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Ask HN: Technical Summer Reading List

• geoelkh 5y ago
  Building a Career in Software is a good one I read recently. Did not finish Clean Code yet but enjoying it so far too.
• nindalf 5y ago
  I'm planning to read - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP). A classic. - Crafting Interpreters. Intro to compilers for me. - Deep Learning for Coders with Fastai and PyTorch. There's some other books in there too, but I'd be really happy if I finished these. I don't have a degree in CS, and most of what I know is self taught. My goal here is to fill in gaps in my knowledge as best I can.
  • exdsq 5y ago
    SICP takes _ages_. I'm working through it myself but have realised it's going to be a background project for the next year or so. No idea how MIT freshman do it so quickly!
    • markus_zhang 5y ago
      I figured that they don't have to work on most of the exercises. If you want to do that it will take forever. I'd say if I want to try it I'll just work on lab projects and just a few exercises just to warm up and stop whenever the problem is too difficult for me.
    • sigjuice 5y ago
      Indeed. SICP does take ages. I only worked through the first three chapters and it took me a year. I skipped a handful of problems that simply didn't interest me enough. This was several years ago and I hope to pick up from where I left off some day :/
• Kovah 5y ago
  I just started reading "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software" by Steven Johnson. Not a highly technical piece, but heard that it should be one of the must-reads for anybody in tech.
• sehhsucht 5y ago
  Steve McConnell - Code Complete (Second Edition) is really good.
• benrbray 5y ago
  I recently started working through the first volume of "Software Foundations" [1] by Pierce et al. If anyone wants to learn Coq with me this summer, feel free to email me at [hn username]@gmail.com :) [1] https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/ https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/
• ollran 5y ago
  The Art of Electronics is on my technical reading list as well. If you are into Clojure, you will probably enjoy Elements of Clojure by Zachary Tellman. It is not a tutorial, it's more like an attempt to bring tacit knowledge of idiomatic programming practices into light.
• rickdeveloper 5y ago
  I really liked Digital Computer Electronics by Albert Paul Malvino.
• kqr 5y ago
  Out of the Crisis by Edwards Deming is one of those books I think should be read by anyone who is a... human? And active professionally, I suppose.
  • Jtsummers 5y ago
    I read this one about 5 years ago, found it in the office library with a bunch of other books it was clear our managers had never read. It was eye opening in many ways (crap, nothing new in the world, literally everything I had tried to improve was also a problem 30-50 years earlier), but a very good read. Easy to take in small chunks since it's not really a narrative, you can go chapter-by-chapter or section-by-section through it as you have time.
  • folex 5y ago
    The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker is also good
• nicolapcweek94 5y ago
  I'll be reading Domain Modeling Made Functional [1], which seems fun as it applies F#/ML/FP concepts to "enterprisey" DDD. [1] https://isthisit.nz/posts/2019/domain-modeling-made-functional https://isthisit.nz/posts/2019/domain-modeling-made-function...
  • xupybd 5y ago
    It's a great read. I love how it shows the entire thinking process from requirements gathering through to delivery.
  • axelroze 5y ago
    Category theory for programmers is also a great read if one is into FP. [1] https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers-the-preface/ https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-p...
  • grilledcheez 5y ago
    I will check it out. I very much enjoyed his talks
  • exdsq 5y ago
    My friend read that two years ago and now works for a small F# consultancy that sounds like a great place to work. He really recommends the book.
    • markus_zhang 5y ago
      Thanks for sharing. Just curious what do people do with F# in real work nowadays? Always found it a bit peripheral comparing to Lisp, Clojure and other "main stream" functional languages.
      • nicolapcweek94 5y ago
        From what I've heard it's mostly fintech, at least in places nearish where I live (Italy)
• rramadass 5y ago
  Just started on Understanding Formal Methods by Jean-Francois Monin.
• xupybd 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goal_(novel) Not so technical but it's interesting and engaging.
• samuel 5y ago
  I came here to recommend "Statistical Rethinking" but if you have read(and understood) the Gelman one, you can skip it completely...
• secfirstmd 5y ago
  -Applied Incident Response -Incident response in the age of cloud -Warning Intelligence Handbook
• ovidiup13 5y ago
  My planned summer reading list: - High Performance Browser Networking by Ilya Grigorik - Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler - Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann How did you find the latter? I'm a FE developer, so quite keen to get my hands on in data.
  • grilledcheez 5y ago
    Kleppmann's book is great, it will be well worth your time. I read it cover to cover. He takes care to be consistent and explicit regarding terminology, so it has helped me put a lot of bits of "knowledge" (and confusion) about distributed systems into perspective.
  • folex 5y ago
    Grigorik book is awesome, must read
    • miguendes 5y ago
      Can you please name its title? I'm curious about it.
