Molecular Biology of The Cell by Alberts et al Janeway’s Immunobiology Robbin’s Pathologic Basis of Disease All of these books are extraordinary in their sheer ability to organize thousands of small details into thematic narratives of how life operates. They also reveal how hard we humans try to narrate life into tidy, comprehensible themes. These books are all of an era (2005-2015), and there are probably newer ones. That said, they are a great guide for non biologists into how experts think things work.
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This is a great list. I'll add the following covering related areas: Cancer - by Weinberg Introduction to Proteins - Kessel, Ben-Tal (an older classic is Proteins by Creighton) Developmental Biology - Gilbert Organic Chemistry - Clayden et al
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We just called Janeway “the bible” for short. Edit: I just realised what my username is here.
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My neuroscience professors referred to Principles of Neuroscience as "the Bible" as well. I think that's testament to how good these recommendations are.
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The Immune System by Peter Parham. A masterpiece.
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West's Respiratory Physiology if a beautiful example of stripping everything down to it's simplest possible level but no simpler.
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Robbin's was great. Read it cover to cover many times in medical school.
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Williams Textbook of Endocrinology is a real gem as well
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Designing Data Intensive Applications is one of the most useful books if you work with big systems. Doubly so if you're actually working on a system like that. Nicely threads a line between too dense and too watery.
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Yes, it's very often recommended. It's surprisingly entertaining for a technical book.
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One of the best books I’ve read in years. There’s very little fluff, which is exceedingly rare in a technical book.
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If you're interested in the effects social media has on political and civic life, these are two great books to read. One is recent, the other is a foundational classic of social psychology: - Zeynep Tufekci, Twitter and Tear Gas, The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (2017). - Erwin Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956) Goffman uses a theatrical metaphor to talk about how our behavior and social life is affected by our perceptions of who the audience is for our actions. Zeynep writes about how the magnifying and flattening effects of social media have been both a help and hindrance to large-scale organizing. Both are wonderful books.
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Few of these books are “great works” in their field, but all changed my understanding of their topic. - How to Read a Book by Adler and Van Doren. I was in academia when I read this and it had a huge impact on how I read and thought about academic papers. - Intuitive Biostatistics by Motulsky. First stats book that I enjoyed. Emphasises the practice of statistics, particularly the assumptions and mistakes people tend to make. - World War II Map by Map, published by DK. Had never previously been interested in WW2 history, but something about this took my interest. While reading it, I finally appreciated the scale and complexity of WW2. - Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. Working through this one meant I actually started getting better at chess! - Common Sense Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms by Wengrow. The book that helped me become interested in data structures and algorithms, rather than being something I “should” learn about.
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>Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess
Ah, memories. Got this book as a kid soon after I started playing at 11-12. It's just a nice puzzle collection, progresses really nicely in complexity. No notation needed, so very kid friendly. The mating pattern with sacrificing a queen on f7 and forcing the king into the corner with the bishop to deliver backrank mate was my first realisation of the beauty and art of chess, and made a real impression on me. It's quite contrived though, so I've yet to get it over the board. But ever since I read it I look for it whenever it seems even remotely possible. Highly recommended for parents of young kids who have just started learning. Here's some other chess recommendations: Silman's 2 books on positional play and endgames: these are fantastic books. The chapters are broken up by rating, ranging from beginner level to master strength(2000 ELO). Other than those two, puzzle collections are always helpful. And for intermediates, game collections from string players. My favourite is Tal - Botvinnik 1962, written by Tal himself. Tal in my opinion is the greatest genius chess has ever seen(held back by his terrible health), and he was a fantastic author as well. Other great collections include Kasparov's My Great Predecessors and Fischer's My 60 memorable games. Skip opening books entirely. Pick an opening and find grandmasters who play it. Study their games, understand the ideas of the opening. Memorising theory isn't really helpful below expert level(1800 ELO). Thanks to OP for the trip down memory lane!
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The Selfish Gene should be read by everyone who studies biology or life science. Modern biological sciences are underlied by an understanding of evolution an genetics. I had heard variants of the phrase "change in allele frequency in a population over time," as a description of evolution many times starting in high school. But it wasn't until I read The Selfish Gene in college that I really understood what this meant and how it should shape our view of biology.
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Indeed. We are only vessels for our genes, what we do doesn't really matter as long as we pass our genes along, from the perspective of our genes. I would also recommend other Dawkins books such as The God Delusion, it was one of the pivotal books that turned me from someone vaguely religious to an atheist. It explains simply how the various fallacies of religions are explainable and unwrappable.
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When I read The Selfish Gene that explanation was very convincing to my (layman's) mind, but I've since wondered if some sort of "multilevel selection" mightn't do a better job of explaining both individual and group behavior. (The idea of "memes" is an interesting metaphor, imo, and nothing more.) This reminds me of a book I had hoped to read, "Darwin's Cathedral."
