Things to Read to Become a Better Human and Developer | Hacker News Reader

Things to Read to Become a Better Human and Developer

dottedsquirrel.com

158 pointsdonutking98 comments

You should read... better human and developer...

We all are individuals with different backgrounds, views, ways of living. Do you understand that your “better human” is different from my “better human”, or your books did not teach it to you?

Maybe, “Self-reliance” by Emerson, Hesse’s “Siddhartha”, “Prometheus Rising”, or something from Alan Watts can help you question your attitude, embrace the differences, and do not push your “shoulds” on others?

And do not make me start on book recommendations to become a better developer... :)

“better human” doesn’t sound good, but the intention behind I believe is good, I’m understanding that there is some advice on having strategies when compromising “good” development practices in favor of getting things done, I think that’s a pain point for tech co-founders, when your CEO wants to move fast, and you get attached to your version of the “right good practice” or best architecture.

Totally recommend Alan Watts too :)

And I think we could benefits from your book recommendations for being better developers, if you have the time.

Maybe being less scornful and haughty in our answers would be a good start to becoming a better human

It seems like this is a list of popular books that most everyone has heard about, and just incidentally includes good ones. My biased opinion is that Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the Intelligent Investor won't be placed on the same list by anyone who has read both of them.

Since the author mentioned Gates, I do recommend just taking a look at books he actually read and reviewed as better recommendations: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books

I second that. Gates' list is much better.

Self help books more or less carry the same advice, just told in variety of different ways and in form of different stories. They all seem to come to the same conclusions.

If you really want to read a good self help book, then toss everything from your shelf that has not been written before the year 1900.

Self improvement and ways to do it has been mastered by many people long long time ago. For those who write about it now, are milking the age old cow.

And it gets boring and repetitive real soon.

Also, I would like to talk about what does the Author of this post means when she says "Being a Better Human Being". What does it even mean? Isn't it just a definition or a set of definitions, conjured by some human(s), to force/condition other people to fall in line.

edit: typo/grammar

Fabulous bit of advice. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is a good start, though I suspect many here have already heard of it.

> toss everything from your shelf that has not been written before the year 1900

best advice ever!

N.N. Taleb aggressively makes this point in Antifragile too. After sticking to Taleb's advise for a year and reading only old things, not only did I stop writing myself, but I no longer think I have what it takes to contribute.

Everything that is worth writing about has already been written[1]. And if I contribute by writing myself I just dilute the pool of great prose by pissing into it. Most authors today (and 100% of authors on this list) have never read great books themselves and it's very obvious.

Reading new authors always leaves me with a feeling like I'm the rear end of the human centipede.

[1] anyone thinking about writing a book (or even a blog post) please before you start, proof to yourself that this sentence doesn't apply in your case (this is aka research and it doesn't stop with authors before your age - in fact it starts there).

EDIT: this list was created by Aphinya Dechalert (https://nz.linkedin.com/in/aphinya-dechalert-7b782480) who works in marketing and her job seems to be making spammy lists like this one. Looking at the OP's other submission it seems all links go to either her medium or her blog. On this tweet she is amazed by all the traffic her site gets after posting this very link:

> So...I relaunched http://DottedSquirrel.com as a community space a few days back. Went to have a shower and came back to this. I checked and made sure it's not bots. It's not bots. #100DaysOfCode #tech #learnToCode https://twitter.com/dottedSquirrel/status/120432373958576537...

Writing to contribute to the existing pool of knowledge is not the only reason to write! You may write because of money, fame, to learn a new subject or make a unique set of things already said or because you simply enjoy it.

Hasn't this comment been made 100 times before?

No that is not the thing. The real value you get from self help books is continuous motivation.

There is no person I think can remember everything. Well, when you read the books you get in to thinking of those thoughts and some time you get real valuable lessons.

I also like to read same book again because it is continuous motivation and some time when you low you need that help.

That's just my thoughts and opinion.

"The Alchemist". That was recommended to me and seemed to be turning up on people's lists of "must reads", so I read it. When I finished, I wondered; did I get rickrolled? Was the book just a longform version of the sarcastic-meme-popular, trite message that the real treasure was <something he already had / where he already was / whatever, you get the point> all along?

Worth noting is that The Alchemist was written in 1988. Maybe the idea was novel then? And many writers who had read it copied this idea and made it an overused trope.

Not impossible, although it does seem to turn up on people's reading lists from this millenium and indeed, this decade.