• Jtsummers 5y ago
  Eric Evans' Domain-Driven Design. I've heard enough about DDD over the years that I figured I'd just go to the source. Liking it so far, I have some good takeaways but we'll see how effectively I'm able to use the ideas over the next couple years. Martin Kleppmann's Designing Data-Intensive Applications. Based on the frequent praise it receives here, haven't gotten far yet. I have some project ideas (for personal and professional projects) that could benefit from reading through it. Martin Fowler's 2018 update to Refactoring. I read the original one a long time ago. In context, we have a work lunch & learn series and I'm interested in doing some presentations on the topic of refactoring (why, how, and when in particular) so it seemed appropriate to refresh my memory on some specific terminology from the book as well as to see if it's an appropriate book to recommend to colleagues. My recollection of the first edition is that I'd recommend it to colleagues, but it's been so long I'd rather read it once more before actually recommending it. I reread Robert C. Martin's Clean Code based on some recent discussion here where it was rather strongly dismissed by a fair number of people. I didn't recall it being bad, my reread confirmed it is not, in fact, bad. Java-heavy, which is now an unpopular style of OOP, but otherwise a very good book. I'd still recommend it to junior colleagues paired with some caveats about avoiding seeing the world in black & white. There is no singular Way of Programming, but learn various ways and find what works for you and your team. There are some more, but it's almost 5am and I haven't been able to sleep so I don't recall everything that's in the book stack or ebook queue. These are the ones I'm most interested in at present.
• axelroze 5y ago
  For me it will be Black Hat Go by as I'd like to learn Go and it seems like a fun way to do it in the cybersecurity setting. [0] https://nostarch.com/blackhatgo https://nostarch.com/blackhatgo
• blatchcorn 5y ago
  The Bible
• thraxil 5y ago
  Does math count as "technical?" I was originally a Physics major and lately I've been on a kick of filling in the mathematics that was used in my Physics classes but that I feel like was never really gone into in much depth. My current reading list is: - "Analysis I" (and II) by Terence Tao (I finished the first volume and am now on the second, but I consider them really one book) - "Understanding Analysis" by Stephen Abbott - "Topology Through Inquiry" by Starbird and Su - "Introduction To Topology And Modern Analysis" by George F. Simmons The Terence Tao books are amazing so far. Extremely readable introduction to Real Analysis. Abbott also came highly recommended and from reading the first couple chapters I can see why as it also seems to be very readable. I don't know if it would be a better introduction than Tao, but it covers mostly the same material and I think having two different perspectives will really help solidify things for me. Once I finish those, I'll see whether I want to go deeper into Topology or move to Complex Analysis or Differential Geometry. I also have a copy of Emily Riehl's Category Theory in Context. I've read some Category Theory before and have a basic grasp, but after reading a few pages of her book, I put it aside until I feel like I'm much more well versed in Topology (the content looks amazing and I really want to read it, but it relies on Algegraic Topology more heavily than other Category Theory material I've seen). So I'll see where I'm at after getting through those Topology books.
  • musgravepeter 5y ago
    Snap. I am also a physicist trying to learn math. In my case it's: - Introduction to Analysis (Mattuck) - Elementary Differential Geometry (Pressley) both chosen because they have solutions in the book, which I find important for self-study. Also just got (hot off the presses) Visual Differential Geometry and Forms (Needham) Looks fantastic! Topology is next on the list...
    • thraxil 5y ago
      "A Geometric Approach to Differential Forms" by Bachman is the one that's in my Amazon shopping cart, but I'll take a look at those others as well.
  • erikpl 5y ago
• someearth 5y ago
  Quran for sure! The best ever book that you *must* read! See: https://quran.com/ https://quran.com/ (With Translations) https://tafsir.app/ https://tafsir.app/ (ARABIC)
  • exdsq 5y ago
    I appreciate learning other cultures, but why the Quran? Seems heavy - why not some sociology textbook on Islamic culture?
    • someearth 5y ago
      "... Quran presents life as more; like it uses a symbol - like a book ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdzbzkJ1mjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdzbzkJ1mjg
  • qntty 5y ago
    Does anybody just read the Quran? I listened to some comparative religion lectures by Huston Smith where he said basically it's impossible to just read. He tried it and didn't understand it. It's a book that is very hard to get into without an existing knowledge of Islam that comes from somewhere other than reading the Quran. Eventually he began to understand it after a lot of background reading from the Sufis.
