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Ask HN: What are the books you wish your colleagues had read?
- hawktheslayer 9y agoStorytelling with Data - because so many people are bad at PowerPoint: http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/book http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/book R for Data Science - because it is such a solid foundation for a career in business analytics: http://r4ds.had.co.nz http://r4ds.had.co.nz And for extra credit two books I hope my collegues DON'T read since they are best kept secret are Cialdini's two books on influence: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini
- craftyguy 9y agoConsider that powerpoint is not the right medium 95% of the time, but is being pushed as the only medium 100% of the time.
- Recursing 9y agoWhy are they best kept secret?
- tvmalsv 9y agoOstensibly to prevent them from using the techniques on yourself, or so that they don't recognize when you are using the techniques on them.
- Recursing 9y agoAren't we talking about colleagues? Shouldn't it be a collaborative environment?
- hawktheslayer 9y agoI meant it somewhat tounge-and-cheek, but if I recall correctly even Cialdini quotes Uncle Ben's line to Spiderman about "with great power comes great responsibility". I also should mention that I work for a large corporation, and while I strive to be collaborative, it is still a political environment I operate in.
- andrei_says_ 9y agoHis books weaponize common psychological traits and teach how to use them to achieve one’s means. An extremely toxic approach in my opinion. I really enjoyed Sandi Metz’ talk on this very topic, in which she addresses the books and offers alternative approaches to creating influence through leadership and solid relationships. It’s a talk I’d recommend for the whole team to watch, together. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzWLGMtXflg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzWLGMtXflg
- tinymollusk 9y agoYou Are Not So Smart && The Halo Effect.
- cm2012 9y agoWorm, the amazing superhero deconstruction web serial, only so I could geek out with them.
- Kapura 9y agoSnow Crash - Convincing possible future dominated by media, corporations, computers, and drugs. The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Fascinating delve into, among other things, why Homer is boring but gets better, prehistoric art in early human cultures, schizophrenia, and perception and the points it breaks down. (I work in VR games so take with a grain of salt)
- peterkelly 9y agoStructure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) by Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman. Full text is available here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html (or PDF at https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pdf https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pdf). It is IMHO the most important book on programming and programming languages ever published.
- sjellis 9y agoIf anyone is interested in SICP, I strongly recommend finding videos of the lectures (which are free online) and watching those, then going back to the book for reference and exercises. I found the SICP book very hard work until I discovered the actual lectures that it is meant to support.
- lashkari 9y agoHere's a link for anyone else that wants it: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8FE88AA54363BC46 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8FE88AA54363BC46
- yesenadam 9y agoOMG Thank you to both of you! I've seen dozens of references to SICP in lists online, but I never knew there's video of the course, no-one mentioned that. Great stuff. After watching the first 10 minutes of the first lecture, was so good I immediately got my super-non-techy housemate to watch it, after explaining how revered among programmers the book is. She said "Thank you for showing me that!" hehe.
- sjellis 9y ago"After watching the first 10 minutes of the first lecture, was so good I immediately got my super-non-techy housemate to watch it, after explaining how revered among programmers the book is. She said "Thank you for showing me that!" hehe." Yeah, the lecturers are really good, and IIRC, the videos were professionally produced (HP paid for them). The book is written like course material for a maths class, more than a commercial programming book.
- take4 9y agoDon’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. The chapter about “religious debates” in particular was hilariously accurate, about how teams of people will argue about strongly held personal beliefs about things that can’t be proven.
- sus_007 9y agoClean Code Series from Uncle Bob. The books made me realize how horrible my codes are. No matter how long you've been programming, I think these books should be read by every single programmer out there.
- BoorishBears 9y agoI wish they hadn’t. Clean Architecture is a plague on Android development undoubtedly unleashed by some obscure IDE programmer paid by the number of times you use the “Go To Definition” function.
- raverbashing 9y agoCC seems to be Design Patterns meets Moral Harassment It turns development teams into a judgemental arena, demeaning of other colleagues and a race to see who follows "the gospel" closer to the letter Who says their code is clean? Who says that's the best way of doing things? In all cases? It just reeks of "I'm better than the rest", which is already a problem in the industry.
- fdw 9y agoWhile I agree that can devolve into a dogmatic belief system, I also think that that's partly a people problem. Many of the ideas in Clean Code make code more readable (for example small methods, each containing only one level of abstraction; or good naming). It's on the coders to know how far to take these ideas and when to be pragmatic and say "good enough".
- raverbashing 9y ago> It's on the coders to know how far to take these ideas and when to be pragmatic and say "good enough". Which works in theory, in practice it's not that that easy, especially since UB seems to cater for the most "religious" ones
- fdw 9y agoIt isn't easy, but so far I've had luck with my co-workers. If they were more dogmatic, I think I would see Clean Code more critical too. But as it stands, I still recommend the book to new colleagues, and our culture takes care that we don't follow each "law" to its letter.
- androa 9y agoReinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux - https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Organizations-Frederic-Laloux/dp/2960133501 https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Organizations-Frederic-La... For me it is the most influential book on how I think about "agile" , what that really means, and which factors really matter.
- iamdave 9y agoThe Phoenix Project. It's terrifying the parallels.
- ozim 9y agoJust finished it. It is a good book. I expected it to be more from sw dev point. But I was not disappointed.
- nathan_f77 9y agoA lot of people have been recommending this book, including Patrick McKenzie (patio11.) I'm going to start reading it.
- matfil 9y agoIt's certainly an interesting read. But very oriented towards big, conservative organisations. To me, the message was just how operations-focussed and, above all, anti-individualistic big chunks of our field have become.
- alexleavitt 9y ago"Everything is Obvious," by MSR researcher Duncan Watts. Imagine every time when people infer seemingly-obvious extrapolations from data. This book addresses that phenomenon to make you more self-conscious about the limitations of data and the constant need for more research.
- mustardo 9y agoEffective Java by Joshua Bloch
- olavgg 9y agoThat book is awesome, should be read by every Java developer! Discussions and examples from this book is often on Stack Overflow too, where the discussions go deeper and may be clearer.
- peteretep 9y agoPerl Medic is a phenomenal book about refactoring in the general case, through the lens of Perl
- oceanghost 9y agoFinal Exit.
- garrettgrimsley 9y agoMost others here mentioned either business or computer science books, so this one sticks out to me. Is there a reason you say Final Exit, beyond a lame joke about wanting your colleagues to kill themselves?
- sctb 9y agoYou've been posting a lot of uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments and it needs to stop, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- beeskneecaps 9y ago1984 just so they don’t get any crazy ideas and invent big brother. cough cough FACEBOOK cough cough
- icantdrive55 9y agoI have found when it comes to money/career; 99% of the people will look the other way, or go into denial. And the first sell out is the, "Hay--that's not how I operate." I saw it in school, and career--over, and over again.
- sledgehammers 9y agoPeopleware. How about not stuffing people into open offices.
- jroes 9y agoCrucial Conversations
- invalidOrTaken 9y agoActually my colleagues are pretty smart! For most people, though, it's hard to beat Jurassic Park, the morality tale that goes something like "Myopic optimization leads to BEING EATEN BY DINOSAURS."
- gaius 9y ago"Just because you can doesn't mean you should" applies to so many situations in software development.
- matfil 9y agoIn terms of books to (gently) influence colleagues... I generally find myself looking for pretty-much the opposite. Something that emphasises the joy of stealing fire from heaven. Old-school sci-fi (lots to choose from) could be pretty good in that regard. Newer stuff often leans a bit too much in the morality tale direction.
- rthomas6 9y agoAt the cost of being downvoted, I like The Fountainhead for this. Trusting your own judgement, daring to create something beautiful even if nobody else appreciates it, even if everyone else hates you for it. Because it's beautiful and because your singular vision improves the world by existing in it. And because you become a better person for daring to realize the great work that is inside of you. The love story in it is kind of weird, okay really weird, but besides that I like the book. Most of the over-the-top strawman librul bad guys, and attempts to morally justify Laissez-faire capitalism mostly came from Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead is more focused on an individual who wants to realize greatness for its own sake.
- oldcynic 9y agoAmusing Ourselves to Death - N. Postman From the 80s, and talking of TV, but it's worth reading again today as it's so applicable to the current landscape. More so than its original target.
- skittleson 9y agoWorking Effectively with legacy code (http://amzn.to/2CazEm5 http://amzn.to/2CazEm5) and The Design of Everyday Things ( http://amzn.to/2H23a0R http://amzn.to/2H23a0R ) Both have a huge impact on how I work with code and design them. Trying to explain these concepts are hard without context. Sometimes i just copy/paste the sections i think they could benefit from.
- qilisiang 9y agoThe Mythical Man-Month - Fred Brooks To all Project Managers & Top Management.
- unpythonic 9y agoAnother good one for project management is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. When running many large projects, there's always a common set of stuff that needs to get done before declaring a project ready for deployment. The techniques in this book are simple, effective and a lot more subtle than simply writing down a list.
- thesmallestcat 9y agoAny, really.
- rotrux 9y agoThe Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (http://a.co/aGEmQBl http://a.co/aGEmQBl)
- lsc 9y agoPersonally, though, I think there are book anti-patterns, too. If you start somewhere new or get new management and they hand out Machiavelli or Sun Tzu, You should probably update your resume and start taking recruiter calls; things are about to get rough. I mean, those are important books, and you should read them for historical/cultural reasons, but if management hands them out at work, from experience, it's indicative of an, uh, unhealthy or at least unpleasant work culture.
- tobyjsullivan 9y ago1) The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt and Thomas will always be a classic. 2) The Decision Maker by Dennis Bakke. This one pairs well with the more thorough Reinventing Organizations which has been mentioned in another comment.
- ozim 9y agoI was disappointed with Pragmatic Programmer, but maybe I picked it up too late. It is quite obvious stuff for experienced person. If someone is 5 years in dev and content of the book is not obvious for him, then I am afraid the book will not help.
- tobyjsullivan 9y agoI agree insofar as any developer should probably know that stuff as a minimal baseline. Which is why it made my list of books I wish my colleagues had read.
- conjecTech 9y agoThere is a class at Georgia Tech I colloquially referred to as "making sure your coworkers don't hate you." It covered design patterns, software testing, and project management. I'd tack on a basic knowledge of databases to that. These are things you can gain a true functional knowledge of in a couple of weeks, and which not knowing might make senior engineers hate working with you. So to mimic the class: The Mythical Man Month Design Patterns - Even if some of the particulars are not as relevant, it still provides a useful framework for thought. Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach I'd also add Harry Potter & The Methods of Rationality. A lot of engineers can think empirically, but its not their first reaction. Going through this book helped make it second nature for me. Can't remember if a certain data structure is immutable? Now I'll write a couple of lines of code to see rather than go looking for documentation. A lot of big problems start as false assumptions. Having the instinct to think to test them and knowing how to will prevent a lot of wasted effort, regardless of your role. How to Solve It by Polya also gets an honorable mention for similar reasons.
- conjecTech 9y agoAn addition directed particularly at cofounders: The Freelancer's Survival Guide by Kris Rusch. It is the single best book on entrepreneurship/running a small business I have ever read. It covers pretty much all the bases. It also covers an enormous number of the issues that you will inevitably encounter if you start a business, but likely have never experienced otherwise.
- mattmanser 9y agoDesign patterns feel completely obsolete now. Not only does no-one at all talk about them, most of the design patterns themselves were harmful and are now completely unnecessary due to functional language features being available in modern languages. Design patterns are like TDD, no-one wants to come out and admit it, but they were really, really bad outside of theory. InitiatorFactoryFactory I do not mourne thee!
- fdw 9y agoCould you please elaborate that? I still see patterns like Builders, Factories, Singletons and even sometimes a Strategy in Java. Why do you think they are bad? What are the functional alternatives?
- g5095 9y agoThe bible
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- uber1geek 9y ago1. Peopleware 2. Code Complete 2
- odiroot 9y agoPeopleware: Productive Projects and Teams I mostly wish this to my ex and future managers, but colleagues wouldn't hurt as well. Working in Berlin I'm constantly baffled how ignorant of the "old" research people are. Time and again.
- rimliu 9y agoSeconded. At a couple of places I was actually thinking about leaving this book as a good-bye gift for managers when I quit. But that wiuld most likeky be effort and money wasted.
- odiroot 9y agoHear hear. I was considering the same thing. Outside of the reasons you listed you can also be viewed as smug / bitter.
- olavgg 9y agoThank for this suggestion, I have just read the introduction and first chapter. This is my current company in a nut shell!
- macieklaskus 9y agoNonviolent Communication
- tzhenghao 9y agoPrinciples by Ray Dalio This is a good start for crafting better mental models and thought frameworks before engaging others in meetings.
- Jach 9y agoJust about anything. Too many coworkers don't read any technical books at all. Some will pick up books to learn specific tools or languages, which is better, but not enough... If you made me pick one, though... The Practice of Programming - Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike - http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Brian-W-Kernighan/dp/020161586X http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Brian-W-Kernighan...
- donretag 9y agoOne of the worst managers I've had was actually well read. We read many of the same books and he also read many listed so far in this Ask HN. I often wondered how did he end up so bad if we read the same books?
- nathan_f77 9y agoI don't think reading a lot of books is a panacea that will magically make you a better person, or even a better manager. It's important to have a lot of "mental models" to make better decisions, but books won't fix a short temper or make someone more friendly. That comes from habits like reflection and meditation, or therapy. Also getting enough exercise, having a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, not working too much, and not having too much stress.
- andersthue 9y agoLeaders and Self Deception Crucial Conversation These two books will teach you and your colleagues how to communicate and maintain an open and centered dialouge while removing bad intentions and bad mindsets from your being.
- yesenadam 9y agoActual titles: Leadership and Self-Deception and Crucial Conversations.
- kabdib 9y ago"I gave my manager two copies of The Mythical Man-Month so he could read it twice as fast."
- zhte415 9y agoExcellent!
- emmelaich 9y agoAll in no particular order.... As a Unix systems engineer, I would choose 1. W.R. Stevens books on Unix and Tcp/ip. 2. Rochkind's Advanced UNIX Programming. 3. Most of the Unix/Linux manual pages. 4. Bash FAQ As a Unix systems programmer I would choose 1. Mythical Man Month 2. Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls. 3. K&R C and Stroustrup C++ 4. A recent Java reference and Bloch's Java Puzzlers 5. a reference and cookbook for the language of your choice -- Python, Ruby, Perl, etc. 6. Google's style guides
- astatine 9y agoFascinating question. I recently went about compiling a list of books that I though our team will benefit by reading (or re-reading). It was rather tricky to find books which are of lasting value and are best read in a contemplative frame of mind. Not necessarily intended to solve immediate problems, but to help become better in some immeasurable way. This is the list we collectively came up with. Our goal was to find 50 books and we went a bit above that in the end. YMMV. Link to list of books: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QOSqT2B_2skXlyG9lKI8O_wgPbz4eWQ7TeEJSNx3Zbk/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QOSqT2B_2skXlyG9lKI8...
- rorykoehler 9y agoMythical man-month was so good you put it twice?
- DyslexicAtheist 9y ago- Nassim N. Taleb: Black Swan and Antifragile[0] - Robert Cialdini: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion[1] - Franklin Foer: World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech[2] - Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society[3] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Fragility/dp/081297381X https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Frag... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Rober... [2] https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat/dp/1101981113 https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Mind-Existential-Threat... [3] https://www.amazon.com/One-Dimensional-Man-Ideology-Industrial-Routledge/dp/0415289777 https://www.amazon.com/One-Dimensional-Man-Ideology-Industri...
- jxub 9y agoThen your overall goal must be to persuade them of the black-swan collateral risks of the big tech sector in an advanced industrial society. I'm in!
- EliRivers 9y agoAnna Karenina and a selection of other classics. Anything from David Mitchell. At least a couple of the more well-known Haruki Murakami novels. Some history from the more scholarly end of the layman accessible works. Little bit of classic philosophy. More of my colleagues speak two (or more) languages than are monolingual, but if that weren't the case, I'd wish more of them read in another language.
- t176 9y agoDreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg. As a programmer of 30 years I have taken more quotes and found more common ground with this book than any other. Here's a small extract that caught my attention: "In order to build something, you have to have a blueprint. And we don't always have one. Then you hit unexpected problems. It's hard to know how long something is going to take until you know for sure you can build it."
- bor0 9y agoDesign patterns get obsolete. Programming languages get obsolete. Libraries get obsolete. Mathematics doesn't. Learn CS foundations, logic, proofs to get better at understanding and gain abstraction experience. Edit: books: How to prove it by D.Velleman, Proofs and concepts, Discrete Math by S.Epp
- bem94 9y agoPlayer piano by Kurt Vonnegut. Essential reading for anyone who forgets how powerful and often out of touch engineers are as a class of professionals.
- matfil 9y ago"The Soul of a New Machine", by Tracy Kidder. Solving hard problems, dealing with (and balancing) both technical and business concerns, but with emphasis on getting things done over process and organisational concerns.
- feydaykyn 9y agoIt's also extremely well written, and a great introduction to how computers work in the inside that can be understood by non technical readers. It's also the only book which succeeded in expressing both the rollercoaster I feel when programming.
- wyclif 9y agoThe entire "You Don't Know JavaScript" series of books by Kyle Simpson: https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS Highly recommended because: 1/ They're up to date and you'll be able to avoid all the outdated JS tutorials on the web 2/ They're extremely well written 3/ They're thorough in a way that a lot of books and tutorials aren't. They are short, dense, incremental books and if you work through all of them you'll have a complete understanding of the language, including what's outside the so-called "Good Parts."
- jawns 9y ago"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. I'm not saying my coworkers are a bunch of jerks, but it's got a lot of great advice for working alongside others and resolving differences. --- "How to Not Write Bad" by Ben Yagoda. I'm not saying my coworkers are all terrible writers, but for many of them, writing just isn't their thing. But learning how to avoid the most common writing problems is important for programmers, because everybody ends up writing some degree of documentation. -- "Experimenting With Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid." I'm not saying my coworkers are a bunch of babies, but I wrote the book, so I want _everybody_, not just my colleagues, to read it.
- Dowwie 9y agoI am a proponent for depth over breadth. To read is one thing but to understand is another. Rather than read 5 books and superficially grasp their concepts, read one closely and carefully. The one book I wish my colleagues would read and learn from is "Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl [1]. "Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness." [1] https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/...
- spodek 9y ago"Getting To Yes" https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Without/dp/0143118757 https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Wit... I've given away more copies of that book than any other. Improves all relationships. "Elements of Style" aka Strunk and White. https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/020530902X https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/... I'd prefer they not only read Elements of Style, but work on it.
- Recursing 9y agoIf you liked "Getting To Yes" you might also enjoy "Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062407805/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062407805/ that has a somehow different perspective on negotiation
- xiuyuan 9y agoYou might find this interesting regarding Elements of Style: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/21/against-strunk-whites-the-elements-of-style/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... The original article it quotes can be found here: www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf It's quite heavy criticism of Elements of Style from the Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
- cimmanom 9y agoGetting Things Done. The engineers usually aren't so bad, because they have what's essentially a GTD system for 98% of their work in the form of an issue tracker (though I've also known one or two who could benefit from a system to help them track the complexity and non-code aspects of larger projects). But the managers and the people I interface with in other departments are incapable of keeping track of what projects they have going on, what the next step are to keep those projects moving, and who's responsible for what.
- irundebian 9y agoRoss Anderson: Security Engineering - A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems Matt Bishop: Computer Security: Art and Science
- rookiemaverick 9y agoThe lean startup and from zero to one.
- rookiemaverick 9y agoPragmatic programmer
- drawdown 9y agoI would like it if my coworkers and managers read and took to heart the message behind • Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees:_Our_Future_on_a_Hotter_Planet • Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming http://www.drawdown.org/the-book but sadly most are too focused on their stock options.
- skilesare 9y agoChris Alexander’s Timeless way of building and Nature of order Robert Pirsig’s Lila
- xstartup 9y agoMcConnell, Steve. Code Complete. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1993. McConnell, Steve. Software Project Survival Guide. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1998. Maguire, Steve. Writing Solid Code. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1993. Ranade and Nash. The Elements of C Programming Style. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992. Kernighan and Plauger. The Elements of Programming Style. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Caner, Cem, et al. Testing Computer Software, Second Edition. New York: Wiley Computer Publishing, 1999. Hunt, Andrew, et al. The Pragmatic Programmer. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Holub, Allen. Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995.