Ask HN: What are young technically minded people reading?
5 days ago
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?
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.
https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html
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'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 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 Ezra Klein’s ideas mostly feel tired, recycled, boring, outdated, and rudderless.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?
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Some books Ive been reading/plan to read: https://studium.dev/books
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'd recommend Careless People, if you haven't read it.
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
Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz
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