last Thursday at 4:20 PM
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware And Software by Charles Petzold.
I read it in my second year of studying computer-science during the summer break, and it completely changed how I view computing.
First of all, the contents alone are quite valuable, even though it is an old book, as it basically walks you through building a simple relay computer on paper, with a CPU, RAM, simplified input devices, teaches you Intel 8080 assembly as an example of assembly programming, and then even goes over a simplified BIOS, OS, GPU and higher-level languages at the end, and it does not assume you have any previous knowledge; it starts from the basic physics behind electricity, then goes into boolean algebra, logic gates, etc. It's basically computer-architecture for the layman.
Beyond the content of the book, I think the biggest mark it left on me is that it taught me that there is no magic behind the layers of abstraction, and that breaking problems and concepts down into simpler ones can make what initially seems like a very complex topic into something that someone can easily follow and understand.
After I read the book, a lot of things I had already learnt at university felt like they made more sense, and I then took courses like Computer Architecture and Digital Circuit Design, where I felt a lot more confident than I probably would have, had I not read that book. It definitely colored how I viewed a lot of the courses I took at university after having read it.
In my career as a software developer, I still often think about that book, and I love to learn things by re-inventing the wheel and building simpler versions of complex existing software.
last Wednesday at 4:05 PM
Not a book or course per say, but based on a book:
The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The Office" by Venkat [0]
Other contenders:
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [1]
Haseeb qureshi's articles on Negotiating [2]
These along with er... mind-altering substances, helped me see that reality as we live it (careers, status, institutions, ect) is like software: built/programmed by humans and can be changed by shifting your perspective.
[0] https://ribbonfarm.com/series/the-gervais-principle/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGhTQ4iruLc&list=PLfc2WtGuVP...
[2] https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer...
yesterday at 2:34 PM
Not a single book but learning from the writings of Cal Newport (blog, books, podcast) over the years have slowly but surely improved my understanding of career capital and how to best utilize attention & time, at least in tech industry.
He does sound a little preachy sometimes but the underlying concepts/frameworks are coherent.
last Wednesday at 4:56 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Fail_at_Almost_Everythi...
last Wednesday at 9:43 PM
Sounds about right. It is called failing forward. Fail forwards, fail fast and keep going.
last Wednesday at 2:19 PM
Two books I read after 9/11 shaped my path greatly:
1.) Stasi: The Untold Story Of The East German Secret Police
ISBN #: 0813337445
2.) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
ISBN #: 9780671728694
Both should be available in most public libraries, but with the ISBN you can usually get almost anything via inter-library loan.
last Wednesday at 4:19 PM
>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
An amazing book. I'm not sure how it's particularly career-path-impacting, but it is fascinating being able to follow the cause and effect chain in Germany leading up to and all through the war (in excruciating detail).
yesterday at 12:54 PM
For me, a real gem though I don't usually recommend it since it's only in Italian is Decalogo della complessità by Alberto Felice De Toni.
And the other one was Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
last Wednesday at 6:18 PM
"The C Programming Language", by Kernighan and Ritchie.
last Wednesday at 11:08 AM
Data Smart, by John Foreman. Out of print, but you can get it from Abe Books: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/data-smart-using-...
Why it is cool?
Because instead of R, Gadoop, Spark, Python, whatever... it started explaining data science with excel.
The best part for me was optimization.
last Thursday at 12:00 AM
I loved that book!
last Thursday at 3:47 AM
To answer the question as I misread it:
What's the most career altering *course of action* you've gone through?
last Wednesday at 9:19 PM
"The Annotated Turing" - I didn't know you could meaningfully intertwine biography and technical analysis like that.
last Friday at 1:26 PM
Fantastic book.
last Wednesday at 5:57 PM
Programming Perl, 1st Ed. from Larry Wall. The three great virtues of a programmer were enlightening for a fresh-outta-college beginner.
last Thursday at 9:37 PM
Creativity, Inc.
It taught me to not limit my imagination and to think of creativity as a way of approaching problems rather than something limited to art. As a developer, it genuinely changed the way I think about building things.
last Friday at 4:49 AM
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen.
He basically took business strategy and applied it to personal life and career choices.
today at 11:45 AM
The Bible.
last Wednesday at 2:54 PM
The Boy's Second book of Electronics by Alfred Morgan(1957) introduced me to electronics circa 1975, and lead to a technical mindset and lifestyle.
last Friday at 4:03 PM
not career altering but worth to mention "Head First Series" when it comes to tech books.
last Thursday at 8:45 AM
A/B testing.
I learned how to write high performance JavaScript code directly to the DOM without a bunch of abstraction bullshit. Turns out this proved to be a bias because our experiment code frequently executed faster and failed far less than the actual production code that went out later.
last Wednesday at 12:15 PM
A digital electronics design course I took at the local science museum when I was 11. It was free, so what the heck, I took it on a whim. I didn't know it at the time, but it set the course of my career for the rest of my life even though I'm a software, not electronic, engineer.
last Wednesday at 10:59 AM
for me it was learning devops
last Friday at 5:51 AM
Which books ?
last Wednesday at 1:57 PM
[flagged]
last Wednesday at 4:50 PM