My wife's and my holiday weekend project: A database of intro books | Hacker News Reader

My wife's and my holiday weekend project: A database of intro books

bestintrobook.com

134 pointsmichaelfairley79 comments

My wife's and my

Nice looking site. It missed what I searched for (quantum mechanics) but it looks very nice.

(NP and NP)'s sounds more natural to me than (NP's and NP's). We say "Jack and Jill's story", not "Jack's and Jill's story"

Grammar girl has an explanation [1] of the rule I've heard elsewhere and always followed---splitting it into "Jack's and Jill's" if they have separate and distinct things (so "Jack's and Jill's stories") and attaching the possessive to the compound entity if they share the item (so "Jack and Jill's story"). So in this case you're definitely correct about not splitting up the possession.

I haven't been able to find anything authoritative to explain what to do when there is a pronoun involved, though I believe the correct form would be "my wife and my..." and not "my wife and I's".

[1] http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-compound-posses...

How do you differentiate between saying the project was a combined effort vs. talking about two distinct entities. eg., My wife and my projects were casualties of the war. Did the projects the two of you were working on destroyed in the war, or did you lose your wife and your projects?

I rewrite to avoid the ambiguity:

My wife and I worked on projects that became casualties of the war.

My rule of thumb is to say them out loud separately:

My wife's weekend project

My weekend project

so...

My wife's and my weekend project

My wife and my. Correcting grammar isn't cool.

Any chance there'll be a `Best free intro book` link of sorts to curate all the textbooks available in PDF form? Sometimes it's hard to find quality free content like `Linear Algebra Done Wrong.`

> Correcting grammar isn't cool.

I find it helpful to see grammatical corrections; they make me marginally less likely to make the same mistakes myself. ("The key to learning is repetition, repetition, repetition, ...")

I object to the site's notion that there is a "best" intro book in many areas, but I'd like to see listed on the site:

Griffiths' _Introduction to Quantum Mechanics_ is quite commonly used, even though it's a bit calculation-heavy. Beyond that or for more theory, perhaps Ballentine, or Dirac's original monograph, although neither is a very common text (if that's what someone's looking for, then Shankar [mid-level-ish], Cohen-Tannoudji, or Sakurai); Ballentine because it's new (relatively... 1998), and Dirac because it's old and it's what a lot of the mid-to-late 20th-century physics giants started from. Feynman's Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals is also a no-brainer because it's been republished and it's now a $12 Dover edition.

What authority is determining the "best" book for a topic?

What's your plan for adding entries for topics? I was expecting a "suggest a book" link, but that sort of assumes that "best" = "most popular" which may not be your criteria.

My definition for "best" is the book that most experts in the field would recommend to their non-expert friends.

And where do you get that data from?

I think a very good way of doing this is putting a question on quora and picking out the most upvoted answers.

I second the question on how you define the "best" book.

Nits:

1. When one drinks one's tea from a cup and saucer, one extends one's little finger. I believe the colonists call this one's pinky. Not to do is unconscionable.

2. One does not say "Sorry, chap", but "Sorry, old chap".

3. As to the long coat without tails together with a topper, I am speechless.

Joshing aside, old bean, great idea.

I searched for C# / C Sharp and I got recommendations for K&R, a Book on Cognitive Science and a book on rock climbing.

Looks like it's missing reccos for Django, Dot Net, C#, etc. and some rather specialized stuff like neurology/neuroscience which I didn't really expect to be on the list anyways.

Good effort thought. I'm going to bookmark the site for future reference

You and your wife don't have kids do you?

http://bestintrobook.com/books/sex

Good work! ;)

This is the same first search that I made :P

Or they figured it out without a book.

The best intro book for Rails should be Michael Hartl's ruby on rails tutorial. http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book

Great idea -- some thoughts/feedback:

1) Your suggestion for the best intro book on "ruby" assumes that Ruby = Ruby on Rails. I think many might disagree -- I'd differentiate and throw in a book on Ruby the language.

