10 ms·
Ask HN: Which book or course gave you an unfair advantage?
Is there a book you’ve read or a course you’ve taken that leveled up your game so much that it felt almost unfair?
- fezzez 5y agoDeep work by Cal Newport. It helped me learn how to be vastly more productive in the same amount of effort and time.
- xanaxagoras 5y agoCal Newport sounds like a made up Chappelle Show character that Dave does in whiteface.
- rkhassen9 5y agoEven having read a lot of Cal Newport, and am a fan of the principles he writes about, this was hilarious to read. Needed that. Thank you.
- capital_guy 5y agoHaving met Cal, the description tracks.
- wry_discontent 5y agoI've had a copy of this book for so long, but it reeks to me of something that should be a blog post I can read in 5 minutes, and so I've never been able to muster the interest to crack it open. How seriously would you recommend it?
- wheelinsupial 5y agoI guess you're lucky that Cal Newport starts with blog posts and turns them into books later. This post seems to be the one that introduced deep work. https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2012/11/21/knowledge-workers-are-bad-at-working-and-heres-what-to-do-about-it/ https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2012/11/21/knowledge-workers... "Last week I introduced the deep work philosophy" in this blog post links to the one above: https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2012/11/27/some-notes-on-deep-working/ https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2012/11/27/some-notes-on-dee...
- albertshin 5y agoI find many "productivity" books tend be easily summarizable... but reading the book is really to drill the concept in your head so that you're conscious of the tips/advice in your day to day. Plus, if you spread out the reading over a few days/weeks, you can apply what you've learned throughout the day as you read along.
- 100011_100001 5y agoIt could be a blog post. Hell I can even summarize it with a few sentences. Work on one thing without distractions for big blocks of time, 1-4 hours. You will make great progress by concentrating on one thing at a time. ....there you have it
- muzani 5y agoI didn't get anything from the book. What was the best insight you got from the book?
- prepend 5y agoI feel the same. Not a bad idea, but really just a blog post stretched out. My takeaway was that I wasn’t crazy for only answering email every few hours and helped quell the anxiety that people “needed” my response.
- kat 5y agoI dont have an exact book or course to recommend, but rather how to approach school courses... I'm Canadian, and went thru post secondary in Canada. This is coming from someone who did not program for fun in highschool, had no family support/introduction to IT, no extra curricular programming introduction, etc. I went to a collage instead of university. My first year computer courses had lab sessions where our teacher helped with programming assignments. There was ~10 kids in class. Uni classes were a few hundred kids in a single class and lab sessions were ~30 kids. They had TAs (teaching assistants, graduate students with no industry experience) instead of their professors during programming lab sessions. I got the same course credit, much cheaper tuition, and a much more practical programming education. I transferred to a university to finish my degree and I was embarrassingly ahead of everyone else when it came to programming. Whatever course you do take, look for passionate people with a teaching background and a small class size.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chestertn 5y agoThe Holy Bible. It taught me that vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.
- rodenmonte 5y ago"vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas" translates to "vanity of vanities, all (is) vanity" - just in case I'm not the only one who didn't know.
- muzani 5y agoIt makes more sense in full context: http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Ecclesiastes+1:1-11 http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Ecclesiastes+1:1-11
- ampdepolymerase 5y agoAll the nihilistic HN are people downvoting because they are envious of having a faith.
- mkl 5y agoI think providing advice in Latin, a language almost no one on HN speaks, is a more likely reason. It started getting upvoted again after someone else provided a translation.
- leephillips 5y ago“I often feel that the American programmer would profit more from learning, say, Latin than from learning yet another programming language.” -- Edsger Dijkstra https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD611.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E... I don’t know Latin, but the meaning of the quoted phrase was pretty obvious.
- uchiga 5y agostill dont know what it means in english
- mjfl 5y agositting next to a 10xer for 2 years.
- legerdemain 5y agoWhat's the best way to get this effect while working from home?
- rkhassen9 5y agoTwitch a 10xer?