Ha. I interpreted the Alchemist as "don't be afraid to follow your dreams even I the road seems hard".

The ending just happened to take him back to where it started but I don't think that was the message.

Another enjoyable book from Paulo is "The Manuscript in Accra"

Good to see gems like the 4 hour work week and investing advice will make me a better human, I was starting to get worried.

I thought the same thing when I saw 4 hour work week. Apparently selling phoney brain supplements to golfers will make me a better human?

Well it might make you richer and as we all know - more money = better than.

I wonder how bad people must be to always want to become a better and better? :D

PS to be clear I am not against improvement, I think it should be put to use as well, like 1 year to improve, next year you try to actually do something. Only improving and improving I see as a ridiculous exercise based on a sick idea that we are not "good enough".

I'm on a treadmill of Tim Ferriss podcasts and self-help books yet never make any products. It's debilitating.

Improvement treadmill can be seen as a subtle form of procrastination.

The book on updating one's favicon missed the list. Tragedy, really.

Read less. Do more

People have differences in how they learn. Some can learn effectively through reading, others learn effectively through doing.

By doing but not reading, you have the potential to gain a more fundamental ground-up knowledge base about why certain approaches work better.

By reading but not doing, you have the potential to gain direct insight into others pre-established knowledge which means you can jump ahead without having a more fundamental knowledge _first_.

I prefer learning by doing, but I think both have valid merits and one is not better than the other. They are just different approaches to the same ends.

Hacking is about solving a series of specific problems. Reading will give you direct insight into another's pre-established knowledge, but it's probably not relevant, and it may not be correct.

Code kata in my opinion is the superior way to learn. Code through practice and repetition, just like every other skill.

Ironically, you can read a book about it https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-journey-mastery-...

This is terrible advice.

It might be terrible advice for someone who is ignorant on a lot of worldly topics -- but if we take the demography of HN, literate, well-educated individuals who already have probably read many dozens to hundreds of books, it's not terrible advice. A lot of the books on that list are 'self-help' books, you read them, they make you feel good, you achieve basically nothing. It's just feel-good filler.

I'm _assuming_ that's what the parent comment meant by 'read less, do more'. It's not 'read nothing, do more'.

So true. It's easy to get stuck in the "preparing to live your life in the way you want" cycle instead of just doing it.

Grothendieck (the mathematician) was at some point giving lessons at a place which had no library. Someone pointed out that there were not many books to read there, so he replied: "Here, we don't read books, we write them."

I've not heard that quote before, but I'm going to guess it was more an apology for the poor state of the library than a serious suggestion about how to achieve what Grothendieck achieved.

I never thought it could be an apology (it's kind of a material detail, they could still find books elsewhere), but rather a mix of sincerity (at least regarding his creativity), stimulation and joking.

it's probably why mathematicians are among the worst writers out there.

https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea/status/1201923650133352448

To be fair wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a textbook.

This should be read as a kind of "contrarian advice" i.e. advice designed not to be taken too literally but to counteract common wisdom that is often accepted uncritically. Common wisdom is of course "you should read more".

Personally I like reading very much and some time ago I started reading a lot of non-fiction of the kind listed in the article. It is a nice feeling when you like to do something and common wisdom encourages you to do more of it. But then I noticed that I don't get much out of these books other than a modicum of entertainment and some superficial erudition. So I stopped wasting my time. Now if I just want to read, I read fiction - it is more entertaining and honest.

In my opinion proper reading of a non-fiction book is a slow process when you try to really understand the ideas, criticize them and apply them in real life and it really blurs the line between reading and doing. A good rule of thumb is that some artifact (at the very least it may be some book notes) should appear as a result of this process. But it is very easy to fall back to "just reading" - reading a science textbook but not doing the problems, reading a software engineering book without writing any code, reading a business book without operating a business. If you do that, all you are doing is reading a fairly boring fiction book.

it's terrible advise for those who spend all their time doing and never reading. People who just stick to either reading OR doing will soon hit a point where progress is limited. Depth is impossible without a constant combination of both.

I really don't have time to read, I would love if authors could provide bullet points version of their books with things to do and skip all the fluff.

https://www.blinkist.com/ ?

My counter advice to this is be mindful that simply by doing more is that you may make all the same mistakes that many have written about.

My advice is that if you want to have confidence in what you're doing, read more as well.

Any book list that includes Rich Dad, Poor Dad needs a giant asterisk emblazoned on it.

“Rich Dad” was made up. He does not exist. The author lied about that as well as his own financial acumen - he makes his money from $45,000 seminars promising riches and seldom, if ever, delivering.

