3 ms·

Ask HN: What is the most career altering course or book you have gone through?

5 points by learner_yearner 19d ago

Pls provide link if the course materials are available anywhere.

Natashash23 19d ago
for me it was learning devops
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 18d ago
  Which books ?
eb0la 19d ago
Data Smart, by John Foreman. Out of print, but you can get it from Abe Books: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/data-smart-using-science/used/?msockid=1f41d3e813fa64eb24efc514123365d6 https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/data-smart-using-... Why it is cool? Because instead of R, Gadoop, Spark, Python, whatever... it started explaining data science with excel. The best part for me was optimization.
- jfil 19d ago
  I loved that book!
JohnFen 19d ago
A digital electronics design course I took at the local science museum when I was 11. It was free, so what the heck, I took it on a whim. I didn't know it at the time, but it set the course of my career for the rest of my life even though I'm a software, not electronic, engineer.
Arad883 19d ago
[flagged]
firefax 19d ago
Two books I read after 9/11 shaped my path greatly: 1.) Stasi: The Untold Story Of The East German Secret Police ISBN #: 0813337445 2.) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich ISBN #: 9780671728694 Both should be available in most public libraries, but with the ISBN you can usually get almost anything via inter-library loan.
- kbelder 19d ago
  >The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich An amazing book. I'm not sure how it's particularly career-path-impacting, but it is fascinating being able to follow the cause and effect chain in Germany leading up to and all through the war (in excruciating detail).
mikewarot 19d ago
The Boy's Second book of Electronics by Alfred Morgan(1957) introduced me to electronics circa 1975, and lead to a technical mindset and lifestyle.
deleted 19d ago
[deleted]
neuralkoi 19d ago
Not a book or course per say, but based on a book: The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The Office" by Venkat [0] Other contenders: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [1] Haseeb qureshi's articles on Negotiating [2] These along with er... mind-altering substances, helped me see that reality as we live it (careers, status, institutions, ect) is like software: built/programmed by humans and can be changed by shifting your perspective. [0] https://ribbonfarm.com/series/the-gervais-principle/ https://ribbonfarm.com/series/the-gervais-principle/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGhTQ4iruLc&list=PLfc2WtGuVPdmhYaQjd449k-YeY71fiaFp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGhTQ4iruLc&list=PLfc2WtGuVP... [2] https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer/ https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer...
- chistev 15d ago
  I always see that book Sapiens recommended, but it has been heavily criticized by the scientific community as having lots of inaccuracies, which has restrained me from reading it. Carl Sagan has a better acclaimed book on the topic.
oumua_don17 19d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Fail_at_Almost_Everything_and_Still_Win_Big https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Fail_at_Almost_Everythi...
- NishanStepak 19d ago
  Sounds about right. It is called failing forward. Fail forwards, fail fast and keep going.
slipwalker 19d ago
Programming Perl, 1st Ed. from Larry Wall. The three great virtues of a programmer were enlightening for a fresh-outta-college beginner.
AnimalMuppet 19d ago
"The C Programming Language", by Kernighan and Ritchie.
schmudde 19d ago
"The Annotated Turing" - I didn't know you could meaningfully intertwine biography and technical analysis like that.
- commandersaki 17d ago
  Fantastic book.
mikewarot 19d ago
To answer the question as I misread it: What's the most career altering *course of action* you've gone through? I was an IT guy, and I took a job making gears in a job shop. The pay and commute were horrible, but it was immensely satisfying. Some of the gears I helped make will still be in service in a century.
austin-cheney 18d ago
A/B testing. I learned how to write high performance JavaScript code directly to the DOM without a bunch of abstraction bullshit. Turns out this proved to be a bias because our experiment code frequently executed faster and failed far less than the actual production code that went out later.
pid0x17 18d ago
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware And Software by Charles Petzold. I read it in my second year of studying computer-science during the summer break, and it completely changed how I view computing. First of all, the contents alone are quite valuable, even though it is an old book, as it basically walks you through building a simple relay computer on paper, with a CPU, RAM, simplified input devices, teaches you Intel 8080 assembly as an example of assembly programming, and then even goes over a simplified BIOS, OS, GPU and higher-level languages at the end, and it does not assume you have any previous knowledge; it starts from the basic physics behind electricity, then goes into boolean algebra, logic gates, etc. It's basically computer-architecture for the layman. Beyond the content of the book, I think the biggest mark it left on me is that it taught me that there is no magic behind the layers of abstraction, and that breaking problems and concepts down into simpler ones can make what initially seems like a very complex topic into something that someone can easily follow and understand. After I read the book, a lot of things I had already learnt at university felt like they made more sense, and I then took courses like Computer Architecture and Digital Circuit Design, where I felt a lot more confident than I probably would have, had I not read that book. It definitely colored how I viewed a lot of the courses I took at university after having read it. In my career as a software developer, I still often think about that book, and I love to learn things by re-inventing the wheel and building simpler versions of complex existing software.
arnav714412 18d ago
Creativity, Inc. It taught me to not limit my imagination and to think of creativity as a way of approaching problems rather than something limited to art. As a developer, it genuinely changed the way I think about building things.
evaltoken 18d ago
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen. He basically took business strategy and applied it to personal life and career choices.
ezulabs 17d ago
not career altering but worth to mention "Head First Series" when it comes to tech books.
romerocarlos 16d ago
For me, a real gem though I don't usually recommend it since it's only in Italian is Decalogo della complessità by Alberto Felice De Toni. And the other one was Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
imakwana 16d ago
Not a single book but learning from the writings of Cal Newport (blog, books, podcast) over the years have slowly but surely improved my understanding of career capital and how to best utilize attention & time, at least in tech industry. He does sound a little preachy sometimes but the underlying concepts/frameworks are coherent. https://calnewport.com/ https://calnewport.com/
general_reveal 15d ago
The Bible.
apothegm 15d ago
Database Design for Mere Mortals. The first afternoon I spent reading and puzzling through that book was worth an entire semester of computer science classes on the topic — and caused me to fall in love with relational databases. With special mentions to K&R as well as The Manager’s Path.

