Ask HN: What are young technically minded people reading? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are young technically minded people reading?

18 pointsdrdec28 comments

When I was young we read books like Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman, Neuromancer by William Gibson and So You Want to be a Mathematician by Paul Halmos. What books are popular with young technically minded people today?

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Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

The ministry for the future by Kim Stanley Robinson explores technological and societal solutions to climate collapse in a novel form.

Starts in somewhat current time and follows humanity’s trajectory for the next 30-ish years.

I found it especially interesting because it does expose and address the socioeconomic issues preventing us from taking action on climate.

Good premise. The stereotypes he wrote about Spain were atrocious.

I feel like what's interesting to the technically minded will stay evergreen? (You mentioned Neuromancer for example)

"A Brief History of Time" was one of my favorite books as a pre-teen beginning to wonder how the world works.

On the fiction side I've heard good things about Cory Doctorow's works -- I purchased a copy of "Little Brother" a while back and enjoyed it. Maybe not as high literature as 1984 or Catch 22 but it was engaging and if I had kids I'd gift it to them when they were the right age.

I'm pretty technically minded, but first I should probably ask: what's the age cut-off for "young"?

My secret agenda is to get gift ideas for my college aged child

Ah good plan, I like it.

I will be following your lead.

I can't speak for every young person, but for me mostly the same things older technically minded people were reading. Currently I've been reading Tanenbaums Operating Systems: Design and Implementation

I just got through Abundance by Ezra Klein and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Do you believe in his ideas? I think the abundist philosophy is a fake moustache and a coat of paint on third way neoliberalism, which has proven time and again to have utterly failed as a political strategy in our current era. Ezra Klein’s ideas mostly feel tired, recycled, boring, outdated, and rudderless. We need true labor reform in this country, not less regulations and more trust in “altruistic developers”.

Pretty rude response, right?

It is an opinion. Interestingly because of that opinion I am actually looking at the book. At least reading the Wiki summary.

The original commenter answered the question of the thread: "here's a book I'm reading". They got in response a screed about "neoliberal" politics. That the response is wrong is besides the point: it was a really rude way to respond to someone recommending a book. The civil and productive way to write that response would have been to recommend in addition another, countervailing book.

He's trying to have discussion, who are you to tell people how to communicate?

Sure, it's just a totally different conversation than what the thread's about, and a super rude one. I'm not the boss of him, but I guess I get to have off-topic conversations too. "Next time, on book recommendation threas, recommend another book, instead of writing a screed about how bad the politics of some other book are."

It's an opportunity to discuss, should he create a new thread to discuss this book and maybe the same person will see this thread? Kinda weird, especially when this doesn't hurt anyone.

His comment was way less rude and way more productive than your comment.

Agree to disagree.

Rude

Some books Ive been reading/plan to read: https://studium.dev/books

I'd recommend Careless People, if you haven't read it.

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz

It's not very current, but I remember this being one of my favorite books back in college:

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

by Carl Sagan

At the moment I'm reading:

* Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential

* Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score

Mostly the Kardashian book club recos. Learn video editing in 3 days etc.

anything and everything that piques their interest

your mind

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