Oh, and his company filed for bankruptcy last month.

It's more about the mindset... But yeah he wrote a book that's all... Rest is fishy

His book is very carefully designed to push you towards buying his other books, then maybe a course or two, then...

It’s always the next book or course that promises actual concrete answers.

It’s not quite at the level of Scientology materials but it’s in the same vein.

Same with other self-help authors, isn‘t it? Take Brian Tracy (not saying he is a charlatan!). Superficially repeating same ideas over and over again, publishing half a dozen books a year with the same ideas.

It's very consciously engineered to work like that. These books and courses are crass but effective marketing funnels, designed to select those who will continue to pay increasingly improbable sums for access to increasingly "exclusive" information.

Had the same reaction.

Huge red flag also for Robert Greene.

Why?

As https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21751079 said:

> And Greene's 48 Laws of Power is practically a manual of sociopathy.

Why? I love his books.

I've read a couple; they come across as engagingly written "just so" stories, lacking research or evidence. Fun to read and fun to think about, but that's all - a bit of fun.

Which is by no means a bad thing; there's a lot to be said for reading a fun book and thinking about it.

I don't see how that's differnt from Malcolm Gladwell's books. Yes when we read them the ideas feal on the border of speculation, but they are interesting, they help us stretch our minds and see things from differnt perspective. Even when we disagree with some conclusions, this help us define our own understanding on the prbolems discussed.

BTW some of Paul Graham's essays have the similar impact on me, sometimes I don't agree with his way of thinking, but still find them very insightful.

It isn't different to Malcolm Gladwell's books.

And Greene's 48 Laws of Power is practically a manual of sociopathy.

> And Greene's 48 Laws of Power is practically a manual of sociopathy.

Exactly this.

If this is supposed to be negative criticism.

It is only negative if you choose to do negative things with it. It gives plenty of insights on human nature. If you choose to do bad things it is not because of this book.

And exactly because of that it makes the book useful to read, so that you can notice and identify sociopathic techniques, and decide how to deal with them. I feel the same way about certain sales books I've read, being conscious of the techniques takes away much of the power those techniques have, and allows you to make rational decisions without being swayed.

Yeah, read this for a more thourough criticism of everything that's wrong with Rich Dad Poor Dad: https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-real-estate-invest...

However, one thing that is actually valuable from the book: The cash flow for rich people vs. everybody else. The idea is to own assets that generate cash. This cash (and only this) should be used to buy luxury stuff.

But of course, you don't need a whole book for this idea.

I add another "red flag" for such a list: "The Richest Man in Babylon". This is easily the most overrated book I have ever read. There is only one idea in the entire book and stretched over 100 pages or so: Reinvest 10% of your income.

That's it. There is literally nothing else in this book. There are like 5 stories or so set in a middle-age arabian setting or whatever about people who do exactly this. Invest 10% of their income, favorably in stuff they understand.

It doesn't go any deeper, nothing concrete, nothing helpful.

> That's it. There is literally nothing else in this book. There are like 5 stories or so set in a middle-age arabian setting or whatever about people who do exactly this. Invest 10% of their income, favorably in stuff they understand.

Unfortunately, you'd be surprised at the sheer number of people for whom this isn't common sense and need to read this.

I think I must be one of those people. I wouldn't even know where to start to "invest 10% of my income favourably in stuff I understand." What does that mean? Examples?

Yeah, same. I'm in a position where I could easily put aside 10% of my income for something, but what does it even mean to "invest 10%"?? Like, into what? Where? Through whom?

The book doesn't answer this.

Invest 10%, what does it mean? Depends. For most people, this would be in stocks. Since most people don't want to have any effort with this, it would be an ETF that reflects a broad market index such as MSCI World or Vanguard.

Through what? A bank with a broker. Some offer you to save money automatically and invest it into an ETF such as Vanguard.

It means: 1. Consistently be investing some amount of your income (eg: Dollar Cost Averaging is a good strategy). Put some money in an investment vehicle every pay cycle or month.

2. When choosing something to invest in, don't rely on blind luck. Look into index funds and understand how they work (youtube, investopedia etc.) If you don't understand various industries and how they make money, pick a total market index and invest there.

3. If you do have an interest in say, biotech, pets, tech companies, you can independently invest in those.

The critical al thing here is to not just invest because you think something is cool. Do your due diligence and learn how those companies make money and what their outlooks are.