- muzani 5y agoI'd love to do this but I don't know who. The closest is leaving the Molly Rocket channel playing in the background.
- lanstin 5y agoRead people's commits and try to understand what and why. Ask questions. The most talented people I worked with love getting good questions. With git or even CVS (ha my age) programming is a completely transparent activity, you can see what everyone is doing. You can read code 1/2 the day and probably be more productive than if you don't.
- trefgin 5y agoWhat did you learn from this person? It would save me two years.
- coolspot 5y agoAdderal + no personal life
- mjfl 5y agoA lot. One important thing is, that it is possible to focus and work for 10-12 hours per day. Before I bought the "only 4 hours of productive work per day are possible for avg human". Not true. Hard to achieve though. You really have to have good self discipline to do it on your own.
- craigching 5y agoThe course: Object Oriented Programming at the University of Minnesota The book: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs This was back in the early 90s, we learned OO with Scheme. SICP is where I credit my programming ability even today. I think that if I'd taken OO via C++ my eyes wouldn't have opened like they did with Scheme and SICP. I was, at the time, programming products in C++ for my father's software company while taking classes and I remember a student ask the professor (Dr. Maria Gini, an amazing instructor) why we were learning OO with a dead language instead of a language we'd actually use like C++. And I remember thinking to myself "I'd like to learn something other than C++ anyway". Dr. Gini simply said "because this is how I choose to teach the subject." (something like that). It was an amazing experience, definitely one of my top 3 classes taken at University.
- shanusmagnus 5y agoGini is a legend. We were all lucky to get her and SICP.
- pankajdoharey 5y agoI also like https://htdp.org/ https://htdp.org/
- fsociety 5y agoIf you are working a lot in Linux user space, The Linux Programming Interface is 10/10.
- jldugger 5y agoIndeed, reading the documentation is often an unfair advantage =)
- lanstin 5y agoAs a long-time writer of networking based user-land code, I find reading the implementation of the socket API to be extremely helpful. There used to be a few "annotated source code" books that were giant but interesting, tho the last I read was from 2.4 I think or maybe early 2.6. But the general understanding of how it works is useful for using the APIs.
- CPLX 5y agoZen Buddhism. I dabbled with the concepts and played with the idea of taking it seriously for about 15 years before I finally surrendered to the idea and it changed everything.
- sdfin 5y agoHow did you learn it? Which books/teachers?
- lanstin 5y agoNo books. Just sit. Follow your breath if you must "do" something. A teacher and a community to sit with make it a lot easier.
- CPLX 5y agoI became interested through books but ultimately if it’s something you’re interested in pursuing you’d want to find a temple or community and practice with those that have more experience. Two books I read early on that I recommend are The Tantric Distinction and Zen Mind Beginners Mind.
- DanHulton 5y agoCode Complete (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Complete). I hear that it's probably not as relevant these days, since it's been nearly 20 years since the 2nd edition was released, but the attitude towards professionalism it instilled in me was invaluable, and the fact that all the recommendations were backed up by studies made it so that I could back up my decisions with facts.
- wenc 5y ago* Fooled By Randomness (NN Taleb): Taleb is a complicated personality, but this book gave me a heuristic for thinking about long-tails and uncertain events that I could never have derived myself from a probability textbook. * Designing Data Intensive Applications (M Kleppmann): Provided a first-principles approach for thinking about the design of modern large-scale data infrastructure. It's not just about assembling different technologies -- there are principles behind how data moves and transforms that transcend current technology, and DDIA is an articulation of those principles. After reading this, I began to notice general patterns in data infrastructure, which helped me quickly grasp how new technologies worked. (most are variations on the same principles) * Introduction to Statistical Learning (James et al) and Applied Predictive Modeling (Kuhn et al). These two books gave me a grand sweep of predictive modeling methods pre-deep learning, methods which continue to be useful and applicable to a wider variety of problem contexts than AI/Deep Learning. (neural networks aren't appropriate for huge classes of problems) * High Output Management (A Grove): oft-recommended book by former Intel CEO Andy Grove on how middle management in large corporations actually works, from promotions to meetings (as a unit of work). This was my guide to interpreting my experiences when I joined a large corporation and boy was it accurate. It gave me a language and a framework for thinking about what was happening around me. I heard this was 1 of 2 books Tobi Luetke read to understand management when he went from being a technical person to CEO of Shopify. (the other book being Cialdini's Influence). Hard Things about Hard Things (B Horowitz) is a different take that is also worth a read to understand the hidden--but intentional--managerial design of a modern tech company. These some of the very few books written by practitioners--rather than management gurus--that I've found to track pretty closely with my own real life experiences.
