9 ms·
The Hacker News Top books of 2023
- zdmc 3y agosame HN book list for the past 15 years
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y agoI’m surprised to see Carnegie’s book rank so highly. I couldn’t finish the book, it’s a boatload of anecdotal bull and I regretted spending my money on it.
- firemelt 3y agowhere is the link for pasts years?
- slowhand09 3y agoI own about a quarter of these. I find it interesting how many are 30+ years old.
- jakobov 3y agoShameless plug: Code Is for Humans is a book I just published. You can get the ebook for free at CodeIsForHumans.com
- crimbles 3y agoRead/use 13 of them. The Phoenix Project is however used as toilet paper. This is a symbolic gesture after working in a very fucked up company who decided the management restructure wasn’t at fault and maybe if they bought a copy and gave it to everyone and we used it as a religious text then everything would be fine. It was a painful read at best. Surprised to see Euclid’s elements. I have a volume from 1742 on the bookshelf!
- gonzo41 3y agoThe Phoenix Project is ok. It's just a simple parable to teach people about the benefits of ITSM and CAB. However, I really wished someone would write something like the phoenix project but there's no happy ending. Instead, things just get worse and worse for all the characters, both professionally and personally.
- atulatul 3y agoEvery unhappy ending is unhappy in its own way...To paraphrase half of a famous opening line.
- m1keil 3y agoSo just normal job in bigCorp?
- drivers99 3y agoThe Goal was an interesting read after having read The Phoenix Project. It's what The Phoenix Project was based on. It's about the Theory of Constraints and in "The Goal" they're trying to save a manufacturing plant. (First edition is from 1984. They're up to fourth edition.)
- atulatul 3y agoI personally liked The Goal much more than The Phoenix project. That could be because I read it very early in my career, and also maybe because when I read the latter book, I was already following a few of the recommendations mentioned there.
- fulladder 3y agoWhere did you get that? Rare bookstore? Care to share?
- tester457 3y agoA site similar to this I enjoy is Reddit Reads[1]. It displays the top books for most subreddits. A fun way to learn about a niche, hobby or internet culture is seeing what that group reads. [1] https://www.redditreads.com/ https://www.redditreads.com/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- PawgerZ 3y agoI may have browsed this for 2 hours during a meeting this morning. I also may have added 20 new books to my wishlist
- bckygldstn 3y agoOh hey this is my site, I’m glad you like it!
- monksy 3y agoFred Brooks passed away last year.. so I would imagine that the Mythical Man month spiked because of it.
- krick 3y agoWhy do you even think it spiked? Pretty much the whole list of books is something I'm used to seeing here and in the neighborhood since like forever, so I don't even feels these lists provide any value anymore (especially because ⅔ of these feel like forced memes to me, that aren't truly worthy of attention they get).
- throwaway55479 3y agoSimilar (per Week + All Time) : https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/ https://hacker-recommended-books.vercel.app/ https://hackernewsbooks.com/ https://hackernewsbooks.com/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fancyfredbot 3y agoTuring's Cathedral by George Dyson deserves to be much more prominent in these lists.
- Nition 3y agoThe "first mention" link for 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' just goes to a mention of Gödel the mathematician. Looks like some false positives there. Understandably tricky to filter when books have difficult names like that.
- personjerry 3y agoA professor introduced me to Euclid's Elements a long time ago, and he had us derive the principles from the axioms one by one in order, as Euclid did. It's a fun exercise!
- jjcm 3y agoI'm getting a certificate error hitting this site: https://image.non.io/a2349bf1-faba-49e4-85f4-4ef2ddbd9aa4.webp https://image.non.io/a2349bf1-faba-49e4-85f4-4ef2ddbd9aa4.we... Anyone else seeing this?
- dktalks 3y agoThis is due to the browser not trusting certificates from letsencrypt, you probably might also see this on other sites like stackoverflow, videolan etc. You need to import and trust the certificates for ISRG Root from[1] and should not see that error. [1] https://letsencrypt.org/certificates/ https://letsencrypt.org/certificates/
- jjcm 3y agoI dont think that's it. My sites that are using letsencrypt certs are fine, ie https://image.non.io/3dd1e56e-d8c8-4d0d-9d01-a7367a6ea794.webp https://image.non.io/3dd1e56e-d8c8-4d0d-9d01-a7367a6ea794.we...
