HN Books @HNBooksMonth

I keep ~10 books at my desk. 9 of them are related to Javascript / Python / Probability etc [1]., There is one book though, that I really love to see everyday. Arabian Nights. That was the first book that was gifted to me when I was 11. I always had it with me. It reminds me of my childhood when things get too stressed and I read excerpts out of this book.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate-... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp... [3]https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Probability-Models-Tenth... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Black-Book-Important-Informat...

⬐ Abundnce10

Which translation of Arabian Nights do you have? I've been wanting to read it for a few years now but haven't got around to it. I think this will the next book I read. Any suggestions are appreciated!

⬐ pouetpouet

For others who might be wondering, it is also known under the title One thousand and one nights (Les mille et une nuits)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translations_of_One_Thousand_a...

⬐ tequila_shot

https://www.amazon.in/Arabian-Nights-Masters-Collections-Map...

I'm not sure where you can get it in the states.

⬐ alehul

Among the books, you included Thinking, Fast and Slow which really stands out, and I was wondering what you gained from it, and how you'd summarize its relevance/value?

I've been meaning to read it, and I think it's really interesting that it provides enough value to be among the others.

⬐ troycarlson

This book has helped me recognize various cognitive biases and heuristics that I or the people around me are demonstrating. Sometimes people say things that just "feel" wrong and this book has helped me identify and name why it feels wrong. It can get a little dry at times, but for the most part the research and examples are memorable. I also find the framework of the "two systems" to be a simple reminder to slow down and think about things that surprise/frustrate me before arriving at conclusions (or responding to that frustrating coworker :P).

⬐ Royalaid

I would also recommend You are not so Smart and You Are Now Less Dumb if you like the cognitive bais theme

⬐ eldavido

This is a fantastic book. It's essentially a summary of the author (Daniel Kahneman's) academic career, worth reading because he's one of the founders of "behavioral economics" - the idea that economic-decision making should be studied using real people and experiments--how they do it in psychology--rather than a bunch of mathematical models on a blackboard which may or may not accurately capture human behavior (despite being mathematically usable/tractable).

If you read this book, you'll learn how absurdly influential Kahneman has been: he did the original research on the endowment effect, anchoring, loss aversion, and tons of other stuff you'll see quoted around here all the time. He's also heavily cited by Taleb.

I wish more academics would write like this. It's a hard book to summarize because it's long and completely free of bullshit. It's more or less 400 pages of "here's the question, here's what we did, here were the results, we were surprised because" 20-30 pages at a time. It's an outstanding book by an outstanding professor.

⬐ icebraining

https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc...

⬐ kashyapc

Although the book still has tremendous value (FWIW, I've read it too), I hope more people also read the above blog (& the comment on it by Kahneman himself), to keep a balance of perspectives and the current "replication crisis" in psychology studies.

Kahneman writes:

[quote] What the blog gets absolutely right is that I placed too much faith in underpowered studies. As pointed out in the blog, and earlier by Andrew Gelman, there is a special irony in my mistake because the first paper that Amos Tversky and I published was about the belief in the “law of small numbers,” which allows researchers to trust the results of underpowered studies with unreasonably small samples. [/quote]

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15228712

Quote Alan Perils

> A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

There are many different motivations behind studying a language. You can study it for a job interview, for a job requirement, or for personal enlightment.

I had my enjoyment of reading some well written JavaScript books such as the "Rhino book" (https://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate-...) and Pro JavaScript Techniques by John Resig (https://www.amazon.com/Pro-JavaScript-Techniques-John-Paxton...). They really help you think in JavaScript just like K&R helps you think in C.

⬐ dang

I agree with Perlis, but he was championing languages like APL, which offer truly different ways of thinking about programming. The arbitrary ins-and-outs of extrinsically complicated designs are another matter; learning those doesn't necessarily affect one's thinking about programming for the better. I realize that what I'm saying sounds trollish, but it's something it took me many years to figure out.

⬐ ontouchstart

Being a big fan of APL (and J), I agree with you.

On the other hand, for JavaScript you might want to take a look (beyond technical merits) at its social context. Client side JavaScript is deeply related to the design and implementation of the DOM. Whether we like it or not, the social aspect of browser really makes JavaScript unique in the history of programming languages.

That is the context of "the way of thinking" I am looking at.

⬐ dang

That's quite an interesting take, but I've imbibed too many Alan Kay talks to buy it except as a case study in bloat. The social contexts leading to extrinsic complexity are many; those leading to breakthroughs of simplicity are precious few. I'd rather study the latter—and even better than study, be part of one!

⬐ ontouchstart

Then perhaps we should give these good guys a hand and bring them into 21st century:

https://github.com/jsoftware

I have this one[1] and it seems to be extremely well written.

http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate-G...

I'm in a similar boat. For Javascript, I found http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate-G... to be a good place if you have little to no familiarity of Javascript. For Node, I'm using the links suggested here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2353818/how-do-i-get-star....

For Angular, I've just followed the documentation on angularjs.org and tried applying it to various web projects that I have already.

I feel that there are a lot more projects in pure JS compared to CoffeeScript that even if you did learn CoffeeScript, you can't avoid encountering pure JS.

If you're an experienced programmer looking to learn Javascript, you probably can't do any better than reading Javascript: The Good Parts. It's extremely short, concise, and enjoyable to read. Highly recommended.

Any experienced programmer should definitely start elsewhere so he can make up his own mind about Crockfords ideas about how programming should be. While the book is ok-ish almost half of the material is about Crockfords personal preferences for coding style and can be applied to any language.

JavaScript - The Definite Guide by David Flanagan is in my opinion the best book on the subject. No other JS book comes even close in clarity and thoroughness.

http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate-G...

⬐ maga

Agree. Moreover, the Good Parts is a bit dated since it's written in 2008 and things had changed noticeable with ECMAScript 5 in 2009. The last 6th edition of The Definitive Guide covers ES5 and has a chapter explaining Crockford's ideas.

Also, http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Definitive-Guide-Activate-P...

6th edition of Flanagan's Definitive Guide coming out.