- aledalgrande 5y agoFind someone in the top 10% in the world who does what you want to learn and try to get them as a mentor.
- cryptofistMonk 5y agoTop 10% in the world is not very high... Top 0.01% is still only top 100 in a city of a million, seems a bit more aspirational
- winter_squirrel 5y agoFar easier to get a top 10% as a mentor than one of a hundred people in a million
- klysm 5y agoEh that’s kinda misleading because not the entire population of the one million has any idea about the thing, so top 10% is probably fairly small.
- aledalgrande 5y agoGood luck getting access to the top 0.01% for a mentor
- blackaspen 5y agoE603, Research Methods, in the writing department. Among other things, I learned how to read academic papers and how to think like a researcher. A fun last day of that course was considering "real world situations" through various research lenses ("If I were an anthropologist, what would I make of this situation?", "If I were trying to understand, using critical discourse analysis, why my roommate won't open the chicken door in the morning") has proven super valuable in corporate-life. There's different reasons for different things ("Why don't we have an onboarding doc?") and it's important to consider all of them and figure out what the best course forward is to achieve your objective.
- 6f8986c3 5y agoAh, another offshoot of Critical Theory.
- 6f8986c3 5y ago"How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big" and "Loserthink" by Scott Adams.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mymanz 5y agoNand2Tetris, the book, and actually coding the entire project. It earned me a prestigious internship, from a no-name school, which subsequently lead to a FANG position.
- readflaggedcomm 5y agoThe Great Gatsby taught me the folly of silent sentimentalism. Awareness of your emotional state is like a super power, or a Cassandra complex. Awareness that you've arranged your fortunes around a one-sided attachment to an illusion is the last bulwark against self destruction, especially when the marketing department eggs you on. Being able to identify it in others can be useful and alienating.
- hughdbrown 5y agoYes, there's much to reflect on in The Great Gatsby. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.
- papandada 5y agoIn my world, taking a dimensional modelling class from Ralph Kimball was almost instant enlightenment.
- sfifs 5y agoThis may be unusual but in my business school, we had a department that focused on Psychology and Org. Behaviour. They offered a free evaluation (they used the California Psychological Inventory [1]) and consultation for all students. The main upshot of what I discovered from that interaction was that relatively shorter term, expertise based project style work is what suited my personality the best. I only applied to consulting style jobs out of college and joined what was effectively an internal consulting arm of a large multinational and am now a globally recognised expert in some domains within the company. Compared to my peers, this knowledge did help me avoid a lot of angst finding a role fit. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Psychological_Inventory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Psychological_Inv...
- jldugger 5y agoPro Git(https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2 https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2). You'd be surprised how many people in our professional community try to get by in life having never just sat down and read the documentation on their tooling. Obviously the git man-pages are terrible enough that we have goofy parody generators, but its okay because this book exists.
- teeray 5y agoSo much this. I’d absolutely recommend everyone read the internals chapters, since they’re approachable and really give you a sense for how git thinks. I feel like after reading that chapter, all the superstition around git faded away for me
- djmips 5y agoSo, I went to bookmark this and I already had it bookmarked in exactly the place where I was planning to file this. Sigh.
- lanstin 5y agoSeriously, after reading this book I have never had any doubt or fear using git. I have to google all the commands that I don't use everyday due to the peculiar lack of consistency in the TUI, but my understanding never wavers.