    • someearth 5y ago
      An Atheists Perspective ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AvepssBwzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AvepssBwzY
      • someearth 5y ago
        Reading the Quran ... from "The Greatest Lier in History" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n527uhH6RWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n527uhH6RWE
• jkepler 5y ago
  Mine are sociology, philosophy, and programming: La technique ou l’Enjeu du siècle (The Societal Society) - Jacques Ellul [0] A New Critique of Theoretical Thought - Herman Dooyeweerd [1] Surveillance After September 11 - David Lyon [2] The C programming Language - Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie [3] [0] https://www.jacques-ellul.org/les-grands-themes/la-technique https://www.jacques-ellul.org/les-grands-themes/la-technique [1] https://herman-dooyeweerd.blogspot.com/2018/12/dooyeweerds-collected-works-series.html https://herman-dooyeweerd.blogspot.com/2018/12/dooyeweerds-c... [2] https://www.sscqueens.org/publications/surveillance-after-september-11 https://www.sscqueens.org/publications/surveillance-after-se... [3] needs no intro here on hackernews
• samuell 5y ago
  I'm a lot into how to streamline data architectures, especially around ML solutions, so some titles related to that. I'm already reading Kleppman's book right now. Tons of very useful knowledge, although quite detailed, and a lot of details around distributed computing, consensus algorithms etc (Part II), which I'm not sure I will need and which make the book rather long. Still, surely worth pressing through. Some titles I would like to dive into in the summer: - "The Art of Immutable Architecture" by Michael Perry. Possibly also: - "Machine Learning Design Patterns" by by Valliappa Lakshmanan et al. - "Building Secure and Reliable Systems" by by Heather Adkins et al. And perhaps something lighter, more inspirational for the day to day work: - "Coders at work" by Peter Seibel
• etherio 5y ago
  - "The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics" by Leonard Susskind. I'm reading the entire series and it's very clear and interesting, definitely recommend if you want to get into physics. - "Speech and Language Processing (3rd ed. draft)" - Really good intro to natural language processing. - Kar by Orhan Pamuk - not a technical book just an intriguing fiction book in turkish I want to read to work on my Turkish;.
• sidcool 5y ago
  - Designing Data Intensive Applications - Martin K - Kubernetes Up and Running - The Joy of Kotlin
• divtiwari 5y ago
  I would recommend reading/implementing the below: 1. 'Write a Interpreter in Go' by Thorsten Ball 2. 'Write a Compiler in Go' by Thorsten Ball 3. 'Crafting Interpreters' by Bob Nystrom 4. 'Ruby under a Microscope' by Pat Shaughnessy
  • koonsolo 5y ago
    'Crafting Interpreters' by Bob Nystrom is such a joy to read.
• gradschool 5y ago
  some "out there" suggestions: - "Extremal Combinatorics" by Staysys Jukna - "Convex Optimization" by Boyd and Vandenberghe - "Delay Insensitive Circuits" [1] - "An Introduction to Mathematical Cryptography" by Hoffstein, Pipher, and Silverman - "Quantum Computing since Democritus" by Scott AAronson [1] https://www.delayinsensitive.com https://www.delayinsensitive.com disclosure: I'm the author.
  • benrbray 5y ago
    I'm not sure "Convex Optimization" by B&V is a good self-study book. I really struggled with it as student, and I struggled to teach with it as a TA. It's one of those "Step 2. Draw the Rest of the Owl!" books. Great as a reference manual, but not great pedagogically. It's very complete and I would struggle to name anything better, though. Mostly, I learned convex analysis by scouring Google for lecture notes written by random professors, then cross-referencing with B&V.
    • wheelinsupial 5y ago
      How is the notation and standards in convex optimization? I took a course linear programming out of Vanderbei's book and it seemed any time I used google to find notes that everyone used slightly different notation or methods. For example, Vanderbei used the dictionaries and others used the tableau.
      • benrbray 5y ago
        It's quite a mess, since discrete optimization is quite an old topic used by many different fields (engineering, statistics, sciences, math) each with their own notation/terminology. One of the merits of the B&V book is the relatively clear/precise notation, and they've made an effort to disambiguate. That's why it's so well-regarded as reference material.
• beckingz 5y ago
  Going to be reading: - Staff Engineer - Thinking in Systems: a Primer - Team Topologies And for fiction: - The Master and Margarita Might re-read peopleware again as well.
• markus_zhang 5y ago
  A side question: How many days of vacation do you take in summer? For parents and non-parents.
  • jdmoreira 5y ago
    In Sweden is not unusual for parents of small children to take 6 weeks of summer vacation. I'm having 6 weeks this summer but I'm in-between jobs. Other either ask for unpaid days or they use some of their saved parental leave. Your employer can't deny you parental leave.
    • markus_zhang 5y ago
      Wow this makes me want to find a job in Sweden :) I'm in Canada and looks like most of my colleauges don't take 6 weeks away. They try to send their children to summer camps for the summer break. But it would really be nice if you can have 6 weeks off in summer and maybe 3 weeks off during winter. A lot of things can happen and you can learn new things.
• andyxor 5y ago
  Brain Computations, What and How, by Edmund T. Rolls https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Computations-Edmund-T-Rolls/dp/0198871104 https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Computations-Edmund-T-Rolls/dp/...
• brudgers 5y ago
  I don’t often read technical books in the summer, but when I do, I read Knuth.
• darawk 5y ago
  Attempting to self study statistics and econometrics in a serious way. I just finished Casella and Berger's "Statistical Inference". I'm about halfway through Shumway and Stoffer's "Time Series Analysis", but then next on the list, in the order I tend to read them: - Theory of Point Estimation Casella/Lehmann - Bayesian Data Analysis 3rd ed. - Convex Optimization - Boyd - Econometrics - Hayashi - New Introduction to Multiple Time Series Analysis - Elements of Statistical Learning - Machine Learning: A probabilistic perspective There's a fair amount of overlap between these books, so it's not quite as much as it seems. But i'm hoping to make it through at least a chapter a week this year, which should get me most of the way through them. We'll see how it goes.