3 ms·

Read The Dinossaurs

25 points by duck 15y ago

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
To contrast, here's my review of the same book: http://www.hn-books.com/Books/The-Mythical-Man-Month.htm http://www.hn-books.com/Books/The-Mythical-Man-Month.htm I remember reading somewhere that Thomas Jefferson was disappointed with the way public opinion had changed between when the Declaration of Independence was written and when the Constitution was formed. He said something to the effect of "12 years ago everybody thought we had awesome ideas, but now they all want something new because after all, those ideas are 12 years old and certainly something newer and better has come along by now." When I started hn-books, I wanted to go on a tour of the classics -- all the dinosaurs. It was a great ride I had doing this last year! I miss it and want to do some more. I would advise everybody who is a serious reader to make a resolution to read a dozen or so of the classics in programming and technology creation in the coming year. You won't regret it. The downside is that I found I lost tolerance for a lot of new work. I'd read some kind of self-help programming book and think "Oh, the author got that idea from over here." and "Yeah, he picked that up from X, but he really doesn't understand how to apply it" There's some real self-congratulatory crap out there. Two hundred pages of book with 3 ideas in it, all copied from some greater writer. If that's the way you need to absorb it -- all nice and fluffy and with the code all in the cool language of the day -- then more power to you. But I've found it's just as easy to read the dinosaurs, get a firm understanding of where the ideas come from, and then have a little better foundation and perhaps more interesting observations to make. Programming is programming. The tech is changing tremendously fast, but the job is the same as it was 30 years ago. The part about what bit 7 needs to be on a new technology stack, how Google got super-scaling to work, and whether the standards body will approve Y next year is important, but it is really overrated. You'll learn far more from the dinosaurs in a month than from consuming that stuff everyday online. </rant>

25 points by duck 15y ago

To contrast, here's my review of the same book: http://www.hn-books.com/Books/The-Mythical-Man-Month.htm http://www.hn-books.com/Books/The-Mythical-Man-Month.htm I remember reading somewhere that Thomas Jefferson was disappointed with the way public opinion had changed between when the Declaration of Independence was written and when the Constitution was formed. He said something to the effect of "12 years ago everybody thought we had awesome ideas, but now they all want something new because after all, those ideas are 12 years old and certainly something newer and better has come along by now." When I started hn-books, I wanted to go on a tour of the classics -- all the dinosaurs. It was a great ride I had doing this last year! I miss it and want to do some more. I would advise everybody who is a serious reader to make a resolution to read a dozen or so of the classics in programming and technology creation in the coming year. You won't regret it. The downside is that I found I lost tolerance for a lot of new work. I'd read some kind of self-help programming book and think "Oh, the author got that idea from over here." and "Yeah, he picked that up from X, but he really doesn't understand how to apply it" There's some real self-congratulatory crap out there. Two hundred pages of book with 3 ideas in it, all copied from some greater writer. If that's the way you need to absorb it -- all nice and fluffy and with the code all in the cool language of the day -- then more power to you. But I've found it's just as easy to read the dinosaurs, get a firm understanding of where the ideas come from, and then have a little better foundation and perhaps more interesting observations to make. Programming is programming. The tech is changing tremendously fast, but the job is the same as it was 30 years ago. The part about what bit 7 needs to be on a new technology stack, how Google got super-scaling to work, and whether the standards body will approve Y next year is important, but it is really overrated. You'll learn far more from the dinosaurs in a month than from consuming that stuff everyday online. </rant>