- is_true 5y agoThis. Learn your ide shortcuts, it crazy how fast you can do things with keys o ly
- vzaliva 5y agoOED. Growing in the Soviet Union, where English proficiency was pretty low, I learned English in a specialized school. I chose to improve and maintain my language skills by procuring and reading English books and taking additional classes. When computers become popular, I had an instant advantage by understanding user interface and documentation and having access to books that were unaccessible to my peers unless translated to Russian.
- lanstin 5y agoI love the OED. I have a paper copy of the older edition (the 2 volume one with a magnifying glass). The histories of words is so interesting. I always tell people (English non-native speakers or my kids learning English spelling etc. in school) that in English the spelling of a word is telling you the history of the word. But the ways meanings slip around and so on is infinitely interesting.
- tomcam 5y agoWhen I started making money I bought the full 22 volume version. Awesome fun.
- Exuma 5y agoNever Split the Difference - a negotiation book by famous hostage negotiator. It's so immediately useful and practical, my entire team used it to collect massive amount of debts and enact other business changes. It was invaluable, and I make everyone I know read it.
- rad_gruchalski 5y agoThis is a very good read. Useful from the start, very pragmatic.
- vmurthy 5y agoYou would probably enjoy "Start with No" [0] referenced in the book. I took away a few lessons from this book :) [0] https://www.amazon.com.au/Start-No-Jim-Camp/dp/0609608002/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=start+with+no&qid=1624672457&sr=8-5 https://www.amazon.com.au/Start-No-Jim-Camp/dp/0609608002/re...
- cweill 5y ago+1 especially the bits about how No Deal is better than a Bad Deal (that was a massive realization for me). What makes the book unique is how the emphasis is on the emotional aspect of negotiation rather than the pure rational, as rarely are negotiations emotion-free. Furthermore, it's important to be empathetic with your opposing party to understand their viewpoint, and how the enemy isn't your opponent, rather the issue at stake. I see a good amount of overlap with the other excellent book Nonviolent Communication.
- modeless 5y agoGeoff Hinton's Coursera course on neural networks in 2012. Today everyone knows about deep learning. Knowing about deep learning in 2012 was a superpower. And being able to take a course from a pioneer of the field, for free, was just incredible.
- llaolleh 5y agoDuring my senior year, my government teacher called people out for saying like every 5 words. For the entire year. He used to be a former lawyer. This has got me into the habit of always listening as I speak and it has been extremely worthwhile.
- rahimnathwani 5y ago"He used to be a former lawyer." This sounds like the start of a Mitch Hedberg joke.
- jldugger 5y ago> called people out for saying I'm not quite sure what you're trying to describe but -- are you referring to the socratic method?
- onetimeusename 5y agoI am sure it's not this way for everything but, for my own experience, I will answer with no. I would also doubt anyone in recent times who said they had a book or course like that. I've found competition to be so intense that, for example, my university restricts access to course syllabi and class information of certain courses because so many people would go through it and try to get a head start on it, sometimes years in advance, so they could have a shot at an A. There are old course notes and syllabi from 2012 that float around the internet that people use now since it's mostly the same. It's hard to picture a book that could give you an edge without anyone else knowing about it.
- muzani 5y agoThere are so many books that have given me an unfair advantage. I could easily list a dozen but the question asks for one. I'd say we live in an age of overinformation. There are books that give you an edge, like Never Split the Difference, and then everyone reads it, and then everyone reads the summary of it, then everyone criticizes the summary (which the original book itself has addressed), then everyone reads the criticism and concludes that the book is bad. You can ask people what a startup is, or what a MVP is, or TDD, and I assure you most would not have the original definitions or purposes from the books. A lot of people think TDD is 100% test coverage or that a startup is a business, but these are all wrong by definition.
- staysaasy 5y agoI've been saving my list (on startups specifically) here: https://staysaasy.com/startups/2020/09/24/startup-book-reading-list.html https://staysaasy.com/startups/2020/09/24/startup-book-readi...