Real Estate is another area of potential investment but you should only do that if the math works out in your favor. Not just the mortgage but factor in repair costs, property taxes, expected appreciation and make sure you're coming out ahead if it is an invest area.

I'm in an European Union country. Personally, I've given up on even trying to invest when I saw all the strings attached.

The bank I use has a service allowing you to put money in their investment funds, configured for different risk profiles.

You need to pay some fees to opt in. There seems to be an already paid yearly(?) fee when you opt in, but you probably need to pay yearly to keep the money in the system. When you decide to cash out, you have to pay income tax.

In conclusion, from my money, the bank needs to be paid, the state needs to be paid, and I doubt their 6% (assuming this is true) yearly return rate is going to net me anything than a loss unless I pump some 6 digit sum right off the bat and leave it there for decades.

I don't really understand your point. Yes, it is more complicated than simply putting money in a bank account and gain a minimum interest rate.

However, it's relatively straight-forward. Not sure about your particular bank, but many banks offer some automatic payments. You simply pay monthly to acquire shares of an ETF. Of course, this costs money, because every transaction on a stock exchange costs money. But generally, this share is yours and the bank keeps it for you. Usually, you can cancel the saving plans and get to keep the shares.

This already is so much easier than private retirement insurances and stuff like that where cancelling a contract comes with hefty fees.

And yes, if you make money on financial assets, you have to pay tax on the returns. This is even the case for the little interest on your bank account. Fortunately, the first 801€ (in Germany) are tax-free and also, the bank handles all of this for you.

I'd argue: If you read about this stuff for 1-2 hours, you know enough about the system and nowadays, it is way easier to do any of this than at any other point in the past.

> and I doubt their 6% (assuming this is true) yearly return rate is going to net me anything than a loss unless I pump some 6 digit sum right off the bat and leave it there for decades.

Well, 6% is the past performance and yes, this doesn't mean that it'll give you the same returns in the future. But generally speaking, it doesn't matter if you put in a 6 digit sum all at once now or acquire shares over the next 20 years.

The only general rule of thumb is: You shouldn't treat this money as a saving account. Don't expect to have access to this money whenever you want, because if you need the money RIGHT NOW, you might be forced to sell your shares at a loss.

> The idea is to own assets that generate cash.

I read this book when I was younger, keenly interested in how he managed to bootstrap himself into enough capital to really get started investing.

I was rather disappointed that his actual approach, when he got to it, was to snipe mortgage foreclosure auctions and then immediately flip the houses for instant profit. Maybe it's legal but this seems scummy as hell to me. I'd be happy if it turned out to be fiction.

As someone who had little investment knowledge acumen "Cashflow Quadrant" was an eye opener and game changer. It was the only book from Kiyosaki that I read and it was sufficient for me to look at the world differently. It doesn't give you any answers but, if you are willing, it will set in you in a different mindset that will help to approach your financial decisions from different perspective. Either this book or "Fastlane Millionaire" by MJ DeMarco.

Well, the ideas outlined there were very worthwhile... for 1970's USA. Have no relation to reality nowadays. Tax system and interest rates are totally different.

What do you mean? Just let your savings compound for 60 years so you can get an extra tennis ball for your walker! Its so powerful!

I would add that any book list that includes a Russell Brand product is bound to be a controversial list - and not in the intellectual sense. I am not quite sure what is he famous for, but I've seen him on TV more than I wanted to and he doesn't seem like a guy you want to take advice from.

He is a British comedian and was in a few movies.

His book is about drug addiction and he is a former addict. Seems like the right sort of person to write the book.

I thought the same until he came and did a comic show/talk about addiction (for a local charity). He is incredibly bright, very interesting to listen to, a great story teller, far from full of himself, and yeah.. he's a great comedian (him being typecast as a drunk/high idiot in mainstream movies didn't do him justice.. he's been sober 17 years)

show/talk about addiction (for a local charity).

Last year I came across a person who tried to recruit me in a local MLM network. The person recommended me Robert's other book to prepare me.

Hehe. Sounds a lot like those "we retired at 30!" folks you hear about every so often.

No, you didn't, you put away enough to enable you to make a career switch to lifestyle-blogging and speech-giving, which you're making a ton of cash with.

It's great you found a way to do what you enjoy, but it's not retirement, you're still working for money.

That's the most succinct and to-the-point way I've ever seen of expressing my annoyance with that crowd.

Thank you, stranger on the internet! <3

that doesn’t make the accuracy less

> Oh, and his company filed for bankruptcy last month.