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You might want to read up on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. It's a proposed extension to the modern synthesis of Dawkins' generation and includes concepts like multilevel selection and cultural evolution. It's currently a matter of debate and empirical verification in the field. But it's a lot more in line with my way of thinking about evolution as a constantly self-bootstrapping process finding new media to evolve. I subscribe to an evolutionary cosmology myself(not Sheldrake's drivel), but that's mostly just a pet theory I like to think about when I'm high :D
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> It explains simply how the various fallacies of religions are explainable and unwrappable. It might be a very good book, but that sort of comments is divisive and does not show as understanding and hence, doss not sell the book, to me at least. The question of God from an anthropological perspective is fascinating, as it emerged all around the world in completely disconnected populations and societies, yet to answer the same set of questions: how did we happen to be? Why? Are we accountable for anything? It does not suggest any existence of God, of course, but it does suggest something deep that is that somehow, sentient creatures require answers to what they deem beyond them and typically, Homo Sapiens did/does invoke variations around the idea of superior beings to answer these questions. As such, I do not understand why some so-called atheists continue to throw stones at religious people instead of showing curiosity at the larger phenomenon. Religious institutions, though, are a well-organized scam around the beautiful anthropological and philosophical question of God.
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> does not show as understandingThat you are saying I didn't understand the book when presumably you didn't even read the book is true irony. I merely explained that it dissects various religious fallacies, that is not throwing stones, as it would be the same as taking a book about mathematical logic and asking why it does not ponder why P ^ ¬P in a philosophical sense; it is not the purpose of this book. It may be the purpose of another one, but not this one.
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I think a fantastic follow-up to The Selfish Gene is Daniel Dennett's From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds: https://www.amazon.com/Bacteria-Bach-Back-Evolution-Minds/dp... The author (a philosopher informed by scientific theories, writing on the subject for many decades) weaves together the grand story explaining biological evolution, evolution of minds, evolution of culture, and more (explaining how memes are a very useful concept to understand the tremendous non-biological changes over the course of the history of life).
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I would add that I think Dawkin's best work is The Ancestor's Tale. Even if you have no interest in biology that book is still worth a read.
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The Ancestor's Tale is an intimidatingly large book at first glance, but I found it well worth the read. I'd recommend it before The Selfish Gene just because, despite the size, to me the progression from chapter to chapter really kept my attention.
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Types and programming languages, Benjamin Pierce: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/tapl/Its contents is what I consider the meta game of programming. Understanding types seems to be a real boost to think about architecture, implementation, etc.
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It’s also surprisingly approachable, unlike most serious mathematical-logic(-adjacent) books. The three-page elementary treatment of the Knaster–Tarski fixed point theorem is worth reading even if you’re interested in cases for which it’s not sufficient (seriously infinite or order-theoretic things).
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Have you read Robert Harper's Practical Foundations of Programming Languages?
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I'm tripping on the first sentence of the blurb: > A type system is a syntactic method for enforcing levels of abstraction in programs. Why is it called a syntactic method? Because type errors are caught at compile time, by analyzing the source code?
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My 2c: I think the point is that types themselves are just syntax. It's all bits at the lowest level, so there's really no such thing as a 'type' on a Turing Machine tape. It can be expressed syntactically on the tape, but that's the point.
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But what's the difference between this type syntax on the tape and the number 2 on the tape, which is presumably something other than "just syntax"? This gets especially confusing when you bring in dispatch, where the types are now deciding what functions get called.
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Pierce is specifically excluding dynamic typing from his definition. He goes on to address this point in the introduction to the book: > The word "static" is sometimes added explicitly—we speak of a "statically typed programming language," for
example—to distinguish the sorts of compile-time analyses we are considering here from the dynamic or latent typing found in languages such as Scheme, where run-time type tags are used to distinguish different kinds of structures in the heap. Terms like "dynamically
typed" are arguably misnomers and should probably be replaced by "dynamically checked," but the usage is standard. A static type system is syntactic insofar as the syntax itself is what is being analyzed, not the actual runtime behavior.
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Artificial Intelligence: 1787, Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason)—where else to find purer reason than in a machine; unfortunately, Kant has written in Kantian using German words, fortunately, there is a recent, great Kantian to English translation in the works of 2020, Richard Evans, Kant's Cognitive Architecture, PhD Thesis [1] Beingness: 1954, Martin Heidegger, Was heißt Denken? (What is Called Thinking?)—perhaps the machine can become intelligent following Kant, but if it is to become wise, it will follow Heidegger. Self-reflection: 1985, Alexandre Grothendieck, Récoltes et Semailles, Réflexions et témoignage sur un passé de mathématicien (Reflections and Testimony on a Mathematician's Past)—insight into one of the most powerful, clear, and precise minds to have ever lived. Socioeconomics: 1879, Henry George, Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy—if the human civilization has any chance to exist and thrive beyond the 4th millenium, it's hard to imagine the implementation of that society being very far in principles from this initial specification. [1] https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~re14/Evans-R-2020-PhD-Thesis.pdf
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For power system operations: "Power System Stability and Control" by Prabha Kundur ( https://www.amazon.com/System-Stability-Control-Prabha-Kundu...) It is the bible of modern power system operations, and it will become more and more important as more renewable energy comes online. Understanding the concepts presented in this book is the difference between "why haven't we hit 100% renewables yet?!" and "we need market incentives for inertial ancillary services".
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》as more renewable energy comes online. Maybe better name is "unstable" energy. Some types of renewables are stable (water dams, geothermal).