- sys_64738 5y agoK&R
- lanstin 5y agoMetamathematics by Kleene. On Lisp by Graham. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Tufte.
- codemac 5y ago* Getting Things Done by David Allen This book taught me so much about how to manage my life, and taught me how to review my own systems. * SICP, On Lisp, and Let over Lambda It's hard to pick one exactly, because really it's about opening your mind to radically different programming paradigms than what's popular. Learning lisp well enough gives you confidence to attempt to create new programming languages, through code generation, or even mentally thinking about an API as a language rather than just a series of functions.
- lanstin 5y agoI loved Let over Lambda, but I always hesitate to recommend it, any more than I'd recommend TAOCP Semi-Numerical Algorithms, although that totally blew my mind. Even just the first chapter or two; I don't care that much about class implementations, but the power and the elegance and bootstrapping so high from such simple beginnings of lexical closures, all a true pleasure of life to learn such things.
- CPLX 5y ago> Getting Things Done by David Allen Agree. Despite being ubiquitous and universally recommended, I think this book is still somehow underrated.
- muzani 5y agoMy main criticism of GTD is that it's a bottom up approach. It proposes that if you get enough things done, your purpose will emerge. But frequently you make progress in the wrong direction. E.g. for me it was a year trying to set up a coffee stand or starting a blog. There was progress and it felt really important at the time but wasn't. When it's usually the opposite. Once you have a purpose, you will know the right things to do. And sometimes you have to let go. There's a book, The Perfect Mess (Freedman, Abrahamson), which proposes that mess is more efficient than order. Another approach is several lists based on your life priorities. I'd recommend the book The 1 Thing (G. Keller), which can combo very well with GTD or even without it.
- guiambros 5y ago
- SirensOfTitan 5y agoMost books by Bob Wilson, particularly Prometheus Rising, which set off a world of self-discovery when I picked it up first in high school. Nowadays, on weird books or ideas, I’d say: * The technique of Focusing by Eugene Gendlin * Shinzen Young’s writing on his See-Hear-Feel noting meditation technique * Or, similar to focusing but much, much weirder: Jack Willis’s Reichian Therapy for Home Use (available free on the internet) Every single book here has its own issues, but they all elaborate on listening to the body, and the subtle ways we hold stress in our bodies. They’ve helped me understand too that there’s a difference between being emotionally fat and emotionally expressive: the former is like a McDonald’s meal, the latter like a fine dining meal. I’ve struggled with generalized anxiety all my life, and this stuff has really helped me deal with it without pushing it away. On the actual real reduction-of anxiety I still feel fairly clueless.
- jdmoreira 5y agoI was not expecting to see Robert Anton Wilson on HN. Glad I did though!
- apis_nearctica 5y agoThanks for the suggestions, I think I will get some very good use out of these. For real reduction of anxiety you might be interested in reading about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which I think would fit well with the resources you mentioned. It’s an evidence-based therapy with a focus on mindfulness and meditation. A big part of what it taught me is how to unconditionally accept my unpleasant emotions which paradoxically leads to experiencing less of them. That’s easier said than done of course but ACT gives exercises and concrete advice for how to get there. The book I liked is called A Liberated Mind, a self-help book by the creator of ACT, Steven Hayes.
- 100011_100001 5y agoPrometheus rising was such an instrumental book for me. At that point of my life I was dabbling into the occult which is why I ended up getting the book. In made me realize that there are multiple side to any story and you can easily get stuck in echo chambers that re-inforce your own pre-conceptions. Ironically it's the book that drove me away from the occult. It also create a lot of uncertainty in my life, which at times even today, 20 years later bothers me. I am never 100% sure about anything, because it's all a "maybe". It has also led to a constant evolution of my thinking process because I am always open to new ideas and mindsets. I remember the last section of the book was totally unrelatable to me. Still own the book, I should probably re-read it, twenty years later.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- carapace 5y ago"Book of the Subgenius" (various authors) but I don't recommend it. It's not for everyone. Learn (self-)hypnosis. "TRANCE-formations" by Bandler and Grinder (and Bandler's other books as well) and "Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis?" by Steven Heller. Robert Anton Wilson's books are pretty good too. Also "Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman's Guide to Reality Selection" by Antero Alli.
