Ask HN: What books have taught you practical things?
Looking for books from which HN'ers read not just for enjoyment, but directly taught them how to do something.
The ggplot2 (viz for R) book has been great: http://www.amazon.com/ggplot2-Elegant-Graphics-Data-Analysis/dp/0387981403
Ruby Best Practices also gave me some ideas on better use of blocks to do data processing from files: http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/posts/gregory/022-rbp-now-open.html
2 comments
[ 11.7 ms ] story [ 10.8 ms ] threadvery practical
Getting Real - Its free so no excuse not to download it http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
Start Small Stay Small by Rob Walling - http://www.startupbook.net/
The Rails 3 Way by Obie Fernandez - This has been huge benefit to understanding rails more than any other online tutorial or documentation - http://www.informit.com/store/rails-3-way-9780321601667
Rails Up and Running - it's only for Rails version 2 but this was for me the most effective book for learning rails. They should really reissue the book for version 3. I bought it 4 months before rails 3 was released but I still refer back to it for some stuff. It doesn't make a lot of sense now but since I was just starting Rails had some exposure to 2 and 3 it was very helpful - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596522018.do