- munificent 3y agoSeeing my book Crafting Interpreters on this list is really really gratifying. :)
- ruddsky 3y agoMy hope is that you make a similar book on databases. :) Crafting Interpreters is one of my favorite technical books ever and serves as a masterclass is technical communication. Thank you!!!
- Levitating 3y agoI'll read any book this guy writes
- runevault 3y agoIt is not from Bob but I highly recommend Designing Data Intensive Applications from O'Reilly. Edit: Which is number 2 on this list hah.
- coolandsmartrr 3y agoI recommend it whenever I give a talk about compilers at conferences on Python or Go.
- fuzztester 3y agoThe description of the Vigil language is really funny :) Very cool idea.
- Levitating 3y agoIt is amazing how humbly you've lowered the barrier for programming programming languages. Aside from hobby PLs, I apply much of what I learned from your book elsewhere and I have become a much more competent programmer because of it. I recommend this book to anyone I know who likes a good programming challenge.
- collinvandyck76 3y agoreading this book career shifted me in a positive way. thank you <3
- kaycebasques 3y agoJust finished The Three-Body Problem trilogy. What a saga. I finished the last book a month or two back and I still find myself randomly thinking about various ideas that I picked up in those books. If you're "serious" about sci-fi, I would say that you really do have to read those books as part of your "curriculum".
- jackthetab 3y agoThe other two books are _that_ good? I just finished the first book. The three body problem and its ramifications was interesting, as was the social background. Other than that, it was a decent YA novel, nothing more. If the other two are that much better, I'll give 'em a shot but otherwise...
- jiscariot 3y agoIf you've already read 1, you really should read 2/Dark Forest.
- ioseph 3y agoIMO the first book was the strongest, followed by the third, I found the 2nd a slog to get through.
- kaycebasques 3y agoThe second was a slog for me too BUT weirdly enough the ideas and events that I'm thinking about the most come from that book. I have wondered many times whether the second book would have been a more enjoyable read if they had stuck with the translator from the first book, who also translated the third book.
- jiscariot 3y agoSeems like everyone disagrees with the ranking of 3PB books. Probably a good thing. On 2 read-throughs, I vastly prefer 2 then 3, and consider 1 a bit of a slog.
- mkatx 3y ago
- theusus 3y agoHow to win friends... Is an awful book and I'm tired of seeing it.
- mentos 3y agoWhy’s that, I found it to be insightful. “15% of one's financial success is due to one's technical knowledge. 85% is due to skill in human engineering”
- totallywrong 3y agoI somewhat agree in principle, but that hasn't aged well.
- agumonkey 3y agoTo be honest, my gut feeling is that it's a cynical observation and mediocre perspective on life in general.. removes some human qualities in life. That said: 1) adult life is often a swamp 2) not knowing how to play the game can harm you 3) often, cynicism wins over good hearted values for tons of simple reasons..
- mentos 3y agoHe goes on to say “Success is owed to personality and the ability to lead people -the person who has technical ability plus the ability to express ideas, assume leadership and to arouse enthusiasm among people” Not sure how that’s cynical maybe mediocre or trite but it was insightful to me as a programmer focused on code and less on people.
- agumonkey 3y agoHold on, I forgot the details, I think I watched a few videos recommending it and then skimmed through it. Maybe I skimmed too fast but all I got was a long list of simple tricks to charm others (hence my comment). Maybe I missed the point entirely .. which would be ironic because clear expression and creating enjoyable group dynamic is probably my main quest since the last 5 years.
- svat 3y agoMore accurately, this could be titled "most frequently mentioned books in replies to 'Ask HN' posts that have 'book' in their title". (Like "Ask HN: Math books that made you significantly better at math?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34439828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34439828 and "Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35929112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35929112 and "Ask HN: Sci-Fi Book Recommendations" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35052757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35052757) As such, the selection process here will be biased towards the kinds of 'Ask HN' posts that can get voted highly (to be visible, to attract many comments), and within those, these are the most frequently mentioned books. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's always a good idea to pay attention to the selection criteria, as selection effects are everywhere. For example, it would also make sense to exclude such threads, to get a more representative idea of what books HN comments tend to talk about in natural contexts.)
