4 ms·

Hacker Book Club

32 points by forsaken 17y ago

klocksib 17y ago
Sounds good to me.
pavelludiq 17y ago
didn't HN have something similar? I think there was a thread and an IRC channel and a Google group dedicated to Hacker news-ers reading SICP.
- chriskelley 17y ago
  http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp?hl=en&pli=1 http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp?hl=en&...
  - buugs 17y ago
    why would people downvote the link to what the parent comment was asking/stating?
jcdreads 17y ago
So I once happened to be at a company where I was lucky enough to have several colleagues join me in an SICP reading group. We squatted in a conference room once a week and plowed through as many sections as we could during lunch. The key feature of the reading group, I thought, was that we were able to identify, right in our production code, right there in the conference room, instances where we used particular idioms from the SICP section under discussion. It was that identification of actual fancy SICP concepts (in scheme-world) in the familiar production code (java-world) that made this particularly worthwhile; folks (including me) saw a whole bunch of places where our java codebase would be (or had already been) improved by applying what we were reading about in the book. It was among the more useful exercises of my professional career so far. So perhaps this django-based discussion group could include illustrations from a reasonable open source codebase (django itself?). Sounds like great fun.
- forsaken 17y ago
  Sounds like an awesome idea. Having practical examples would really help hammer the ideas into your head as well. I'm glad that people think the idea is good. There is so much goodness in SICP (I only read halfway through it). I really think adding some external context like your suggestion kind of brings new life into the discussion. A lot of the concepts in the book are ageless, and it's instructive that we are still making the same mistakes today!
forsaken 17y ago
Interesting how often this is discussed, and it looks like there are already a couple of efforts going on. It was previously mentioned here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407067 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407067 The hacker news SICP group that spawned: http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp?hl=en&pli=1 http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp?hl=en&... Also a wizard book study as well: http://groups.google.com/group/wizardbookstudy/ http://groups.google.com/group/wizardbookstudy/ It might almost be better to merge all of these ideas, as there appears to be interest!
billswift 17y ago
They are all talking about discussion groups, not book clubs. Why doesn't someone (who knows a lot more than me, or I'd do it myself) start a Amazon Associates bookstore with books for hackers? I would definitely be interested in that. If anyone knows of something like that, or a good hacker study guide, maybe leave a link? Before someone recommends it, I've already seen esr's "How to Become a Hacker" http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html . I'm looking for more practical programming study that would be useful for hackers and programming.
ilyak 17y ago
If we're talking about books, I prefer fiction.
realitygrill 17y ago
You know, I have seen so many intriguing-sounding books recommended and discussed here on HN - and not just on strictly 'hacker' topics. Like it says in the guidelines, "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." I want to read them. I can't keep track of them! Would it be possible to automatically collate these books somehow, with hn-ers' comments? Maybe with check boxes for what you've already read, and integrate it with HN accounts?

32 points by forsaken 17y ago

Sounds good to me.

didn't HN have something similar? I think there was a thread and an IRC channel and a Google group dedicated to Hacker news-ers reading SICP.

chriskelley 17y ago
http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp?hl=en&pli=1 http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp?hl=en&...
- buugs 17y ago
  why would people downvote the link to what the parent comment was asking/stating?

jcdreads 17y ago

So I once happened to be at a company where I was lucky enough to have several colleagues join me in an SICP reading group. We squatted in a conference room once a week and plowed through as many sections as we could during lunch. The key feature of the reading group, I thought, was that we were able to identify, right in our production code, right there in the conference room, instances where we used particular idioms from the SICP section under discussion. It was that identification of actual fancy SICP concepts (in scheme-world) in the familiar production code (java-world) that made this particularly worthwhile; folks (including me) saw a whole bunch of places where our java codebase would be (or had already been) improved by applying what we were reading about in the book. It was among the more useful exercises of my professional career so far. So perhaps this django-based discussion group could include illustrations from a reasonable open source codebase (django itself?). Sounds like great fun.

forsaken 17y ago
Sounds like an awesome idea. Having practical examples would really help hammer the ideas into your head as well. I'm glad that people think the idea is good. There is so much goodness in SICP (I only read halfway through it). I really think adding some external context like your suggestion kind of brings new life into the discussion. A lot of the concepts in the book are ageless, and it's instructive that we are still making the same mistakes today!

forsaken 17y ago

Interesting how often this is discussed, and it looks like there are already a couple of efforts going on. It was previously mentioned here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407067 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407067 The hacker news SICP group that spawned: http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp?hl=en&pli=1 http://groups.google.com/group/hacker-news-reads-sicp?hl=en&... Also a wizard book study as well: http://groups.google.com/group/wizardbookstudy/ http://groups.google.com/group/wizardbookstudy/ It might almost be better to merge all of these ideas, as there appears to be interest!

billswift 17y ago

They are all talking about discussion groups, not book clubs. Why doesn't someone (who knows a lot more than me, or I'd do it myself) start a Amazon Associates bookstore with books for hackers? I would definitely be interested in that. If anyone knows of something like that, or a good hacker study guide, maybe leave a link? Before someone recommends it, I've already seen esr's "How to Become a Hacker" http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html . I'm looking for more practical programming study that would be useful for hackers and programming.

ilyak 17y ago

If we're talking about books, I prefer fiction.

realitygrill 17y ago

You know, I have seen so many intriguing-sounding books recommended and discussed here on HN - and not just on strictly 'hacker' topics. Like it says in the guidelines, "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." I want to read them. I can't keep track of them! Would it be possible to automatically collate these books somehow, with hn-ers' comments? Maybe with check boxes for what you've already read, and integrate it with HN accounts?