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I’m surprised that Knuth’s book isn’t in the top 5 and I’m very surprised to see Descarte’s meditation as even in France no one longer reads this ( must be rela
by tangue 3y ago
I’m surprised that Knuth’s book isn’t in the top 5 and I’m very surprised to see Descarte’s meditation as even in France no one longer reads this ( must be related to the various posts about meditation on HN imho ) and Franck ( not Brian ) Herbert wrote Dune. I don’t trust this post and indeed I don’t trust anything published on the Internet after Llms went mainstream.
- NhanH 3y agoThe author name is wrong for Meditations (though it links to the correct book) It’s Meditations (by Marcus Aurelius).
- kristianp 3y agoAuthor here. There are at least 2 books referred to as Meditations, so probably that item on the list should be split into Decartes [1] and Aurelius. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosoph...
- jamestimmins 3y agoKnuth's work is the computer science version of "industry-specific canon that few people have actually read", much like The Powerbroker in urban planning. I own several of his books (admittedly they were gifts), and have never read them. So them not showing up in the top five doesn't surprise me much.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- laurent_du 3y agoI don't think Knuth's work is canon in our specific industry, be it web dev, system dev, or whatever it is people around here are doing. Knuth belongs to Academia, not industry.
- smithza 3y agoI am sorry that you feel this way. Software Engineering and Computer Science are thoroughly academic topics that every practicing IC and manager can greatly benefit from reading and digesting. Bill Gates put as an endorsement of TAOCP that he would hire (in industry) anyone who mastered the topics therein. Did you not go to university? Even if you didn't, where was the source of your education? Knuth wrote books that could belong to undergraduate level programming courses.
- hcks 3y agoI mean Microsoft hires any college grad that can solve medium leetcodes, its not like it’s a huge endorsement.
- laurent_du 3y agoI have read a few chapters of TAOCP for fun but I have a PhD in Mathematics, and worked in Academia, so I am an outlier. I don't think Knuth's book are a difficult read - for me. But unlike you I don't make the mistake of believing everyone is as proficient as I am. I don't know a single person, among my friends and acquaintances working in SWE, that could read a page of TAOCP.
- aragonite 3y agoFor many people it's more of a reference book, not to be read cover to cover. Reminds me of this bit from a corecurisve interview with Richard Hipp: https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/ https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/ Richard: You just pick things up. People tell you these things, and that happened to some with Bloomberg. They’d come to us and say, “Hey, why aren’t you doing this optimization,” and I said “Never occurred to me.” “Well, can you do it?” “Let’s see what we can do,” and then it would go in, so, yeah, kind of figure it out as you went along. I had to invent a lot of this myself. Nobody ever taught me about a B tree. I had heard of it. When I went to write my own B tree, on the bookshelf behind me, I’ve got Don Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming, so I just pulled that down, I flipped to the chapter on searching and looked up B trees and he described the algorithm. That’s what I did. Funny thing, Don gives us details on the algorithm for searching a B tree and for inserting into a B tree. He does not provide an algorithm for deleting from the B tree. That’s an exercise at the end of the chapter, so before I wrote my own B tree I had to solve the exercise at the end. Thanks, Don. I really appreciate it. Adam: That’s awesome. Did you pull anything else from that book? Richard: Well, it’s an amazing volume. I can’t give you a specific example, but from my era, everybody has to have read or at least skimmed through, at least browsed through The Art of Computer Programming, and know that algorithms that are there, maybe not Don’s exact implementation. I mean, I never took the time to learn MIX, which is his assembly language, but it’s useful to flip through and look at all the algorithms he talks about. I think that just a year or two ago I needed a pseudorandom number generator, and I was, “Let’s see what Don recommends.” You pull it off. You see what he does.
- hcks 3y agoIt’s massively overrated too. It’s a detailed handbook on the engineering problems of it’s time (sorting, parsing, …) which have all been ‘solved’ since.
