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The Manga Guide Series
- cercatrova 5y agoThese are great, I used to read these back in the day, if only for the novelty.
- lemarchr 5y agoAre they capable of fulfilling the role of primary learning material? Or are they supplementary to more traditional texts?
- cercatrova 5y agoYeah they do teach what you need to know, in my experience, but they're not textbook level in explanation, simply because there's no space for that much text on the page.
- knowaveragejoe 5y agoSome of them are. Both the Electricity and Microprocessors books have lengthy sections that are mostly text with a few diagrams, as opposed to the normal manga format.
- jchw 5y agoI don’t know how good these are for actually learning a subject matter, but I’ve always been tempted to pick up a couple, if only to keep on the shelf. There are some that cover topics I’d genuinely be interested in and have a poor enough grasp on that they would likely be useful as introductions if nothing else. And even if not, it’s difficult to deny the novelty :P
- echelon 5y ago> The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology > The Manga Guide to Organic Chemistry > The Manga Guide to Quantum Dynamics > The Manga Guide to Soil Mechanics > The Manga Guide to Project Management They have everything.
- picture 5y agoFound a pdf of the microprocessors one if anyone feel like sampling what the content is like. http://50.116.28.134/MangaGuidetoMicroprocessors.pdf http://50.116.28.134/MangaGuidetoMicroprocessors.pdf Imo I love things like this just for the fun (novelty) of them!
- dylan604 5y agomy browser, FF, just said nope to that link. maybe a good thing as I didn't actually mean to click it.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoit said so as it's HTTP not HTTPS
- dylan604 5y agomaybe so, maybe that's all it thought was scary. luckily for me, i had no intention of downloading the item as it was an accidental click while trying to click a different window. It just so happened to come from suspicious looking IP only address with a PDF about manga. So it just worked out in my favor. you can't deny that it is a very suspect link even if giving benefit of doubt that surely an HN user would never post a link to something untoward, right?
- picture 5y agoWhat makes it more suspicious other than the lack of a domain name? Would you trusted more if it was http://righto.com/MangaGuidetoMicroprocessors.pdf http://righto.com/MangaGuidetoMicroprocessors.pdf instead? (using Ken's blog as an example) Or did you do an IP look up in your head that told you this IP is related to malicious activity? What if it has HTTPS instead? Would that make it less risky for you? (From my understanding of HTTPS, it wouldn't. Maybe make it harder for other people to see that you're viewing a pdf..)
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- BoysenberryPi 5y agoI enjoy this series quite a bit and read more than a few but these books are far denser than people realize. After each manga section there are several pages of an afterword of sorts that feature some of the densest textbook level explanations you'll ever see simply because they can't give the needed depth in the manga parts of the story if their goal is to actually teach something.
- corysama 5y agoI'll vouch for the Manga Guide to Databases. It's a solid first introduction wrapped up in a silly little story about a princess and a fairy. Read numerous 5-star Amazon reviews for more.
- dragontamer 5y agoI've only read a few but its hit-or-miss... to be expected since the series is written by so many different authors. I think the Manga Guide to Databases was really good, but the Manga Guide to Linear Algebra was pretty bad. To be fair, Linear Algebra is really difficult to teach and hard to think of a silly story to wrap it together. But the Princess in the "Database" story is trying to organize the apple-orders of her kingdom, and that's just enough "story" needed to be a good, practical example of Databases, 3rd normal form (as well as the inconsistencies you'd come across in just 1st or 2nd normal form... and how those inconsistencies could lead to double-orders or incorrect data).
- rg111 5y agoThe only book you need to get a solid foundation in Linear Algebra is Linear Algebra Done Right by Sheldon Axler. Not only a very good book on LinAlg, but a very good book on any topic.
- astrange 5y agoLarry Gonick did western equivalents of these; Cartoon History of the Universe is either the best book I've ever read or the best comic book. It's rather 70s though, so the art can get psychadelic and it covers several different religions as if they're literally true. But it has to be the only kids' history book written in the US that treats China and India's history as just as important as ours.
- el_seano 5y agoI love Gonick's books! I have his Cartoon Guide to Calculus, Modern History, and US History too! His bibliographies at the back of the books would make for excellent syllabuses
- amelius 5y ago
- evanlivingston 5y agoIs manga specifically female orientated? I understand that's there's a shared visual style, but what explains the shared use of young looking girls?
- astrange 5y agoWestern cartoons always have boys as protagonists because the execs thinks nobody likes girls. They just have the opposite opinion is all. Mainly the character ages are because they're targeted to readers of the same age, but there's definitely impure reasons for it too. All these covers have pretty different artstyles, it feels kind of random and the art isn't great either. Not sure if it's meant to be a parodying popular series or what. Mostly they look like boys' comics, "Statistics for Nurses" feels like website clip art, and "Surveying" looks like an older girls' comic or book cover for a Western novel.
- dragontamer 5y agoShojo and Josei manga are designed for female-audiences. They can consist of male characters (DNAngel) or female characters (Princess Jellyfish). Shonen and Seinen manga are designed for male-audiences. They can consist of male characters (Naruto), or female characters (Madoka Magica). ------- Madoka Magica in particular is a Seinen-oriented story pretending to be a Shojo story. So the categories can get complicated sometimes. All categories know and understand each other's demographics, as well as the tropes and overarching storylines that enter one demographic vs another. But that's what makes "cross-demographic" shows (like Inuyasha, Kenshin or Madoka) so much fun. They take elements of one genre, and shove it into a totally different genre. Inuyasha is nominally Shojo (aimed for a female audience), with Kagome (female protagonist) meeting lots of cute fantasy male characters (Inuyasha in particular). But it takes a battle-style reminiscent of Shonen, and a lot of male-audience members identified with Inuyasha. Kenshin is nominally Shonen (aimed for a male audience), with Kenshin (male protagonist) largely doing battles. But Kaoru's arc largely plays out like a Shojo romance. As such, a lot of female audience members identified with Kaoru. ---------- The gender of the main character though isn't really that important though. In the West, it seems like "male-audience must have a male-main character", but that sort of thing just doesn't seem to be an issue in Manga. Its kinda-sorta there in some cases, but there's enough manga / anime that break the rule that it really isn't a rule at all.
