Subject
31 entries
Books
Bookmarks
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
Tamim Ansary's retelling of world history through an Islamic lens — the same events as Western textbooks, but experienced from inside a different narrative center. One of the clearest explanations of why 'Western' and 'Islamic' worldviews talk past each other.
The Architecture of Open Source Applications
Four-volume series where experienced developers explain the architecture of major open-source applications — Git, nginx, Firefox, and 80+ others. One of the best resources for seeing how real systems are actually designed.
Visualizing all books in ISBN-space
A GPU-accelerated interactive map of all ~2 billion ISBN numbers, using a custom Bookshelf-Curve algorithm that preserves ISBN decimal structure better than Hilbert curves. Shows publication dates, publishers, and availability across hierarchically-loaded map tiles.
The Soul of an Octopus — Sy Montgomery
Sy Montgomery's memoir about befriending octopuses at the New England Aquarium — part natural history, part meditation on consciousness and what it means to know another mind. One of the best books about animal cognition written for a general audience.
A Distributed Systems Reading List
Fred Hebert's curated distributed systems reading list — covering foundational papers, books, and blog posts from the Fallacies of Distributed Computing through CAP theorem, consensus, CRDTs, and failure handling. One of the more practical and opinionated guides to the field.
HN Top 40 Books of 2023
The Hacker News Top 40 most-recommended books of 2023, compiled from community discussion. SICP and DDIA top the list; the pattern across 40 books reveals HN's bias toward CS fundamentals, mathematical rigor, and timeless over trendy.
Neural Networks from Scratch in Python
Neural Networks from Scratch (NNFS) is a book by Harrison Kinsley and Daniel Kukiela that builds neural networks in pure Python with no frameworks — the go-to resource for understanding what's actually happening inside backpropagation and gradient descent.
Book List for Streetfighting Computer Scientists
Nick Black's curated reading list for developing deep, confrontational CS competence — covering C/C++/Rust, algorithms (Knuth, CLRS), systems (Stevens, Kerrisk), architecture, and theory. Explicitly excludes ML, quantum, and infosec.
Outlive by Peter Attia — Derek Sivers' Notes
Derek Sivers' notes on Peter Attia's book Outlive — about the science and practice of longevity, with Attia's framework for extending healthspan not just lifespan. Attia argues for earlier, more proactive intervention than conventional medicine recommends.
Derek Sivers' Book Notes
Derek Sivers' collection of book notes — concise summaries with his personal takeaways from hundreds of books across business, psychology, philosophy, and music. One of the most useful curated book note collections on the internet.
Google Talk to Books
Google's Talk to Books lets you search a large corpus of books using natural language statements, returning passages that respond semantically to your query. An early public demonstration of semantic search over a curated corpus, predating the vector database era.
The StoryGraph — Goodreads Alternative
StoryGraph is a Goodreads alternative built by a Black founder that focuses on mood-based book recommendations and detailed reading stats. It's privacy-respecting, ad-free, and adds reading pace, mood tagging, and pace tracking that Goodreads never bothered building.
Library Genesis
Library Genesis (Libgen) is the largest shadow library on the internet — millions of books, academic papers, and articles freely accessible. The de facto resource when paywalls block access to knowledge.
The Eth2 Book
An online book covering Ethereum 2.0 — the move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake via the Beacon Chain. Written in early 2022 as The Merge was approaching, providing technical depth on Casper FFG, attestations, and validator mechanics.
Probabilistic Machine Learning (Kevin Murphy)
Kevin Murphy's Probabilistic Machine Learning book series — a comprehensive treatment of ML through a probabilistic/Bayesian lens, freely available online. The 2012 original (MLPP) and its 2022 follow-ups are standard graduate-level references.
What Got You Here Won't Get You There (Book Summary)
James Clear's summary of Marshall Goldsmith's book on the behavioral habits that prevent successful people from reaching the next level — the 20 bad habits executives have that are actually making them less effective. Surprising because the habits are things that worked earlier in their careers.
Hacker News Books
Hacker News Books extracts and ranks book recommendations from HN comments — a crowd-sourced reading list from technically sophisticated readers. Useful for finding what books the HN community actually recommends, beyond bestseller lists.
Probabilistic Machine Learning: An Introduction (Murphy)
Kevin Murphy's Probabilistic Machine Learning: An Introduction is the modern update to his 2012 ML textbook — free online, covering everything from linear models through deep learning with a probabilistic framing. The definitive graduate-level ML reference for 2022 onward.
Two Books That Turned a 26-Year-Old Programmer Into a Billionaire
An Entrepreneur's Handbook article about the two books that most influenced a young billionaire programmer — likely covering mental models and systems thinking as frameworks for decision-making. The article is paywalled but the premise is evergreen.
Top Machine Learning Books Recommended by Experts (2020)
MentorCruise's expert-recommended machine learning book list for 2020 — recommendations from actual ML practitioners and researchers, covering foundational math, statistical learning, deep learning, and applied ML.
Best Data Science Books According to the Experts
Built In's curated list of best data science books by category, with expert commentary on what each covers and who it's for. Spans introductory statistics through advanced ML, with a practical rather than academic bias.
Build a Career in Data Science (Manning)
Manning's 'Build a Career in Data Science' book — covers getting a data science job, excelling in the role, and navigating data science careers from both technical and non-technical angles. One of the few books focused on the career side rather than the technical side.
8 Awesome Books on Algorithms & Big Data
A 2013 roundup of eight books on algorithms and big data — a snapshot of the canonical reading list practitioners were recommending at the start of the data science hiring boom. Most of these titles held up as long-term references.
Data Science Book Resources (Data Science Central)
Data Science Central's curated page of data science books and reading materials circa 2013 — a community-aggregated list covering statistics, machine learning, programming, and big data. A snapshot of the self-education canon for the emerging data science field.
Hadoop Illuminated — Free Open-Source Hadoop Book
Hadoop Illuminated is a free, open-source book on Apache Hadoop — a community-maintained guide covering HDFS, MapReduce, Hive, Pig, and the broader Hadoop ecosystem. One of the better free learning resources at a time when the Hadoop ecosystem was evolving faster than formal textbooks.
Don Turnbull's Data Science Book Recommendations
DataScholars post on Don Turnbull's data science book recommendations — a 2013 curated reading list for practitioners entering the field. A period artifact showing what an experienced data scientist thought was essential reading at the height of the big data hype cycle.
Coding for Interviews — Book Recommendations
Coding for Interviews was a weekly newsletter and book-recommendation site for software engineering interview preparation — curating the canonical algorithm and data structure books used in technical interviews at top tech companies.
Natural Language Processing for the Working Programmer
Natural Language Processing for the Working Programmer — a free online book teaching NLP concepts using Haskell. Unusual choice of language for NLP education; valuable for functional programming practitioners interested in text processing.
If You Read Only One Book About the Future of Biology, This Should Be It
io9's recommendation of George Church and Ed Regis's 'Regenesis' as the essential book on the future of biology — saved with 'in for one' indicating intent to read. Church's vision of reading and writing genomes to re-engineer life itself.
The 7 Books of a Highly Effective Programmer — Fogus
Fogus's 2009 list of seven books for making a highly effective programmer — a curated reading list weighted toward PL theory, Lisp, and computation fundamentals. Influential enough that it circulated on Hacker News for years after posting.
A Crash Course in Computer Science: Reading List
A curated crash course in computer science reading list from 2012 — the canonical texts someone with practical programming experience would read to get the theoretical foundations they missed. SICP, CLRS, Dragon Book, and peers.