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Fair point. To be precise, I would use the term intermittent or non-inertial but I didn't want to alienate any readers. All generation is unstable, just in different ways, so I don't think it is a useful descriptor.
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So unstable isn't actually a better name for renewable, because they are different dimensions. Battery research is underway to increase the availability of energy derived from renewable sources.
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I'm not sure batteries are the answer on a grid scale. From the grid/market perspective, they're incredibly expensive energy time machines. They also come with their own environmental issues. Batteries make sense if you need to make small islanded systems, or need black start capabilities. If you just want to teleport energy/inertia around I think the answer is old school flywheels, pumped hydro, and synchronous condensers. The real lowest hanging fruit is industrial demand-side response. I'm actively working on this from the grid side, implementing partial control room scada control of heavy industry for real-time grid balancing. Costs a few engineers some grey hairs, which is a lot cheaper than building grid scale batteries to provide the same end result.
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These two books I read recently are real gems / eye openers for me, which changed my view on many things: Robert C. Allen - The Industrial Revolution: A very short introduction (don't be fooled by the book series, every sentence carries its weight). C.S. Lewis - The Discarded Image (we get so many things wrong about what people before us thought and why).
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Agreed on The Discarded Image, it really is very good. I've read it together with Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages and they both provide fascinating insights into not just how people lived but more importantly what they thought. Medieval Europe is absolutely fascinating and it's great to be shown around by someone as erudite as Lewis and Huizinga. If you liked The Discarded Image, Lewis's book on courtly love (The Allegory of Love) is also very good. Courtly love is such an inscrutable subject for moderns and I only wish more people wrote as intelligently on the subject as Lewis did, since everything from Petrarch's sonnets to the 16th century Madrigals and beyond are only intelligible if one possesses some understanding of how courtly love works. Now if only I have time to read through Gower like Lewis suggested...
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Fantastic to see Bob Allen mentioned here! The research group where I worked tended to be on the opposite side of debates to Prof. Allen, but he’s a skilled and influential historian of the British Industrial Revolution. The last 10-20 years of research into the Industrial Revolution hasn’t had much impact on popular understanding. Hopefully books like the Very Short Introduction will change that.
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> we get so many things wrong about what people before us thought and why I see this a lot in engineering. Almost nobody takes the time to understand the work that came before them.
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"Best Approximation in Inner Product Spaces" by Frank Deutsch. This book is about the following problem, "Given a point P and a set S in a vector space, find the point in S closest to P." (The most common example of a vector space is the Cartesian Coordinate Plane which is also called R^2 because every point is of the form (x,y) where x and y are real numbers.) This book is very simply written. All the details of the proofs are provided. Also, Professor Deutsch covers the history of many of the theorems in the book. Applications to Linear Regression, Interpolation, and Control Systems are given. The main prerequisite for reading the book is a course in mathematical analysis (Rudin or Royden) and a course in matrices or linear algebra. The book is based on the graduate level Approximation Theory course which Dr. Deutsch taught for several years.
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Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages by Bruce Tate Seriously, check out this book. It's delightful! It'll level you up as a software developer. Also, I've heard it heavily influenced José Valim to create Elixir.
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Computer science: Knuth's TAOCP. And Sipser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation.
Programming: SICP, K&R, and Stroustrup. Siebel's Practical common lisp.
Artificial intelligence: AI a modern approach.
Signals and Systems: Oppenheim's book
Probability and statistics: Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by Jaynes
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Molecular Quantum Mechanics by PW Atkins and RS Friedman Kind of a niche subject but this one really stands out. The prerequisites are a fairly solid understanding of linear algebra and differential and integral calculus. It's for anyone interested in spectroscopy from IR through UV, the electronic structure of molecules, approximate techniques, molecular symmetry and group theory, computational matrix-based methods, etc. For background on computational linear algebra, this one is great: Linear Algebra: A Modern Introduction by David Poole
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The older editions of "Physics for Students of Science and Engineering" by Halliday and Resnick are great. Over the last 60 years, this has been the most commonly used physics text book in college. It's rather well written, and there are many very good homework problems. It covers the basics of mechanics and Electromagnetism and a few other topics also. The older editions have harder problems that are more instructive. By doing the homework problems, the reader learns physics, calculus, and the ability to manipulate and derive formulas.
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"Designing and Managing the Supply Chain" by Simchi-Levi. My copy is almost 20 years old but still covers all the fundamentals and most of the necessary details of how supply chains work. "Logistics Engineering and Management" by Blanchard. The Integrated Logistics Support bible, of you go by some people. Also, the engineering and product development companion to the first book. It covers how good products are designed that can be builf, sourced, maintained and supported throughout their lifetime. Despite the title, actual logistics are not covered. A must for everyone involved in the development of non-consumer goods hardware with life times above 3 years. And also agreat resource for those consumer products. If you always wondered why defense contract are as expensive as they are and are usually signed for a couple of decades, this book gives you the theoretical basis for one part of the answer.
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In psychology, I think Culture of Honor is absolutely stellar: Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South by Richard E. Nisbett & Dov Cohen https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Honor-Psychology-Violence-Dir... The authors weave together a basically airtight argument for their thesis, drawing on historical, sociological, and experimental evidence to describe and explain the phenomenon called "culture of honor". It's a short book and really worth reading to see how well an argument can be made.