Pls provide link if the course materials are available anywhere.

Natashash23 19d ago

for me it was learning devops

BOOSTERHIDROGEN 18d ago
Which books ?

eb0la 19d ago

Data Smart, by John Foreman. Out of print, but you can get it from Abe Books: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/data-smart-using-science/used/?msockid=1f41d3e813fa64eb24efc514123365d6 https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/data-smart-using-... Why it is cool? Because instead of R, Gadoop, Spark, Python, whatever... it started explaining data science with excel. The best part for me was optimization.

jfil 19d ago
I loved that book!

JohnFen 19d ago

A digital electronics design course I took at the local science museum when I was 11. It was free, so what the heck, I took it on a whim. I didn't know it at the time, but it set the course of my career for the rest of my life even though I'm a software, not electronic, engineer.

Arad883 19d ago

[flagged]

firefax 19d ago

Two books I read after 9/11 shaped my path greatly: 1.) Stasi: The Untold Story Of The East German Secret Police ISBN #: 0813337445 2.) The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich ISBN #: 9780671728694 Both should be available in most public libraries, but with the ISBN you can usually get almost anything via inter-library loan.

kbelder 19d ago
>The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich An amazing book. I'm not sure how it's particularly career-path-impacting, but it is fascinating being able to follow the cause and effect chain in Germany leading up to and all through the war (in excruciating detail).

mikewarot 19d ago

The Boy's Second book of Electronics by Alfred Morgan(1957) introduced me to electronics circa 1975, and lead to a technical mindset and lifestyle.

deleted 19d ago

[deleted]

neuralkoi 19d ago

Not a book or course per say, but based on a book: The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to "The Office" by Venkat [0] Other contenders: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [1] Haseeb qureshi's articles on Negotiating [2] These along with er... mind-altering substances, helped me see that reality as we live it (careers, status, institutions, ect) is like software: built/programmed by humans and can be changed by shifting your perspective. [0] https://ribbonfarm.com/series/the-gervais-principle/ https://ribbonfarm.com/series/the-gervais-principle/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGhTQ4iruLc&list=PLfc2WtGuVPdmhYaQjd449k-YeY71fiaFp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGhTQ4iruLc&list=PLfc2WtGuVP... [2] https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer/ https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer...

chistev 15d ago
I always see that book Sapiens recommended, but it has been heavily criticized by the scientific community as having lots of inaccuracies, which has restrained me from reading it. Carl Sagan has a better acclaimed book on the topic.

oumua_don17 19d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Fail_at_Almost_Everything_and_Still_Win_Big https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Fail_at_Almost_Everythi...