Again?!?

I'd just advocate read non fiction, a lot of it, across many different subjects, there's almost no non fiction book that hasn't influenced my perception of the world around me and introduced me to new ideas

Huh, I was hoping for more maths/CS theory/software architecture. What are some books that you feel really catapulted your understanding of a particular facet of programming to the next level?

Well, it very much depends on ones goals and ones context, doesn't it? Which impacts what ones brain pays wants and what it focuses its attention on, and what it filters out no matter how much you attempt to cram it in.

What I found a revelation and a bug eye opener - yes as a (CS degree) programmer - was: medicine, chemistry (and org. chem and bio.chem), biology. From Coursera and edx.org. When I did this it was all completely free, now they put some restrictions on some courses (Coursera more so than edX), for example that as a non-payer you cannot do all the exercises.

Even when/if the linked courses are over, accessing there content should still be possible. The courses are free, a certificate is not necessary. Some homework or exams may not be available for non-payers.

Best (university level introductory) course for biology: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-biology-the-secre...

Bio-chemistry: https://www.edx.org/course/principles-of-biochemistry

Physiology: I actually found a lot of lectures on Google better than any of the online courses, start from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=physiology+

Fundamentals of neuro-science: https://www.mcb80x.org/ followed by "Medical Neuroscience" on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience -- easily one of the best courses out there

A very simple course combining (very simple, beginner level) programming and (basic) biology: https://www.edx.org/course/nature-in-code-biology-in-javascr... -- what's interesting here for a programmer definitely isn't the Javascript code, but asking biology questions that can be answered with (even simple) code.

Staticstics is a huge part of medicine and biology - plenty of good courses on probability, statistics (all levels) and courses using R or Python, here a random example course: https://www.edx.org/course/statistical-analysis-in-bioinform...

On so many more levels than I can briefly write down here this "field trip" into bio-sciences felt soooo much better than learning yet another programming language. Let's keep in mind, regardless of C++, Haskell, Javascript, and/or whatever framework, the hardware underneath all of it is all the exact same architecture. Looking at differences between the programming languages now seems to me like looking at a surface that to a naked eye looks completely smooth, but if you zoom in far enough with an electron microscope it looks like a messy mountain area. But when you do that you lose sight of the big(ger) picture. The excourse into (organic and bio-) chemistry and biology helped me get a better sense of where we are, at least it feels that way. The neuroscience helps remaining grounded (and getting more cynical) when reading popular headlines about "neural network" and "AI" and the like.

Russell Brand was a wtf moment for me

How so?

I can't stand the guy on the television. Is the book any different than his tv persona?

I found his book Recovery to tell a very powerful story of his trouble with addiction, and how he has worked through it. He goes quite deeply into self introspection and analysis of himself and his character, and how he needs to remain constantly vigilant of the instincts and urges that took him down those paths to addiction many times before.

I found this book to be one of the most raw and honest things that I have ever read. I'd really recommend against discarding it because of not liking the man or his character.

The post lost me at: "The idea is not to _just_ move to a remote country and use the exchange rate as leverage..."

I love reading reactions to things posted on HN

I would add "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb which is also mentioned and referred in "Think fast & slow". It also helps understanding the world by showing examples of human error and misconception.

Can I anti-recommend Taleb? Maybe it's his delivery that puts me off but I just find him absolutely insufferable.

Taleb most likely sees reality more closely to how it is than almost anyone else on earth. Sorry that him dropping truth bombs on everyone was "insufferable" to you

Taleb comes across as a smug asshole. I don't see any reason to spend time in his company

i cant judge him on what kind of person he is. I only read his book and i learned a lot of stuff that i haven't read anywhere else.

ITT people saying some of the books are great and others are not despite the fact the whole idea is to read them, keep what works for you personally, and dump the rest...

All this self improvement craze is just a neurotic outgrowth originating from the decline of religion/community and growing individualism, change my mind.

It’s always great to have book recommendations. Does anyone have other “must read” book suggestions that have had a big impact on them?

There are plenty of “Ask HN” threads on book recommendations every single year. You could search for those on Algolia (hn.algolia.com).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10924741

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Tip: If you can't find the time to read books, see if there are audio books available.

>Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Doesn't speak too good for the author's ability to judge quality books.

Russel Brand, eh? Sounds like a contribution from Sponsoring Brand ;)

Not a single woman author… this doesn’t seem wildly statistically improbable to anyone?

What a crock.

The author of TFA is a woman.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com