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What is the one book that helped you the most in your career?

3 points by uptownfunk ↗ HN
If you had to pick the one book that has helped you the most, what would it be?

Common answers (looking for something other than the below)

Religious texts: The Bible, etc.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Sleep

SICP

Getting things done

16 comments

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bitterspeak
“Crucial Conversations” is one of the books that I always reference back to in my career and my personal life. It helps the reader break down difficult (and high risk) conversations and provides tools on how to turn conflicts into successful outcomes.

I recommend it if you haven’t read it.

prahladyeri
"The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andrew Hunt. If you're from computer science or related background, it's a must read. The book was written in 1999 but quite relevant even today. I'd go so far ahead to say that if every developer starts following these basic principles, the amount of technical debt in the IT industry may easily get reduced by over 80%!
beauHD
The 48 Laws of Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_48_Laws_of_Power
dulakian
Came here to post this one. No single book my entire career has helped me more.

It's a toolbox full of tools. How you use those tools is up to you.

A hammer can be used to build a house, or crush a skull. Two very different outcomes depending on the intent of the person wielding the tool.

Communitivity
It's hard to pick the top one, especially since I've learned a lot of things from the Web.

Here are five:

* Effective Java, by Joshua Bloch

* Clean Code, by Robert Martin

* The Pragmatic Programmer, by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

* The Practice of Programming, by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike

* Refactoring, by Martin Fowler

k310
Old-timer here. I learned to use the unix built-ins via Unix Text Processing, Unix Power Tools, and UNIX Relational Database Management. The last of these is a commercial version of Walter Hobbs' work at RAND. The code is avalable at github. https://github.com/ironsmith58/RDB These were a great way to learn shell commands and perl. (and a free database)

The Wiki Way was the first book on wikis.

Another book that helped me was "The Addictive Organization" by Anne Wilson Schaef. It's just amazing how common behaviors are that are normally associated with addiction. Principally: Projection and denial.

pg_1234
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him ~ Sheldon Kopp

To quote Google:

"A fresh, realistic approach to altering one's destiny and accepting the responsibility that grows with freedom.

No meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real."