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Mastery - Robert Greene (2012). At the point in my life where I read this book, I was a recent ComSci grad, I had already started working and it was clear to me that I needed some framework to understand where I was going. Not just in terms of software, but in general, I needed some north star as far as a process and an ideal to achieve were concerned. Reading this book gave me exactly that. A clear, understandable framework that explained the progression from understanding how to do something, to being good at doing something, to being a master. While it didn't give me a step by step guide, the lessons in this book gave me ideals by which to work out my own trajectory, whether or not I felt at any given point as though the efforts I was putting in were guiding me towards mastery, but more so than anything, this book gave me patience. I read somewhere that (maybe just in my country, I can't remember) once you've been a software developer for 5 years, you have crossed over the median age of experience in the industry. As a younger engineer, I was impatient, in a rush to do Interesting Work™ and had no appreciation for how whatever I was doing at the current moment was perhaps exactly what I needed to do to get to what was important, which is mastery. That is to say, getting past the point of good to the point of exemplary, not just being a consumer or repeater of skills but a creator of them. I read this book in Year 1 of my software career, I am now in year 5 and I know that because of this book, years 10, 15 and 20 will bring more reward and more joy in deepening skill.
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("Data and Reality")[ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1753248.Data_and_Reality] - despite its age (written before SQL was mainstream) it remains a short, accessible read that lays out how to think about modeling an information schema, particularly where the same piece of information may be used in separate parts of the organisation.
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Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by John L. Hennessy the creator of MIPS and David Patterson the creator of Berkeley RISC (later SPARC) Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment by W. Richard Stevens
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You could add MIPS, later RISC-V ; and RISC later ARM :)
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How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp is the most compelling overview I have come across about how marketing works at the aggregate level. Despite its flaws, Thinking Fast and Slow is a good companion piece inasmuch as it sheds light on how decisions are made at the individual level.
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I run a professional software-development firm, and Managing the Professional Service Firm by David Maister is the most accurate and instructive book I've read on the topic (and not for lack of other books). Maister basically made a manual of my whole world which includes things I never thought about like "leverage formulas" and "service programs". Would highly recommend if you are a partner of a firm or thinking of starting your own.
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For compiler theory, "Principles of Program Analysis" (by Nielson, Nielson, Hankin). It is so foundational to what we do at rev.ng, that we gift a physical copy of the book to every interviewee, even if they don't pass.
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Wow, I never expected Nielson & Nielson to be mentioned here. It's one of my favorite books, I have referred to it in some of my past comments, and certainly the best static analysis textbook out there. I actually took several courses from the authors some years back, and implemented most of the book for a not-so-simple imperative language, including e.g. abstract interpretation for detecting out-of-bounds array accesses. The book is a bit advanced unless you are well seasoned in the basics of abstract algebra and interpreter / compiler construction. Most fellow students struggled a lot. Hence, the authors have written a prequel [1], which is a bit simpler and also uses Datalog to get going faster. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.10086.pdf
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Hi, how does the book compares to the dragon book?
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Compiler theory is a wide topic, here the focus is on static analysis, while the Dragon Book is more wide-spectrum. However, I can tell you that this book is so much better than the Muchnick (Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation). The way data-flow analysis is explained in Muchnick sucks, while in POPA it's vertical but once you get over it, everything clicks and you are able to design new analyses in a sound way.
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They are different. This book is about static analysis which is not discussed in-depth in the dragon book.
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Brigham's book on the Fast Fourier Transform was an eye opener for me. Not so much because of the "Fast" part (which is super interesting and useful too) but it was the introduction I needed to make integral transforms and convolution click. And that helped tremendously to connect a whole bunch of other dots.
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Not my field per se, but in a college course they had us read "All I Need to Know About Manufacturing I Learned in Joe's Garage" The entire book was a short, simple allegory about Lean manufacturing that walks you through exactly why Lean is so powerful, in a direct comparison to traditional methods. The book was written to be handed out to dumb auto executives. I still think about the book a lot today even in the software world.
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Why do you need to read a book about lean manufacturing? Don't you just mix cough syrup and fanta?
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Not a professional database developer but study it in my spare time Books that stand out to me are: - Database Internals, Alex Petrov - Database Design & Implementation, Edward Sciore - How Query Engines Work, Andy Grove These have been much more useful than IE the Cow book or "DB Systems The Complete Book" to me.
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Neuromancer Snow Crash Blindsight (Just some fun fiction to bolster one's passion for their chosen profession. Obviously TAOCP, SICP, K&R, and other books in their ranks are better answers.)
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Managing the Professional Service Firm by David Maister. No longer doing consulting, but found it invaluable as a tech person building a consulting team and trying to break into enterprise. Probably useful for any professional consulting through a firm (lawyers, accountants, big 4, etc.) Someone mentioned Designing Data Intensive Applications which I’m partial to as well.
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Leading Firms, David C. Kuhlman. I read this one during a period of 4 years when I saw myself neck deep into consulting services managing both development projects and implementations. The book was so much aligned to the reality of things in the field that I started to check mark paragraphs so I could be counting them later.