NishanStepak 19d ago
Sounds about right. It is called failing forward. Fail forwards, fail fast and keep going.

slipwalker 19d ago

Programming Perl, 1st Ed. from Larry Wall. The three great virtues of a programmer were enlightening for a fresh-outta-college beginner.

AnimalMuppet 19d ago

"The C Programming Language", by Kernighan and Ritchie.

schmudde 19d ago

"The Annotated Turing" - I didn't know you could meaningfully intertwine biography and technical analysis like that.

commandersaki 17d ago
Fantastic book.

mikewarot 19d ago

To answer the question as I misread it: What's the most career altering *course of action* you've gone through? I was an IT guy, and I took a job making gears in a job shop. The pay and commute were horrible, but it was immensely satisfying. Some of the gears I helped make will still be in service in a century.

austin-cheney 18d ago

A/B testing. I learned how to write high performance JavaScript code directly to the DOM without a bunch of abstraction bullshit. Turns out this proved to be a bias because our experiment code frequently executed faster and failed far less than the actual production code that went out later.

pid0x17 18d ago

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware And Software by Charles Petzold. I read it in my second year of studying computer-science during the summer break, and it completely changed how I view computing. First of all, the contents alone are quite valuable, even though it is an old book, as it basically walks you through building a simple relay computer on paper, with a CPU, RAM, simplified input devices, teaches you Intel 8080 assembly as an example of assembly programming, and then even goes over a simplified BIOS, OS, GPU and higher-level languages at the end, and it does not assume you have any previous knowledge; it starts from the basic physics behind electricity, then goes into boolean algebra, logic gates, etc. It's basically computer-architecture for the layman. Beyond the content of the book, I think the biggest mark it left on me is that it taught me that there is no magic behind the layers of abstraction, and that breaking problems and concepts down into simpler ones can make what initially seems like a very complex topic into something that someone can easily follow and understand. After I read the book, a lot of things I had already learnt at university felt like they made more sense, and I then took courses like Computer Architecture and Digital Circuit Design, where I felt a lot more confident than I probably would have, had I not read that book. It definitely colored how I viewed a lot of the courses I took at university after having read it. In my career as a software developer, I still often think about that book, and I love to learn things by re-inventing the wheel and building simpler versions of complex existing software.

arnav714412 18d ago

Creativity, Inc. It taught me to not limit my imagination and to think of creativity as a way of approaching problems rather than something limited to art. As a developer, it genuinely changed the way I think about building things.

evaltoken 18d ago

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen. He basically took business strategy and applied it to personal life and career choices.

ezulabs 17d ago

not career altering but worth to mention "Head First Series" when it comes to tech books.

romerocarlos 16d ago

For me, a real gem though I don't usually recommend it since it's only in Italian is Decalogo della complessità by Alberto Felice De Toni. And the other one was Thinking, Fast and Slow by psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

imakwana 16d ago

Not a single book but learning from the writings of Cal Newport (blog, books, podcast) over the years have slowly but surely improved my understanding of career capital and how to best utilize attention & time, at least in tech industry. He does sound a little preachy sometimes but the underlying concepts/frameworks are coherent. https://calnewport.com/ https://calnewport.com/

general_reveal 15d ago

The Bible.

apothegm 15d ago

Database Design for Mere Mortals. The first afternoon I spent reading and puzzling through that book was worth an entire semester of computer science classes on the topic — and caused me to fall in love with relational databases. With special mentions to K&R as well as The Manager’s Path.