HN Explorer

Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?

48 points by Sam_Odio ↗ HN
I'll start it off:

- O'Reilly's Python in a Nutshell

- A 12" PB (I use my old PB as a more capable "kimble" and for quick SSHing into my servers)

- And to preempt the half-dozen comments suggesting them: Founders at Work & Hackers and Painters

64 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 86.4 ms ] thread
kirubakaran
I would just put a thumb drive and a sticky that says isohunt.com
marcus
Call me old fashioned but I like my dead-tree products, it's an entirely different feeling to read a physical book than a PDF.

Although I usually have soft copies of all my favorite books, so I can search them quickly.

Glimjaur
I would add "Getting Real" by 37Signals, for starters.
davidw
It's not bad, but it's free on the web. And in terms of "getting real", they could stand to make a real book out of it by getting an ISBN number for it with all the money they made off of people throwing their money at them.

And of course I'll add the obligatory mention of Squeezed Books, which is more or less based on business books I've bought and enjoyed (although there are also others like Good to Great that I wouldn't recommend).

tjr
- New Hacker's Dictionary (print version is nice for browsing)

- The Little Schemer (or the whole series, if you really like them)

- The Art of Computer Programming

marcus
Programming Collective Intelligence - O'Reilly Media Toby Segaran

Art of the start - Guy Kawasaki

The art of war - Sun Tzu

raju
Huh! Currently I have Programming Collective Intelligence and Art of the start on mine. Just started reading Prog Coll Intell. So far, I am impressed.
klocksib
Hmmm, here's a list of books I really like:

Memory as a Programming Concept in C and C++ by Frenck

The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System by McKusick/Neville-Neil

Learning GNU Emacs by Cameron, et al.

Practical Common Lisp by Seibel

The C Programming Language by K&R

The C++ Programming Language Stroustrup

The Design and Analysis of Algorithms by Leviten

Assembly Language Programming for the IBM PC Family by Jones

Essays/Collections:

Hackers & Painters by PG

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman by Feynman

What Do You Care What Other People Think by Feynman

The Cathedral & The Bazaar by Raymond

Novels:

The Soul of a New Machine by Kidder

Where Wizards Stay up Late by Hafner

imp
Another vote for "Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman" by Feynman
tomjen
Make friends and influence people -- will help you understand why people react as strange as they do.
andreyf
I skimmed that book and it all seemed to boil down to "be nice". Am I the only one who finds that ironic?
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
kingnothing
I haven't read the whole thing, but another major point in the book is to subtly mimic the other person's body language.
xirium
I'd summurise as "Trust. Be friendly. Take genuine concern for your clients point of view." These are pre-requisites for "win-win" situations.
snowbird122
One of the most interesting parts of the book is that it claims you should "never criticize" another person. It says that every person can always justify their actions in their own mind and all criticism is taken negatively. As an example, even mass murderers have been interviewed justifying their actions. I tend to agree with this philosophy.
pg
More specific than that: see things from the other person's point of view.
moog
The Feynman Lectures on Physics

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

A Latin/English dictionary for new company names

Tichy
Some plants for better air quality.
jey
It really depends what sort of hacker they are. There's a sort of hacker you buy a copy of "Pro JavaScript Techniques" for, a sort you buy the Dragon Book for, and another sort who you give a copy of TAOCP.
DarrenStuart
designing the obvious - a common sense approach to web application design by Robert Hoekman Jr

The New New Thing

Masters of Doom (story of id software, great story)

Smart Start-ups: How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Profit by Starting Online Communities

steven levy's Hackers and crypto also for the history.

zenlinux
I love Designing the Obvious - it's a great book on interface design and usability, and focuses on web applications. Very relevant to this community.
watmough
Programmers at Work, by Susan Lammers.

It opened up many many ideas to me, including flying, writing software for people, why simple software is harder to write than complicated software, and gave me some indication of what 'being smart' really means.

I really highly recommend this book.

danw
Recommended:

* Everyware: Dawning of the age of ubiquitous computing

* Never Eat Alone

A few biographies of people you admire too. My favourite is "Buckminster Fuller's Universe".

Has anyone got a recommendation for a good biography on Walt Disney?

henning
Harry Potter, Goosebumps, choose your own adventure stories...

Oh, wait, I have to look like I'm really smart. Um, Knuth.

konsl
Upcoming:

"High Performance MySQL" (O'Reilly) (New Edition)

"Advanced PHP Programming: Developing Large-scale Web Applications With PHP 5" (Developer's Library) by George Schlossnagle

Released:

"Building Scalable Websites" (O'Reilly) by Cal Henderson

"Scalable Internet Architectures" (Developer's Library) by Theo Schlossnagle

cbthiess
Getting Things Done, by David Allen

anything by Edward Tufte

The Singularity Is Near, by Ray Kurzweil

Dip, by Seth Godin

NoBSWebDesign
Made to Stick

I've won several marketing competitions, an elevator pitch contest, and made countless connections with others, using ideas from this book.

spydez
"Lord of the Rings" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", because seriously... you need to read something fun every once in a while.
jraines
Getting Real (37 Signals)

Programming Ruby (Pragmatic Programmers)

Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers)

Javascript: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly)

a good text on database design & normalization, performance issues, and SQL

something to teach *nix basics, which I don't have but could have used

slackerIII
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (for thoughts on competition)

Managing Gigabytes (if you are doing anything related to search)

Writing Solid Code (especially if you are using C/C++)

Most of the research papers that come out of OSDI/SOSP: Dynamo, BigTable, Sawzall, GFS, Chubby, etc

randrews
I second the Boyd suggestion. One of the best books I've ever read.
kintro
Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister

Build to Last by James C. Collins , Jerry I. Porras

xirium
I've not read Peopleware but I've read Why Does Software Cost So Much? by Tom DeMarco and Slack by Tom DeMarco. The former focuses on technical issues and the sunken cost of software. The latter focuses on the agility of organisations. Tom DeMarco started as a programmer and subsequently became a consultant increasingly focusing less on technical issues and more on business issues. Therefore, reading his books in order would be most relevant as your start-up develops.
ojbyrne
O' Reilly's "Dynamic HTML" is probably my most well-used book.
bprater
Code by Charles Petzold is an awesome hacking book. It takes you from flipping a light switch, thru simple circuits up to assembly language. It's beautiful!
amohr
The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman

I know he's gotten some flak lately for ripping on 37signals, but this book seriously changed how I look at the world... especially doors.

Freakonomics - Steven Levitt

Good for understanding the value of taking another perspective.