- moomin 3y agoGlad to see I helped get Rudin into the top 10. :D More seriously, I remember many of these questions and it’s important to understand sentiment matters. Many of the mentions of SICP are not glowing. Indeed, they’re specifically written by people who want to puncture the bubble of worship around the book. With all of that said, I think this list is fun.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mindcrime 3y ago'Ask HN' posts that have 'book' in their title". Yeah, that kinda puts a damper on it for me. Only selecting "book" Ask HN's leaves out a lot of stuff. Just to illustrate: I was initially surprised not to see The Four Steps to the Epiphany on the list. Heck, I probably mentioned it 6 or 7 times last year on my own. But when I went back and searched, it seems like all the times that I mentioned that book were in threads that weren't about books per-se. And I'm sure plenty of other people will have similar anecdotes. For example, it would also make sense to exclude such threads, to get a more representative idea of what books HN comments tend to talk about in natural contexts.) Yes, exactly. I'd like to see a similar analysis done, but excluding those threads for the same reason.
- sfpotter 3y agoThe math books that made the list are ones that always rate highly on these lists, but I think they are uniformly bad choices for people with a more passive or recreational interest in math. A lot of textbook publishers have series for undergraduates which are a better choice. For example, here’s Springer’s: https://www.springer.com/series/3423 https://www.springer.com/series/3423. For someone who has a college level education in science or engineering, but not a math degree, I think they would have more fun looking through a series and picking a title that seems cool and interesting to them. I honestly just have to wonder how many programmers have unread copies of Principles of Mathematical Analysis sitting on their shelves unread.
- titanomachy 3y agoDo you think the Princeton Companion is good for an amateur/casual audience? I've been thinking of picking up a copy. I've taken like 8-10 undergrad math courses, but no advanced topics.
- rramadass 3y agoDefinitely! I have both the Princeton Companion to Mathematics and Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics and both are well worth the money. One of the difficulties in studying the breadth of mathematics is that the huge amount of jargon/notation of the different branches/models/tools all seem complex/unrelated and hence a single volume where you can jump back and forth between different views is very much necessary to appreciate the unity of Mathematics. It is also an invaluable aid in understanding new terminologies/techniques that one may come across while studying other subjects. The volumes are truly comprehensive w.r.t. "Modern Mathematics" and should be a part of every educated person's "personal library".
- sfpotter 3y agoDefinitely unnecessary for them to be a part of every educated person’s library. This is a pretty absurd viewpoint. The reality is that there are loads of educated people who contribute vast amounts to the world without even the most passing familiarity with “modern math”. I also don’t agree with the sentiment of the rest of the post, sorry. If someone is casually or recreationally interested in math, building a comprehensive view of modern math just… isn’t important. If you’re interested in spending more time with math, just do it—don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There’s no right approach other than the one that makes you happy.
- man4 3y ago[dead]
- krick 3y agoOfftopic, but is it just me who struggles to treat seriously any post that has "I used GPT" somewhere in the beginning? This one actually isn't a good example, since I "feel" it's kinda reliable for the task, and may only produce slight false-negatives, which isn't that bad, and I don't see any other plausible way to parse HN comments for books anyway. But I'm noticing lately that I'm half-consciously slightly annoyed every time when somebody nonchalantly offers me "used GPT" as a source for the "answer" (which really starts happening quite often), and I'm wondering if it's normal these days.
- latexr 3y agoIt’s not just you, and your reaction makes perfect sense. When someone wrote a post, that implied some kind of research and insight you might’ve not arrived at on your own without a significant time investment and perhaps a number of specific skills or contacts. You could follow the logic and the sources and evaluate each step of the journey. Even if a conclusion were wrong, you might still glean important accurate information, such as a specific resource to use in the future, or appreciate the investigative journey the author went on. When a post starts by mentioning an LLM as the source of the information, they might just as well tell you the prompt and end the post there. You can run the query yourself and interpret the result on your own. Saying they used an LLM is like saying they used a search engine, clicked a result without thinking, and everything is based off of that but they won’t even tell you the URL. You have zero idea if the information is accurate and can’t even trust or learn from the analysis. Like yourself, I’m not trying to use this particular submission as an example. Rather, I’m attempting to decode where your feeling (again, you’re not alone) might in general come from.
- shaldengeki 3y agoI agree with the general thrust of this, but it's worth noting that the author does _slightly_ better than is typical for LLM-based analyses: they released the dataset of book-labeled posts. You can at least estimate the false-positive rate from that, by sampling the results. (You can't estimate false-negative rate, though.) Ideally authors attempt to do some sort of validation of the results at the LLM-labeling step and present that, but that rarely happens with these sorts of posts. I think that's pretty telling.