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Here's a request: someone once recommended a text book which lays the foundations for understanding all different kinds of programming languages (and presumably their design tradeoffs). And the people who had read it commented that it made it easy to understand different programming languages quickly. Anyone got an idea of what book that might be?
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That sounds to me like “Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming”
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A classic reading on the field of programming language theory is the Sebesta one: Concepts of Programming Languages.
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The programming language concepts class I took in college used that as our text book. Looking back it was one of the most useful classes I took.
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I think this might have been the textbook I was thinking of. It wasn't SICP and I don't think it was CTM.
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Maybe Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP)?
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# Pure Mathematics / Geometry - Harshorne - Algebraic Geometry - Bott, Tu - Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology - Milnor, Stasheff - Characteristic Classes - Milnor - Morse Theory - Serre - Linear Representations of Finite Groups - Fulton - Intersection Theory
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Milnor is a wonderful writer, in his books as well as his papers.
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Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology might be one of the best math books ever written. I’ll add Milnor’s Topology from the Differential Viewpoint and/or
Differential Topology by Guillemin and Pollack.
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Code by Charlse Petzold. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs aka. SICP. Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Klepmaan. The C Programming Language by K&R. Distributed Systems by Tannebaum.
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Big +1 for Code by Petzold. Just started the 2nd edition that came out last month and I'm blown away by Petzold's ability to pack in meaningful, interesting information without sacrificing readability.
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The SICP MITOpenCourseware and associated Brian Harvey CS61 Berkeley lectures are both on YouTube - and the 2nd Edition PDF is currently free from mit.edu: https://web.mit.edu/6.001/6.037/sicp.pdf Together they’re an amazing introduction to (or refresher for) Computer Science.
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The Design of Everyday Things. It really changed how I view software (or any product) as just a tool to help people.
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In a similar vein, Don't Make Me Think about simple website usability is a good place to start. I also like The Best Interface Is No Interface, although the original article was sufficient.
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I'm a bit into competitve programming, so Competitve Programmer's Handbook by Antti Laaksonen is a solid book if you want a reference for CP.
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Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and StrategyThis is a commonly cited book about “strategic thinking”. But despite that, it’s one of the few business books that I actually read every page (as opposed to spotting fluff and selectively skipping pages), and it had a notable impact on the way I think/write/communicate.
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Graphics programmer at a game studio Real-Time Rendering is probably my most used book when I started It is more breadth than depth though
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Probabilistic Robotics. Great overview of fusion and perception techniques for robots with various sensor types, reads like a world class lecture series instead of being a dry textbook.
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the Unbanking of America - the author does a deep dive and recounts first hand experiences of lower income Americans dealing with banks. I would say this is required reading for anyone interested in Fintech/neobanks that target the lower income segment
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Related: the recently released "Cloudmoney" by Brett Scott [0]. Serves as a lay-accessible and politically-neutral crash course on the modern banking system, as well as a polemic warning of the power intrinsic to centralized transaction surveillance, both from state-backed digital fiat, and the "FinTech" private sector. (The author wears his pro-cash bias on his sleeve, and does a reasonable job defending it.) [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53239405-cloudmoney
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“Breakthrough Advertising” by Eugene Schwartz. The relevance for any marketer is incredible. Much of what I read from “gurus” is essentially just rewording this book.
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Hacking: The Art of Exploitation 2nd edition This book teaches excellent hacking techniques. Everything is build from scratch (c/assembly) so you get to understand things like buffer overflows to the core.
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My field of study (what I really like to think and learn about) isn't my field of work, but I like the question so I'll spill some thoughts. I spend a lot of time thinking about philosophical-ish stuff, so here are some books that have had the strongest residual effects (whether that's changing how I think, changing what I think about, changing my values, or simply getting the thought ball rolling faster): Ishmael (Daniel Quinn) 1984 (George Orwell) Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) Godel, Escher, Bach (Douglas Hofstadter) The Republic [imp. "the allegory of the cave"] (Plato) The Genealogy of Morals (Friedrich Nietzsche) The Social Construction of Reality (Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (L. Wittgenstein) Dissemination [imp. "The Pharmakon"] (Jacques Derrida) The Quest for Reality (Barry Stroud) Languages of Art (Nelson Goodman) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn) Concepts (Jerry Fodor) The Web of Life (Fritjof Capra) Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco) Naming and Necessity (Saul Kripke) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig) There are others, and a lot of essays (by thinkers like Bertrand Russell, Carl Hempel, Hilary Putnam, WVO Quine, Karl Popper, Alfred Tarski, Gottlob Frege, David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Mikhail Bakunin, CS Peirce, and David Hume, among many others), but these seem apropos as they most readily came to mind.
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The Quest by Daniel Yergin Subtitle "Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World" Is THE book for understanding the structure of the energy industry. Whether you're in it or just a curious person it's a phenomenal read. He has a sequel out that I haven't picked up yet but I'd recommend The Quest to absolutely everyone.
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Generalized Linear Models by McCullagh and Nelder completely changed my perspective on supervised learning.
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Physics: Feynman's lectures on physics. Maths: Rudin's Real and Complex analysis. Software engineering: The Mythical Man-Month. Computer science: Knuth's TAOCP.
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TAOCP, you have worked through the whole thing? At what point in life?