- AlexMT23 5y agoYou're right, the Book of the SubGenius is certainly not for everyone. We can't have people questioning reality, it would unleash chaos.
- itbeho 5y agoHow to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie. Old but great for an introvert on the spectrum like me. Human nature doesn't change, but I still don't understand it. Functional Web Development with Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix: Rethink the Modern Web App by Lance Halvorsen Elixir and Phoenix have been fantastic for my productivity. I had a fairly short, but steep learning curve in the early days, but LiveView is amazing and replaces quite a bit of client side javascript that previously felt redundant to me. I've been getting a quicker time to completion, and correspondingly being paid faster than when I was working with more traditional stacks like Django or Rails.
- vladmarin 5y ago* Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy. The book explains how to think of a platform systematically. It's valuable because it applies to everything else in life, any business, any industry - not just IT platforms. Based on the findings of 2 Nobel prize winners. * Never Split the Difference. Don't even think about it - read it. The book is a life coaching chapter that everyone should learn. * The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks. Everything is a network. From wars, to economy, to minorities, to terrorism. Understanding what truly lies behind the concept of "network" is just as well one of those life coaching chapters everyone should learn.
- godmode2019 5y ago* Thinking fast and slow - how to think and make decision and how to consider bias. * Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth - specialisation is for insects. * Propaganda - 1928 book by the inventor of public relations and modern media. Know how they influence you. * The war of art - being a professional. Honesty I don't think this book was written by a human this book completely changed my life and any other person I for to read this book had a similar experience. I have more but I don't want to information overload anyone.
- ronyfadel 5y agoPlease do, I’m taking notes :)
- loughnane 5y agoHow to read a book by Mortimer Adler. Greatly improved my efficiency in gaining understanding from printed works, so acted as a force multiplier across several aspects of life.
- 100011_100001 5y agoI always thought this book on how to read books was kind of like a meme. Did it really help you?
- sharmi 5y ago* Introduction to Personal Finance (I think, on Coursera) Personal Finance is one subject that is not taught is any school across the board. Previously, my spouse and I were influenced by whatever the insurance seller peddled as the best. Post this course, we can identify most bad investments from good ones and have a basic but solid financial plan for the future. I have taken many courses, but certainly this one has stuck with me. And I took this one a decade back!
- madhadron 5y agoMy doctoral level real analysis course (the one on measure theory, Lebesgue integration, etc.). Hardest course I ever took, but it was the great unification that made so much of the math in my head just special cases of the same thing.
- aalhour 5y ago* Thinking Fast and Slow * The Selfish Gene * Probability: For the Enthusiastic Beginner * How to Measure Anything * Rationality: From AI to Zombies * Cynefin: Weaving Sense-making into the fabric of our world * Major works of Friedrich Nietzsche
- austincheney 5y agoThis was is the first programming book I ever read and it has allowed me to do things others cannot. https://www.amazon.com/DOM-Scripting-Design-JavaScript-Document/dp/1430233893/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=document+object+model&qid=1624793455&sprefix=document+ob&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/DOM-Scripting-Design-JavaScript-Docum...
- JackMorgan 5y agoA lot of books have shaped my thinking and seriously improved my skills, here's the list: http://deliberate-software.com/page/books/ http://deliberate-software.com/page/books/
- runawaybottle 5y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Programming-ebook/dp/B00ACC2536/ https://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Program... Coder’s At Work is a collection interviews with several brilliant programmers. This book gave me confidence during a time where I didn’t have much. My main take away was that every programmer was different and have different values. There was no archetype, it destroys the notion of identity (all programmers are this, went to this school, care about these things, are good at this, wear hoodies, etc). Must read.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]