Ask HN: What are some books or courses which had high ROI on your career? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some books or courses which had high ROI on your career?

31 pointsherdyderdy12 comments

Learning How To Learn (available on Coursera here [0]) and its companion book[1]. That course seriously improved how I learn new topics and has paid dividends many times over since then.

[0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Learning-How-Learn-Spending-Studying/...

The book Impro - it's a fantastic book written by an Improv coach, the first chapter on Status was one of those lightbulb moments for me, so many interactions I had everyday made so much more sense. Reading the first chapter is a better use of an hour than anything I can think of off-hand.

https://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Joh...

Vladimir Khorikovs Pragmatic Unit Testing course on Pluralsight. Massive game changer for me.

Visual Quickstart Guide for SQL.

I still give it to my new data analyst interns, so many are excel jockeys and it's the most consumable intro and reference to sql I know for a someone intimidated by SQL. Combine that with coding horrors join diagrams from 2007 and you've got even non technical people off to the races even if they aren't particularly self guided learners.

I wish I had an equivalent for R though, still don't know how to ease people into that.

Which sql authors specifically ?

3rd Edition. Fehily.

Just checked that book, the 3rd edition is from 2008. I understand that the basics would remain same, but can anyone recommend a latest version of the stuff in it?

I get your concern, I've found that while it doesn't have CTE's and other modern things it's enough to get people rolling unattended.

That being said... man I wish they would update it.

my Safari books (oreilly.com) online subscription! https://www.oreilly.com/online-learning/pricing.html

Best investment ever. I make it a point to do 1 live course every week, even if its a repetition (read:revision) of an already done older course. Have been doing this since last 2 years, even though its a hefty cost on my pocket, the learning is great.

Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki. It was my first exposure to a language with a strong type system, type inference, and data structures in a functional language. It was off to the races for me after that.

How to make friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie - Learning how to talk to people in a way that make them feel validated has been the most important lesson I've learned for working effectively in teams.

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