2) To the point of how the choices are made -- maybe institute some sort of voting system (Winner with X votes, runner-up #1, runner-up #2). I think it gives more credibility to the site if it's a community resource and the selections are based on something other than the site-owner's opinion.

Good idea and good weekend project! Also, excellent that you and your wife can work together on stuff like this - that's a great thing.

...and for Ruby, I find Chris Pine's "Learn to Program" a good choice: http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram

A search for alcholism gave me "How to brew: Everything you need to know to brew beer right the first time." Oops!

Neat idea! I like it.

The basis of your website was the subject of a wildly popular Metafilter thread, which may interest you:

What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?

http://ask.metafilter.com/71101/What-single-book-is-the-best...

Overall, a good start, with a few rough edges. Searching on python resulted in "Dive Into Python" and "Learn Python the Hard Way", which are very good recommendations in my opinion. However, searching on "public speaking" referred me to a book on public radio, and searching on "programming" resulted in "Internal Server Error".

I am new to programming, currently teaching myself Python. I have "Dive into Python" and have done most of "Learn Python the Hard Way". I feel both of these are not ideal for beginners. Maybe they would be better for programmers new to Python.

I have found "Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science" by John Zelle to be the best reference so far.

Good Idea. I had troubles finding non-techy topics. I got nothing from: bikes, cars, trains, animals, and snakes.

Some of those topics are definitely in the site, but the search is only doing exact match right now. I'm in the process of getting stemming and some fuzzy matching turned on, so hopefully bikes will give you hits for bicycle in the near future.

Good Plan. Keep up the good work!

Two for four: `Javascript` and `Haskell` gave me sensible (I'd say great) recommendations, `Erlang` and `Neural Networks` were duds though.

Overall, the site looks great and certainly seems to function well, outside of my two obscure queries. Congratulations on a project well done!

I like the idea... searching for "economics" gave positive results, but "how to start a business", not so much...

http://bestintrobook.com/books/how+to+start+a+business

Maybe so, but if you reword your search: http://bestintrobook.com/books/business+startup

Truly awesome work. Does it find the introductory book by googling it or they're all introduced by hand?. The funny thing is that my gf ain't letting me going on with my holiday project instead of helping me like yours haha

you seem to be missing entries for "auto maintainance", "goat herding", "cat herding", "sheep herding" and "sex". however a search for "maintainance of rare watches" turned up a bunch of books. the first hit was one on philosophy.

:-)

Awesome Idea! please tell your wife, if she'll allow me to I will do some HTML/CSS work on the site for free! ... http://twitpic.com/5lnysd

Cheers!

inline-block doesn't work too well on <= ie7, <= ff2, which is really annoying because it's the best way to do that layout.

Really nice idea! Should save me trawling through amazon reviews to see if the particular book I'm after is suitable for newcomers.

heads up: http://bestintrobook.com/books/iphone+programming gives me an error, although http://bestintrobook.com/books/iphone+development works fine.

Nice idea. +1 for crowd-sourcing for other topics and ranking/rating multiple books for a topic. It seems to include the author name in the search index which seems like a bad idea. http://bestintrobook.com/books/C http://bestintrobook.com/books/phillips

I like the approach taken in this thread : http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subj...

One of the rules the poster imposed was for the participants to name the other books they've read on the subject and explain why they thought their chosen textbook was superior.

I was randomly flicking through titles, just to see the scope of what you had in your database, and one flicked past that looked interesting - but by this time I had already hit "show another".

You may want to consider having a "previous" button there, but I completely understand that may take away from your design. Great job though!

Apparently the best book on unix network programming is "learn python the hard way". Take that Richard Stevens !

I know it's not massively important given the subject matter of the website, but you should still sanitize your inputs:

http://bestintrobook.com/books/%3C/title%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert...

Great idea. The first search I tried seemed pretty excellent (biology), but downhill after that. I did number theory, linear algebra, chemistry, topology, compilers. Only linear algebra gave something that looked reasonable.

Build up the database some and you might have something really useful.

I think this would be very useful to people who are new to a particular subject and do not have other means of guidance. One way of building the database would be to request users for inputs if there is no data for the topic user is searching for.

