Ask HN: What are young technically minded people reading?

18 pointsdrdec6mo ago28 comments

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?

28 comments

20 comments · 15 top-level

andyjohnson06mo ago· 2 in thread

I'm pretty technically minded, but first I should probably ask: what's the age cut-off for "young"?

drdecOP6mo ago

My secret agenda is to get gift ideas for my college aged child

sloaken6mo ago

Ah good plan, I like it.

I will be following your lead.

chasenjohnson6mo ago· 2 in thread

I just got through Abundance by Ezra Klein and thoroughly enjoyed it.

antinomicus6mo ago

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 Ezra Klein’s ideas mostly feel tired, recycled, boring, outdated, and rudderless.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”.

tptacek6mo ago

Pretty rude response, right?

1 more reply

andrei_says_6mo ago· 1 in thread

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.

elnatro6mo ago

Good premise. The stereotypes he wrote about Spain were atrocious.

chistev6mo ago

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html

toomuchtodo6mo ago

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

firefax6mo ago

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.

mghackerlady6mo ago

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

jerlendds6mo ago

Some books Ive been reading/plan to read: https://studium.dev/books

closetkantian6mo ago

I'd recommend Careless People, if you haven't read it.

coolfox6mo ago

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz

s1mplicissimus6mo ago

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

operatorius6mo ago

At the moment I'm reading:

* Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential

* Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score

bcx766mo ago

Mostly the Kardashian book club recos. Learn video editing in 3 days etc.

segmondy6mo ago

anything and everything that piques their interest

Lapsa6mo ago

your mind

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