- zamadatix 3y agoIt's wild to me that Euclid's Elements made #15. Not that math isn't a great thing to learn but are hundreds of pages of (translated) straight propositions from over two millennia ago really such a superior means of learning vs everything written since that it's still the 3rd most referenced math book in the list? I mean it's not like the propositions will have changed but surely there are many improved arrangements of teaching the concepts by now that people would be using and mentioning instead? Dunno, maybe it's just my ignorance for not trying it.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoI would imagine people aren't reading Euclid's Elements as a math textbook so much as a historical document
- zamadatix 3y agoThat's what I figured as well but the "first mention" link is comments about people using it as learning material!
- resters 3y agoIt's nice to see Blindsight by Peter Watts on the list. Superb "hard sci-fi" book that includes a bibliography of real world publications that justify/motivate the flights of imagination. The story is told backwards in time, which may take some getting used to, but it's a great read.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoI did (very little, but some) follow up reading from the bibliography, and there are definitely some worthwhile "truth is stranger than fiction" topics in there. I don't recall it being told backwards in time, or at least in a way that was confusing. Might need to revisit it. The (semi?)sequel Echopraxia didn't quite grab me as much, and I think the concepts were a bit 'higher' and so my level of intellect got a bit left behind - which I'm also finding with Accelerando by Charles Stross (still enjoying it, but there are parts that lose me), which is highly respected on HN.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoA Modern Anarchism: Anarchist Analysis by Anark (2023) Web version: https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-1-anarchist-analysis https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-1-anarchist... // https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-2-anarchy https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-2-anarchy
- aspenmayer 3y agoPart 3 https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-3-revolution https://libcom.org/article/modern-anarchism-part-3-revolutio...
- ionwake 3y agoNeuromwncer so low? ;_;
- Havelock 3y agoNice affiliate list.
- jslakro 3y agoHe warns it at the end https://hnreads.com/post/top40_2023/#fn:1 https://hnreads.com/post/top40_2023/#fn:1
- phlipski 3y agoGreat list. I picked up "Introduction to Algorithms" by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein for the first time in 20 years since undergrad. Still a useful! The classics never die. I get a kick when I see "The Art of Electronics" and "The C Programming Language" still being recommended on the regular. Nice to see that my undergraduate education from 20+ years ago is still relevant! I think this also helps to underscore the idea that tech fads come and go, but the fundamentals never die.
- mrgoldenbrown 3y agoCaveat Emptor: Some of the links to books are bad. For example, number 24, The Phoenix Project links to a cliff notes style summary of the book, with this warning buried in the description: "Please Note: This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and not the original book."
- kristianp 3y agoThanks for that, fixed the Phoenix Project link.
- karmasimida 3y agoNice report. One nitpick of mine would be, majority of books made on the list are actually timeless, they are classics. There isn't too much 2023 about the list. Not really a fault on your side, but inevitable if mining such recommendations in a crowd sourcing way.
- encomiast 3y agoAmazon drives me absolutely nuts. I clicked on the link for Polya's 'How to Solve It' and it took me to a page with a $69.99 paperback and a link to a $10 e-textbook. I click the textbook link and now the paperback link is to an identical looking $16.45 book, the only difference I can tell is that it is the "reprint" edition (aren't they all reprints given the original was published in 1945?). The reviews and most information other than weight and size are the same. Which do I choose? Will I regret not having whatever was worth $53.54 in the original link. There doesn't seem to be anyway to know if I am buying some fly-by-night poorly printed edition for $16.45 or getting a good deal because they all seem to be the same product. I've seen so much garbage on Amazon lately, I just don't trust anything, not even the books.
- rramadass 3y agoYeah, it's a bit of a problem but not that difficult to search for the book on Amazon and then on Google to locate the publishers. Also always check wikipedia for details (eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It). For classics like Polya also check used book stores (in addition to Amazon) like https://www.betterworldbooks.com/ https://www.betterworldbooks.com/ https://www.thriftbooks.com/ https://www.thriftbooks.com/ etc. where you can get good editions for cheap.
- tickerticker 3y agoChip War would be a good "2023" book.
- SoftTalker 3y agoI'm not sure how much non-technical books are discussed here, but it would be nice to be able to sort/filter by fiction, nonfiction, and/or genre. I guess it might end up being quite similar to the NYT or other such lists, but it would be interesting if it were different.
- arpit-workhack 3y agoI was wondering why you skipped Nassim Taleb. He's quite good to understand complexity of the world.