Hacker News Books

Related previous threads:

Evidence-based software engineering: book released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25073218 - Nov 2020 (118 comments)

Evidence-based Software Engineering – book beta - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23769930 - July 2020 (22 comments)

Evidence-based Software Engineering [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3213482 - Nov 2011 (9 comments)

Evidence based software development - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2707618 - June 2011 (1 comment)

What we actually know about software development, and why we believe it’s true - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=901600 - Oct 2009 (54 comments)

I'm pretty sure there were others in years past... maybe someone will find one.

This paper is emblematic of a serious problem in the software development field: lack of empirical research. It is unsurprisingly filled with opinion and anecdote, with little mention of research in the area. And in the one actual study cited, "Does Test-Driven Development Really Improve Software Design Quality?", the author mis-characterizes the findings. Not that there is a huge set of research on unit testing to refer to--there isn't--and hence the problem.

"Software development has been characterized from its origins by a serious want of empirical facts tested against reality, which provide evidence of the advantages or disadvantages of the different methods, techniques or tools used in the development of software systems."[1] In my view, the best thing we could do is to adopt "Evidence-Based Software Engineering"[2] as other disciplines have. This is more likely to have a major positive impact than the newest and hottest language, tool, or technique.

[1] Reviewing 25 Years of Testing Technique Experiments. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220277637_Reviewing...

[2] Evidence-Based Software Engineering. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=999432

Getting More - Stuart Diamond. I still think this is the best book on the art of negotiation.

Getting Things Done - David Allen. If you have adult ADHD like me, and you haven't read this, it's the first system that's really worked for productivity for me.

Man's Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl.

Living Buddha, Living Christ - Thich Nhat Hanh.

Cosmos - Carl Sagan.

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin.

The One who Walks Away from Omelas - U.K. LeGuin.

Wild Seed - Octavia Butler.

The Heike Monogatari - (tr. Helen Craig McCullough) “The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.” If you need a comparison. this is the Japanese historical equivalent of Game of Thrones combined with a bit of MacBeth. The rise and fall of two shogunate families, and an analysis of the tragic flaws of character that brought their fall about.

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo.

Small Gods - Terry Pratchett.

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad.

The Guide - R. K. Narayan.

Evidence - Mary Oliver.

All of Us - The Collected Poetry of Raymond Carver.

Silence - Shusaku Endo.

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami Haruki. This and the next four are odd choices, perhaps, since it's a surrealist book, but IMO books that force your imagination to work hard do as much for creativity and fresh ideas as any of the more popular methods.

The Well-Built City (The Physiognomy / Memoranda / The Beyond) Jeffery Ford - Surrealist novellas best described as about the protagonist living and achieving agency within the constructs, dreams, and nightmares of a "Great Man's" mind.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson.

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon.

Dhalgren - Samuel L. "Chip" Delany.

not true ..
'western medicine' is NOT 'evidence based medicine'

"What percentage of the around 3000 treatments included in Clinical Evidence fall into each category:

- 11% Beneficial

- 23% Likely to be beneficial

- 7% Trade off between benefits and harm

- 51% Unknown effectiveness

- 5% Unlikely to be beneficial

- 3% Likely to be ineffective or harmful"

http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/ceweb/about/knowledge.jsp

=============

and
"Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM) is an international, peer-reviewed journal that seeks to understand the sources and to encourage rigorous research in this new, yet ancient world of complementary and alternative medicine."

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/

Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (ECAM) and Pancreatic Cancer:

http://www.hindawi.com/search.aspx?startindex=1&field0=9...

Does anyone know where can I read the referenced studies? I'd be interested if they looked at Evidence Based Scheduling / Monte Carlo simulation: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html

Edit:

One of the authors of the references has several articles available here:

https://www.simula.no/people/magnej/bibliography

but not the one referenced, although there are several newer articles.

Books

Alain de Botton - The Consolations of Philosophy: https://indefenseofbatman.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/alain_...

Web articles

Maria Popova - 13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings: https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/10/23/13-learnings-13-yea...

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-ver...

Bertrand Russell - In praise of idleness:
https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/368/368RussellIdlenesst...

Videos

Bluebird by Charles Bukowski (read by Tom O'Bedlam): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVdpfhsj6uI

Autumn Song by W H Auden(read by Tom O'Bedlam): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwNpsUZlZpo

Alternate World by Son Lux (music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1u79rmMd8g

Evidence by Faith No More (music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHPlZjgfWh4