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These reading lists are lovely and promise a Better You, but I'll propose the following challenge: * If you're at home, turn around and look at the bookshelf y
by khazhou 7y ago
These reading lists are lovely and promise a Better You, but I'll propose the following challenge:
* If you're at home, turn around and look at the bookshelf you've already accumulated. Did you really read all those books you so looked forward to when you first bought them? Or do you remember all the best bits from your favorite ones? Be honest now... the unbroken spine on your Godel Escher Bach suggests otherwise. Read what you have, before stressing on Kay's or others' lists!
* If you're at work, have you read all the wiki/docs/etc created by your team and neighboring teams? Do you understand the full architecture and implementation of the system you work with every day? Go read that, level up and become the most knowledgeable person on your team.
- pvg 7y agothe unbroken spine on your Godel Escher Bach suggests otherwise. Read what you have, before stressing on Kay's or others' lists! Read what you like. You're describing someone who's clearly been 'stressing lists' so much they've got books they're not interested in and are never going to read. If you've made the mistake of accumulating a bunch of books as props, well, it happens - there's no need to compound this further by guilt-tripping yourself to read them before reading something you might actually want to read.
- khazhou 7y agoI'm describing the problem of already owning books you'd like (love!) to read, but don't make time for them. I'm also describing that most of us (I posit) already have a great collection of great books, which aren't fully tapped. Honestly, even re-reading your college textbooks will up your level significantly. You don't usually need to seek out the "best of the best" book, unless you're really going deep or want to learn a specific topic in a very particular way.
- pvg 7y agoIf you say so, fair enough. The image you've picked seems like a perfect encapsulation of a different problem. I want to help the person with the smooth-spined G.E.B whose third monitor is not quite at the right height. Go right ahead and slip it under there.
- msla 7y ago> Be honest now... the unbroken spine on your Godel Escher Bach suggests otherwise. I find it amusing that this book is chosen as an example of one people don't really read, and not, say, Penrose's The Road To Reality.
- khazhou 7y agoWell it does have a 25 year headstart. And a cooler cover!
- Rerarom 7y agoI read both GEB and TRTR, and I haven't read any of the books on Kay's list ;)
- GlenTheMachine 7y agoHey there. I've read the first half of GEB at least four times. It's only the last 50% I've never read.
- wwweston 7y agoThe content is fractally self-similar, so you're covered.
- copperx 7y agoI remember begging my mom to buy me GEB at a Barnes and Noble when I was about 17, about twenty years ago. The book was expensive, especially for a Mexican family, but the book was hyped up in Slashdot, so I really really wanted to read it. I remember reading a few chapters and then couldn't muster the motivation to continue. I still feel guilty about it. The book sits in my bookshelf, spine unbroken. My mom recently passed away. I'm sorry, mom.
- emmanueloga_ 7y agoI'm thinking on prioritizing "I am a Strange Loop" over GEB. According to Hofstadter, it is a better book [1]. Also, shorter :-). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
- commandlinefan 7y ago> have you read all the wiki/docs/etc created by your team and neighboring teams? Well, in my defense, it's pretty terribly written...
- Kuraj 7y agoIf you can convince your lead to let you set aside some time to update it / write a new one, it's a good opportunity to learn AND earn some brownie points
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 7y agoHonestly it's more about not forgetting them. The Amazon wishlist has honestly helped me a lot here, I can also annotate and sort it in case I come across a book again. Plus it helps people buy gifts for me on holidays really easily. Sorry for turning this into an Amazon ad but it's a great feature
- efreak 7y agoIf I'm understanding your comment right, you could use Calibre to do this just as easily, possibly with more information. There's no requirement to actually have a file associated with a record in Calibre, so you can add your comments into the metadata (or have the record point to a file with comments and notes instead of/alongside the ebook). I use a Calibre database to keep track of my bookshelves; the metadata includes ISBN, my review, my rating, average online rating from various sites, where I got the book, similar and associated books, etc. It should be relatively simple to get a single-click plugin going that brings up a search for the ($ISBN|$ASIN|$TITLE+$AUTHOR) of the currently selected record. The only thing missing here is public access (the buying gifts part)
- ChickeNES 7y agoWhile I myself would like to do just this at some point, this is a lot of work to learn a new tool vs using a website that someone is already familiar with. And you get the added bonus of it being in the cloud and available on your phone (especially great for trips to used bookstores).
- ChickeNES 7y agoReply since I can't edit: Note that I'm not endorsing using this for "flipping" books, quite the opposite. I've been screwed over so many times in my search for old out-of-print technical books, that it's a bit of a sore spot.
- narnianal 7y agoSadly 99% of the code that's written nowadays can be directly thrown away. I propose another challenge: Learn the actual meaningful stuff. E.g. how to code in lisp. Really learn it. You will never code lisp in your job. Promised. But in almost every task you will find that you reuse what you learned. Or learn the architecture of git. How many people write bullshit around git because they don't understand that git can already do 100x of what their shell script or UI tool or plugin can do.... Don't waste your time with what is hip and instead learn how things really work. Real things. Don't learn the latest javascript framework, but learn the difference between class based inheritance and prototypal inheritance. Don't learn the hippest UI IDE, learn vim or emacs. Really learn it, e.g. how to solve almost all problems in vim without any plugins. And one last point about "read all the content your team created". Not sure how big your teams are, but in many companies that's impossible. If you spend 12h of reading 7 days a week you can't read all the content that is created in that week. But you know that the cool_library that replaces the AwesomeLibrary is just as bad at solving the problem and both actually don't even know what the problem is.
- User23 7y ago> You will never code lisp in your job. Promised. I believed this too, but then Clojure happened. It's not my ideal Lisp, but I can get paid to write it at a mainstream company.
- microcolonel 7y agoDitto, Clojure gets work done, and there are hardly any Fortune 100 companies left without someone using it on the job. It's become part of my job.
- uoaei 7y agoWhat is Clojure's wheelhouse -- what is it used for?
- chimpburger 7y ago
- new2628 7y agoThe purpose of a personal library is not necessarily to keep all the books you've already read within hands reach. I personally prefer to keep books I have never read but may one day be interested to read, so when I approach the bookshelves, it has the potential of a surprise, the thrill of exploring/discovering/etc.
- nosianu 7y agoThat was a comment I read some time ago coming from Umberto Eco. He has a very big library and he occasionally gets asked by visitors to his home if he read all or most of them? His answer was long your lines. Of course he had not read most of it at all - because what was the point of keeping a library mostly consisting of books you already read? Your library should be the exact opposite to be useful, i.e. mostly consisting of books you had not yet read. Unfortunately I forgot where I read that.
- new2628 7y agoNice, thanks. Sadly he passed away not too long ago. An image search for "umberto eco library" gives some impressive pictures.
- ignoramous 7y agoTo the contrary, some of the best books have so much knowledge in them that you instantly level-up many notches with a single chapter. For instance, reading The Pragmatic Programmer and JavaScript: The Good Parts early-on changed my professional life irrevocably, both in terms of programming and career. I am sure there are various other books like those that truly are impactful, and it doesn't hurt to look up recommendations for those from people who are experts / polymaths. The case against wikis (with the exception of design docs) and blog posts is that they are erratic, restricted, unedited, stale, and low on pedagogical focus. Some of the books are meticulously structured-- there's no comparison.
- 6thaccount2 7y ago"low on pedagogical focus" Although I have some duds, the hundreds of pages of wiki contributions I've made are nearly all designed to be what I wished existed when I was learning said details. Sadly, they only help to a certain degree. The individual really needs to want to learn to get any real lasting benefit.
- reactor4 7y agoMay I ask you what you wrote? I’m interested.
- 6thaccount2 7y agoInternal team wiki covering my industry which is power systems (transmission level stuff).
- crumpets 7y ago>what I wished existed when I was learning said details. This isn't what 'pedagogical focus' means though. Just writing down the stuff that helped you out very rarely covers what is necessary to help people out in general. A pedagogically focused approach would also cover the assumptions you had going in and provide clear references to expected prerequisites. It should also cover the "why" for a specific approach if there are multiple approaches, which is very frequently left out of internal documentation wikis.
- el_benhameen 7y ago>If you're at home, turn around and look at the bookshelf you've already accumulated. So accurate as to be creepy. There's a shelf full of unread technical books right behind me. I will save this link for later.
- pnathan 7y agostrong agree: a committment to working through ones library can yield great things. also you can unload poor books that are taking up space now!
- commandlinefan 7y agoThere’s a used book store near where I work that has a whole section of programming books. I stop by and pick up old computer books for $10 from time to time, and I always mean to get around to actually reading them - more than once I’ve found that I bought the same book twice, having forgotten that I already own it…
- xyzwave 7y agoIs this in the Bay Area by chance? I’ve been dying to find a place like this.
- commandlinefan 7y agoDallas, TX, sorry. Half-priced books, if you’re ever in the area. Most of the computer books sell for a fraction of what they cost new.
- JakeStone 7y agoCan I throw in a snark? If you buy some number of books because your coworker told you to, then actually spend some time reading them?
- rjsw 7y agoI have GEB in the bookshelf behind me and have read it all the way through, same for The Mind's I, two of the books in the list are there as well. The one book behind me that I haven't finished is the dragon compilers book by Aho, Sethi & Ullman. Have also read Lisp 1.5 but don't have a physical copy.
- fluffything 7y agoIs the dragon book worth reading? Most compilers nowadays are completely different from what's discussed there. Like, SSA form is barely covered in that book.
- elwell 7y ago> unbroken spine on your Godel Escher Bach suggests otherwise This hits close to home!
- mistrial9 7y agofail - I read quite a bit of it.. one or two pages at a time!
- Waterluvian 7y agoIt's like the gym on January. People like the idea of getting fit. They don't actually like doing it though. The act of figuring out what's next and buying the materials feels good without any commitment.
- wrycoder 7y ago> unbroken spine on your Godel Escher Bach I've read most of it, some parts several times, over the years. But my spine is unbroken. Here's how: Open about 20 pages and run your finger firmly down the gutter. Flip 20 pages and repeat until you get to the center of the book. Next, start at the back and repeat, moving towards the center. Then repeat the whole exercise. While you are reading, occasionally run your finger down the gutter. If you do this, you'll never break a spine, and those massive paperbacks will lie open on the table. An iPhone makes a good book weight, almost as good as Levenger's.
- shawnps 7y agoI don't think there's anything wrong with buying books that you intend to read in the future. I do this all the time, and when I want something new to read I pick something off of the shelf. There are worse things to buy than books.
- mcnichol 7y agoHad it been a reading list from anyone else I may not have looked as I feel as fatigued as your statement suggest you are as well(and you are very much talking about my bookshelf as well)... But there is a special place in my heart for certain folks...Alan Kay is one of em. Time to move some of that dust on my shelf around.
- ExtremisAndy 7y agoOuch. This hurts. This is my problem exactly. I have two bookshelves full of programming books that I’ve never completed, and yet each morning I spend at least 30 minutes on Amazon reading the TOC of whatever new programming books they’re recommending to me. Imagine if I instead spent that time reading the books I already have. Just simple math shows that would be 180+ hours of learning per year. But my biggest problem is simply deciding where to begin. Which book do I read? As silly as it sounds, that is very often exactly what paralyzes me. I struggle to just pick one and commit to it.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoStart with the old ones. For example, the Mythical Man Month. Still relevant and every other book references it.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y agoEven ignoring the fact that people are more than just cogs in their company's grinder, I don't quite get why you seem to believe it is obviously more important to memorise the method signature of my interns' implementation of leftpad() than what a good book has to offer. To be entirely honest, the list is actually too narrowly focussed to support my larger point: namely, that lifting you view to the horizon, by sampling from the best that fields as far away from yours as possible have to offer, is about feeding the soul and not just the machine. Anyway, I've only read about half the books on my bookshelf (but including GED) and that's actually how I like it. After all, books you haven't read are worth far more to you than those you already know.
- astatine 7y ago> Be honest now... the unbroken spine on your Godel Escher Bach suggests otherwise. Ouch. That hurt. I literally turned around and saw this book in pristine condition.
- m463 7y agoI also think some science fiction should sit on everyone's bookshelf.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoNot just books, you can apply this thinking to just about any purchase.
- bigred100 7y agoGEB is a scam book that causes undergraduates to annoy their mathematical logic professors with meaningless questions