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I did it in toilet sessions but only the first volume (do not have other volumes in paper).
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Six Easy Pieces was one of my favorite books as a kid.
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> Maths: Rudin's Real and Complex analysis. Yes!! Rudin kills it, but you need a year or two to get through this gem. A course in university will go too fast for sure.
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I often hear Rudin is too challenging to be an introduction to analysis. You need to be very comfortable with relevant proofs already. Then what's so good about it? I'm not doubting it's great because I do hear it lauded, but it's hard to imagine. It is just a collection of mathematical obscurities for super-nerds? I've been ever-so-slowly self teaching higher maths. Right now halfway through Hammond's book of proof and almost done with Polya 1.
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Just note that the mentioned book, colloquially known as Papa Rudin, is definitely not an introduction to analysis, which is usually said to be "Principles of Mathematical Analysis", i.e. Baby Rudin. Even then, Baby Rudin is terrible as an introduction in my opinion, though it is quite good as a reference. > I'm not doubting it's great because I do hear it lauded, but it's hard to imagine. Everyone has their own taste, even with math textbooks; there are plenty of acclaimed textbooks I hate (looking at you CRLS). > I've been ever-so-slowly self teaching higher maths. I happen to be in a Discord server for people self-studying math. It's a pretty cool place; if you are interested you can contact u/CheapViolin on Reddit.
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It’s true that most people will probably drown if you throw them into Rudin first thing (although I’ve known a couple who held their breath, swam the whole length, jumped out and asked for more). The thing is, “analysis” in (English) mathematical vernacular covers a lot more than were dreamt of in Newton’s philosophy, and that in turn is a lot more than is habitually included in a course entitled “calculus”. On the other hand, most calculus courses cover (badly and shallowly) many things that are properly from other places (commutative algera [field axioms], order theory [Dedekind completion], general topology [limits and opens], set theory [cardinals]) but just can’t be avoided when talking about the reals. So, what do you not get in a standard first course in calculus that still goes under “analysis” (but is not a research topic)? - Filters and/or nets (a coherent viewpoint on all the limits) - (Multiple) derivatives as objects of (multi)linear algebra (no more horrific “Jacobians” and “Hessians”) - Implicit / inverse function theorem (local normal form under smooth change of coordinates, cf Morse’s lemma as well) - All of that in the infinite-dimensional setting (for a decent theory of ordinary differential equations) - Exponential / trig functions as solutions of ODEs (all other definitions obtained from various solution approximations, requires previous point to be nice and unforced) - Fourier-Laplace decomposition (take previous point up to eleven, solve all linear ODEs in existence at once, including every passive electric circuit) - Distributions aka generalized functions (you can, technically, do the previous point without that, but it’s a complete mess; this instead requires a rather advanced theory of infinite-dimensional spaces) - Differentiation and integration as continuous and smooth operators on infinite-dimensional spaces of functions, infinite-dimensional-vector-valued integrals (you can make do with the classical theory of “differentiating under the integral sign”, but it’s Lovecraftian levels of horrible, better not) - Integration by residues (together with the previous point, makes the two most powerful methods for computing indefinite integrals when the definite one is intractable and/or inexpressible) - Functions of a complex variable (required for the preceding to even make sense, unlike mere complex-valued functions is essentially a completely different theory closer to algebra if anything) - Power series (don’t make sense without the preceding point even if you’re interested in the reals; why I called exponentials and trig the same thing above) - Lebesgue integration (because Riemann integration sucks for all of the above even if you can make do) - Stokes theorem (the theorem of multidimensional integration, like Barrow/Newton–Leibnitz is for the one-dimensional case; you did learn multilinear algebra didn’t you?) - More? I’m not saying Rudin covers all of that, but no one book does. I’ve also omitted (a lot of) hooks into what are usually considered other disciplines (manifolds, speed of convergence, solution in radicals, probability measures, ...).
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Continuous Delivery Pipelines: How To Build Better Software Faster
by Dave Farley It is such a low effort - high reward endeavor to get up to speed quickly in DevOps and for communicating product strategy
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The Art of Electronics, Horowitz and Hill
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Rightfully considered a classic in the field, and its third edition was highly anticipated for many years. This book's niche is in building the intuitive understanding that is often lacking after the typically highly mathematical treatment seen in 200-level circuit theory courses. It's a great transition from "ok, I can manipulate the equations for a circuit with one or two transistors" to being able to design complete, practical electronic devices. The book is also heavily used as a cookbook and reference by practicing electronics engineers as it contains a lot of expert wisdom particularly in the area of high-precision analog circuits (the authors' background is in physics lab instrumentation design).
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Peopleware It should be mandatory reading for anyone leading a team of any size. The book is from 1987 and the insights into building efficient teams and team spaces is still perfectly valid - like we haven't learned anything during the last 3 to 4 decades.
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“The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception” by James J. Gibson completely changed how I think about vision and moving images.
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“Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques” by Jim Gray & Andreas Reuter. Rightly the Bible of database systems.
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AI and ML: Simon J.D. Prince; Computer Vision: Models, Learning, and Inference. Thorough book with unorthodox explanations and great figures. The book is very pleasant to read. I'm eagerly awaiting new book on Deep Learning from the same author.