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- tomcam 5y ago
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- 533474 5y agoIf cartoons trigger you, I suppose you may have a problem with oversexualising media. They r just drawings, when I read mangas as a kid I never thought and I still dont think about them that way. Why not notice the cute monsters? or cute dress? Some body proportions are comical, the eyes are drawn to portray emotions in a cute or exaggerated way. There may be a drawing or two that you might call fan-service, but not everyone looks at these cartoons and thinks that this material is for sex predators all the time. In asia not everyone is so triggered or oversexualising everything. Where is the innocence in people? have we lost the ability to look at things differently?
- tomcam 5y agoYou seem awfully invested in this. I don’t recall using the phrase “triggered“. I believe I said “a bit queasy“.
- wheresmycraisin 5y agoI think it says more about you that you see something sexualised in those covers.
- tomcam 5y agoThat train left the station when they chose to create a book for adults that shows a prepubescent child in a minidress
- userbinator 5y agoIt's called "Japan". The cultural norms there are very different in some areas.
- davidjhall 5y agoIf you have a safari books online subscription, the manga books are available through them --- I think all of them. https://learning.oreilly.com/ https://learning.oreilly.com/
- capableweb 5y agoCould anyone with this subscription tell us if it's worth getting? I'm in the software industry and do read books from time to time, maybe just one every quarter or something like that. Still worth to get the subscription?
- xkgt 5y agoAll I can say is it is incredibly useful, not just O’Reilly but they have got collections from a lot of other publishers. It is really useful as a reference or when you want to deep dive into something new. To top it, if you get to complete couple of books cover to cover, it is even better. I can’t say whether it is worth the subscription fee. I have got my employer to cover for my subscription for the last 2 years, but not sure if I will be willing to pay it out of my pocket.
- throw0101a 5y ago> Could anyone with this subscription tell us if it's worth getting? My local library has a deal with them: connect to the library's website, enter your card number, and get bounced through a proxy to O'Reilly's site to read any content. Perhaps check if your local library system as the same deal.
- capableweb 5y agoMy local library for sure doesn't have access (it has around ~100 books available at any given time, and because of lack of funding/maintenance recently had to give away their computers). Since you do have access, could you maybe share if you think it's worth paying for?
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- veridies 5y agoIt's such an odd coincidence to see this now; I just discovered this series a week ago. I teach elementary school science and math, and I've already used a few excerpts from this (from Universe and Calculus) to help illustrate important ideas. I'm also a huge fan of Gonick's The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, which I'm using with the younger kids. As far as I'm concerned, we'd replace pretty much every textbook with comic books.
- lxe 5y agoWhen I was around 8 to 10, I got REALLY into computers through this book my parents got: https://bashny.net/t/en/34007 https://bashny.net/t/en/34007 (Энциклопедия профессора Фортрана / Professor Fortran's Encyclopedia). It laid out all the fundamental concepts like algorithms, storage, memory, etc. I didn't even have a computer at the time, but this book I think pretty much laid the path for me. My dad also had these ones, which I also loved: https://archive.org/details/worldofcomputers/page/n17/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/worldofcomputers/page/n17/mode/2... (Мир компьютеров в вопросах и ответах / World of Computers in Questions and Answers). It's probably got an original Japanese version, but I can only find the Russian ones. These books are more advanced, and go into computer basics all the way to telephone and packet networks.
- pvg 5y agoThe first one has a Russian wikipedia page with some more details: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B0_%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%AD%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BA... It's reminiscent in style to the Usborne books of similar vintage https://usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books
- laurieg 5y agoIt looks like this is the original book: http://webcatplus.nii.ac.jp/webcatplus/details/book/1862799.html http://webcatplus.nii.ac.jp/webcatplus/details/book/1862799.... It looks like there's a copy in my local library. I'll have to go hunt it down next chance I get!
- missblit 5y agoWho Is Fourier was the OG manga guide to fourier analysis. And kind of a weird book in general.
- creakingstairs 5y agoThese kinds of educational manga have been quite common in where I grew up in and I devoured them one after the other. Never though I was “studying” but still got a good broad picture of the topic. I think that’s how education should be! I get so annoyed at how utterly boring my school was. I’ve been thinking about drawing something similar for software engineering and have a draft for introducing Apache Kafka that I want to publish some day.
- faitswulff 5y agoI got most of these when Humble Bundle was running a 35% off sale on No Starch Press (here's the book set: https://nostarch.com/manga-guide-13-book-set https://nostarch.com/manga-guide-13-book-set). Still a splurge, but it saved me a good chunk of money.
- wodenokoto 5y agoLooks interesting. Where can you get these outside of Japan?
- corysama 5y agoThey’re pretty widely available. If you are lucky you can even find them in the few remaining American book store chains. The publisher has an online store https://nostarch.com/ https://nostarch.com/ But, it looks like it’s getting hugged to death at the moment…
- weberer 5y agoClick your country's flag under each book.
- kgarten 5y agoI like the book series ... just find funny that there are again typos in the title: "The Manga Guide to Statistics: Regression Analysys"
- zczc 5y agoReading some comments here on perceived sexualising in manga, I've started to think that's why we have that ugly asexual Corporate Memphis illustrations everywhere.
- andrei_says_ 5y agoI found these on O’Reilly and they’re awesome.