- inductive_magic 3y ago> I don’t trust this post The post appended the raw data provided by GPT, allowing you to verify the integrity of the data. This makes the post trustworthy from a methodological pov. > I don’t trust anything published on the Internet after Llms went mainstream. You always had to verify the integrity of the data and methods used in any publication, regardless of the medium. The responsibility of both authors and readers hasn't changed. If you took things for granted before LLMs, you shouldn't have, and if you don't trust trustworthy authors post LLMs, you should.
- otteromkram 3y agoI don't trust this comment.
- danparsonson 3y agoOne could argue that whereas once it was necessary to verify the source, now it is necessary to verify not just the source but also the LLM derivation of it, (which may be subtly mangled) - and the source may no longer be readily apparent.
- xarope 3y agoI think this is a good thing. In the past you would remind people, hey, after you find your wiki article, "please" go verify. But wiki was "good" enough most of the time, that people found verification to be often time redundant. But now with LLMs everywhere, people will realize it is necessary to verify.
- meheleventyone 3y agoExcept that isn’t what will happen and is part of the reason we tried to have majority trustworthy sources.
- TheSpiceIsLife 3y agoYou're optimistic!
- westpfelia 3y agoHonestly the fact that Ayn Rand is so high makes me question HN entirely.
- __rito__ 3y agoI think this [0] is a better, and more (statistically) representative list. [0]: https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news
- reducesuffering 3y agoThis list can't be more accurate with "Three Felonies A day" at #4, "Elements of Computing Systems" at #6, and "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" at #8. TFA list seems way more representative.
- __rito__ 3y agoI didn't say perfect or accurate. I said "more statistically representative". As compared to the OP. And I stand by that.
- yawpitch 3y agoIf a list includes Ayn Rand and the title for the list doesn’t start with “[N] Worst [Writers|Artists|Philsophers|Thinkers|Economists|Women] of” then it’s a bad list.
- spicymapotofu 3y agoThis narrow perspective doesn't sit well with me. I read Shrugged while growing up poor, and I think a thoughtful take would be that she wrote, in her own way, something which could be in the running as the "Great American Novel" alongside Gatsby or Huckleberry Finn. It captures a zeitgeist, even if I don't personally want this world at large, and I think we lose an important part of literature discussions to allow a discourse as simple as "Rand bad".
- xhevahir 3y agoWhat? Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy is one of the most important books in the history of Western thought. Saying that "even in France no one longer reads this" is like saying that The Origin of Species is irrelevant because one never sees passengers reading it on the London Tube.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- guilbep 3y agoBtw, it's wrong, it's a link to Marcus Aurelius "Meditations". not Descartes methaphysical ones.
- fsckboy 3y agoMarcus Aurelius "Meditations" is a very popular recommendation these days, I keep seeing it around
- Scarblac 3y agoIt's extremely fragmented and repetitive, something we can't blame the author for as he never intended it as a book to be published. It could do with being recommended less, imo. There are probably good summaries of it around.
- mrkstu 3y agoIt’s repetitive, but also not particularly long. Also easier to skim those parts. It is more of an issue when you’re trying to consume the audio version…
- paperwasp42 3y agoFor me, the repetition is a feature, not a bug. It's similar to Buddhist meditation practices, which also involve a lot of repetition. It really helps my brain to fully absorb the message and walk away feeling more calm and in control. But as with any philosophical text, your mileage may vary.
- prepend 3y agoI think the accreditation to Descartes may be incorrect. The link goes to Marcus Aurelius.
- mberning 3y agoDescartes wrote a book with a similar title, but I agree with you, I think Marcus is way more talked about on HN.
- AnonymousPlanet 3y agoI can assure you that Descartes Mediations is required reading for any philosophy student at some point, also in France. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, on the other hand, is pretty much of no relevance if you study philosophy. It's very popular in the life style and esoterics section at book stores though.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]