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Physically Based Rendering (vol.3) Pharr, Jakob, Humphreys. Because it covers most, if not all, the maths required to do PBR right. If you are interested in graphics, this book MUST be on your shelf.
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"how to measure anything" by douglas hubbard is a good one especially if you work in a product focused role
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I am not a professional game designer, but I really like "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses". It teaches you to look at games (and all kinds of experiences) through different viewpoints like looking at the economy of the game or looking at the love and relationships in the game. Very interesting for thinking about the complex systems within modern games.
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This also exists as a deck of cards and there's online and mobile versions of it as well:
https://deck.artofgamedesign.com/#/These are a bit more practical for actually using the lenses whilst designing.
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The Jazz Theory book - Mark Levine High Performance Browser Networking - edit: Ilya Grigorik Effortless Mastery - Kenny werner
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High Performance Browser Networking by Ilya Grigorik you mean. +1 for the recommendation. I always found it hard to learn about networking from the traditional textbooks and this answered a lot of the questions that I always wondered about.
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High Performance Browser Networking ( https://hpbn.co) is a fantastic book. It was written by Ilya Grigorik though.
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Wow, never expected The Jazz Theory Book or Effortless Mastery to show up on HN. I'll add The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine and Jamey Abersold vol. 1 How To Play Jazz and Improvise
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Do you think non-musicians could benefit from Effortless Mastery?
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The best book on software testing was written in 1974 and doesn’t mention testing: Introduction to General Systems Thinking, by Jerry Weinberg. The best book on consulting is by the same guy: Secrets of Consulting.
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Vision by David Marr Heuristics by Judea Pearl The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming
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Map Projections: A Reference Manual - John P. Snyder Gravitation - Misner, Wheeler, Thorne Already mentioned: (it's a goody) Linear Representations of Finite Groups - Serre
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Caveat: MTW stalled me for the longest time by omitting two points: - Tensors (as well as exterior and symmetric powers) have very little to do with differential geometry (and a fortiori physics) as such except for motivation—go study multilinear algebra first if the fanciful pictures of egg crates don’t help. Learn the coordinate-free definition of the determinant and rederive Cramer’s rule while you’re at it. - Nobody can satisfactorily explain what the Riemann tensor is as a whole, though you can learn to work with it and understand some of the direct summands. (“A little monster of (multi)linear algebra”, as Gromov’s refreshingly frank book[1] puts it.) This is one of the rare cases where the worse meaning of von Neumann’s oft-abused quote is in force. If you like the geometric viewpoint proselytized in the earlier parts of MTW before it gets to GR proper, try also Modern Classical Physics by Thorne and Blandford, which is that in doorstopper form (an early version[2] is available online though not advertised). [1] https://www.ihes.fr/~gromov/expository/34/ [2] http://www.pmaweb.caltech.edu/Courses/ph136/yr2012/
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A course in Arithmetic by Serre is for me THE book to get into Number Theory
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Not a technical book but A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster had a few perspectives I’d never considered.
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Ihe e-myth book by michael gerber. It hits you right in the face when you're a.. what he calls the Technician masquerading as an Entrepreneur. It's truly an eye opening book and really helps you see the systems in everything from a bakery to the hotel chains as soon as you've read it.
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Have to disagree on this one. I thought it was one paragraph (maybe even one sentence) spun out into a really dull book. zzzzzz
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Haskell wiki. It's mostly a bunch of functional programming stories, where you learn in a broad scene what's FP is about.
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Electromagnatic Compatibility Engineering, Henry Ott The Elements of Style, Strunk and White The Hardest (working) Man in Showbiz, Ron Jeremy
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I'm intrigued by those choices and can't tell if you are making a subtle joke about life itself (building, writing, fucking?).
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Statistical Rethinking, Richard McElreath
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Hacker's Delight by Henry Warren. Don't get distracted by the name, it's about binary mathematics. Bit twiddling at its finest.
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Inspired by Marty Cagan is the best book on product management I've ever read, despite its corny name.