You might want to clarify the results. The best intro book for Javscript http://bestintrobook.com/books/javascript

Begins with, "this is not for beginners." It's for already programmers.

I think it'd be really cool if I could see popular searches. Despite the fact that the title of the page is "...for any topic", I had no idea whether it was programming or what, though that may have been because my random book was K&R

I searched for "cooking", and it returned the exact book I'm reading right now.

Great job getting it up and running. However i have a few suggestions:

1. The color theme needs to come alive. The colors are all screaming at me.

2. Dont just say internal error. Tell us what is going on 3. notfound.htm page is missing

Again i say, great job.

Voting is really required here.

There are many good StackOverflow (and other StackExchange sites) questions listing good books on certain subjects.

Other than that - It's a good idea. The gap between most books and really good ones is HUGE.

I searched for "Wine making" and got results for:

  wine (appreciation)

  jewelry making

  creative writing

  whiskey

  the middle ages

  management

  web usability

Seems pretty hit or miss.

The first hit for wine making is (and has been) a wine making book. Check again.

How is "best" intro book defined? I typed in "economics" and I got a book on an introduction to Austrian economics. If the best economics textbook is one praised by Ron Paul and Ayn Rand, count me out.

How were the candidates determined? I can imagine topics like Rails and Python being fairly contentious.

It also needs a Django recommendation. Do you receive a notice, when the queries return no results?

Yes. I'm logging the searches and will add books for the missed topics. It started off with 250 or so, which was a fair amount to hunt down, but it looks like I have even more work to do.

I would consider tapping Quora for this unless you have a rolodex full of experts on such varied topics as carpentry, light infantry tactics, contra dance, or conflict de-escalation.

StackExchange!

Seems like a great concept for a site. I (as well as many here) am looking forward to more comprehensive results on programming subjects.

I use Internet explorer 6 (It's mandatory at work, don't blame me;-)) The layout on the start page is a bit messed up there.

The best intro book to C++ is K&R, eh? =)

These appear to be dead-tree books. It would be nice to have such a list with freely downloadable books. Any pointers?

This particular site could alternatively offer a link to the freely available books (CC etc.) or at least notify about it. I don't know how the site works so I've no idea if it's possible without checking every license by hand, but it would be very, very awesome.

Seriously, this is an amazon affiliate site and even other wise has tons of adsense.

I dont see an evangalist.. just an opportunist :)

I have adblock :)

But it's still a good initiative.

Because making money for providing useful information is wrong and evil!

Looks great, but you might want to implement literal search strings. A search for C# or C++ both return K&R

Unfortunately, I'm at the whim of the hosted search solution I'm using (IndexTank).

Michael, I'm Ignacio, from IndexTank, we exchanged some emails. Come to our website's live chat so we can think of a workaround for any problems you're experiencing with our whims :)

Your affiliate link is missing!

Wow, I searched for design and the recommended books are spot on! Congrats!

nothing returned for php and erlang (first tries for me)! Might be nice to have a list of topics references and maybe possibility to recommend some on topics not yet handled?

There's a slightly hidden list of all the topics: http://bestintrobook.com/all

I'm working on a suggest feature. For right now I'm logging the queries, so I'll know what there's a demand for that I don't have.

How are you constructing the list?

Ok nice! Thanks for the quick answer, waiting to see this!

Until then... :-)

My suggestions:

  - Erlang: Erlang & OTP in Action
  - (Common) Lisp: Practical Common Lisp
    - this one can also be read online for free[1]

Disclaimer: Haven't finished either of them but they've been great so far.

[1] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

Erlang and OTP in Action is great for learning about OTP. It's not really the best introduction to Erlang the language itself. I'd recommend Erlang Programming by Cesarini AND Thompson for that. Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong is good as well.

Thanks for posting the link, I was about to ask.

Seems to fail when you enter an empty string.

pretty cool and instant money maker with amazon's partner program

This is a good idea, but have you thought about a crowdsourcing system? You could fill a lot of holes pretty fast and get some community input on which book is the best.

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