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Introduction to Heat Transfer by Frank P. Incropera and David P. Dewitt Wind Energy Handbook by Tony Burton, Nick Jenkins, David Sharpe, Ervin Bossanyi The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill
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I've been programming since I was 10, earned a C.S. degree in '96, and have been a successful generalist working as a sysadmin, programmer, network engineer, devops, open-source contributor, etc at everywhere from a small ISP in a college town where I was the only tech person to startups to companies as large as H.P. working on enterprise software. Really a bit of everything. I guess you'd call it dev-ops, but even if I were just a programmer, my curiosity about how things work would drive me to understand my tools better. And at the same time, even if I were just a sys admin, my impatience for repetitive tasks would drive me to automate my tasks. These are the books that really helped fill out my knowledge and helped me in my day-to-day work. In no particular order: Code by Charles Petzold. I read this around 2010 for the first time. There isn't really anything in it I didn't know, but the material is just so amazingly well presented that it helped me realize there were things I could only explain in a very hand-wavy sort of way or that I'd forgotten. Just an amazing book. I re-read it every so often. I just got the 2nd edition and look forward to reading it soon. Higher Order Perl by Mark Jason Dominus. Even though I'd mostly moved on from Perl when I read this, this book really helped me better understand C.S. concepts that I should have learned better getting my degree. This is secretly a book about Lisp for people who are allergic to parenthesis. After reading this book, I was able to back to The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer and get a lot more out of them. All of the Stevens books, but probably UNIX Network Programming to start. I had the TCP/IP state diagram (from TCP/IP Illustrated) taped on my on cubicle wall for a decade or more. Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey E. F. Friedl. You get what's on the tin with this one. I've used RE's to great effect throughout my career and I mostly have this book to thank for it. Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley. A humbling book. I read it and think "that's really clever, I would not have thought of that." These are the ones that spring to mind. I'd have to peruse my bookshelf to see if I'm missing any other obvious entries. I've used a lot of the O'Reilly books over the years too, e.g. sed and awk. I'm also intentionally leaving out text books that would be part of any C.S. degree. As an addendum: Man pages. All of them. The Linux man pages, maybe not so much. SunOS was my introduction Unix, and I was spoiled by their quality and comprehensiveness. I recall one day discovering "man intro" and then spending a week doing nothing but reading man pages. http://software.cfht.hawaii.edu/man/solaris/Intro(1)
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Using Unix 3rd Edition by Peter Kuo because it helps in understanding basic Unix principles and tools.
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Lots of interesting suggestions from people! I love “the inmates are running the asylum” This book made me feel like a shit developer, but also made me change the way I think about software. I think it made me a much better developer in how I approach a problem and how I solve it for the customer.
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Microelectronic Circuits by Adel S. Sedra and Kenneth C. Smith Signals and Systems by Alan V. Oppenheim and Alan S. Willsky
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Book- Simulacra and Simulation
Author- Jean Baudrillard
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From the lens of a Product Manager working in ML / Large Language Models... The Alignment Problem By Brian Christian How do we tell the computer to do all the things we want it to do, all the things we don't want it to do, and all the things we didn't realize we want it to do or not do? How do we capture the rich implied and inferred nature of humanness? That's the Alignment Problem. The book dives into this broadly – but also gives an excellent non-technical survey of the evolution of machine learning. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art By Scott McCloud This is magnitudes more than a dive into the perhaps easy to dismiss artform. This book is about storytelling and why great stories resonate. It's one of the best pieces of media, on media, period. An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management By Will Larsen When I my company was acquired by a very-big-Giant, my personal antibodies reacted negatively to the how the big G's way of thinking and doing – I was harmfully autoimmune. To some extent I had to accept things, to another extent I needed a different perspective. This book helped me transition and it's one I push on all of our leads. While we as PMs don't manage people directly we architect the whole system – and this book is an insightful (I buy it for all the team's leads) lens on how big teams where personal alignment and corporate alignment problems need to be negotiated. Exhalation Stories By Ted Chiang (also recommend Stories of Your Life) The author has an absolute magic way of taking a kernel of an idea and spinning not only a whole world, but a whole new way of looking at the world – all in the span of a short story. You can't get any closer to home than "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" where the protagonist rears an artificial intelligence from "pet" to a human-like mind. The Pragmatic Programmer By David Thomas and Andrew Hunt PMs need to get things done. Even if we don't code, we need to think deeply on how it's built to ensure it achieves our goals now, and what we project them to be in the future. As the title suggests, a pragmatic take on building code-driven systems. Design of Everyday Things By Don Norman The OG design-thinking before IDEO corporatized it. Principles By Ray Dalio "Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life." This book influenced me to distill how we take action and prioritize and how we decide as a team. I'll admit some of the set up of the book irked me, but the distilled world view that form the Principles in the second half of the book generally resonates; the world works a certain way, find those patterns, use it to your advantage (and for good). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information By Edward Tufte You could jump into any of Tufte's books, on any page, and come away with new ways of looking/thinking/telling stories about data. ML problems are data problems – let's think well beyond raw dumps and tables.
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Elements of Statistical Learning by Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman
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Dijkstra’s A Discipline of Programming and its spiritual successor that he did with Scholten Predicate Calculus and Program Semantics. They changed how I think about programming.
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You must surely then get his (with Feijen) book A Method of Programming. It is designed for classroom use targeted at a "introductory programming curriculum".
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Classical Electrodynamics By Jackson Numerical Recipes By William H. Press et al Quantum Theory of Materials By Kaxiras
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> Classical Electrodynamics By Jackson I'm so sorry. You have my sympathy.
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Currently reading this and loving it so far. Any recs for more technical introductions?
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Signals and Systems by Oppenheim, Willsky and Nawab is a foundational text.
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Working mostly with IT operations, I'd say the Google SRE books.
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all of Tanenbaum's books, especially Structured Computer Organization
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>especially Structured Computer Organization One of the best books explaining the abstractions and layering involved in Computer Systems. For some reason not many people know about this.
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The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll. In my humble opinion, it should be a foundational text to read for all technology students.
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Cliff Stoll! I'll have whatever he's having
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Designing Data Intensive Applications. Operating Systems in Three Easy Pieces.
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Design of Everyday Things applies to almost any design or engineering discipline. You'll never look at a door the same way.
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"Laboratory life" by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar
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Building Scientific Apparatus
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ecology of the planted aquarium by diana walstad
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