I taught myself to code back in 1994 while working the graveyard shift as a geologist in the environmental industry. My job consisted of sitting in a chair during the dark hours of the night in a shopping center in Stockton, CA, watching another geologist take samples from wells in the parking lot. A friend of mine suggested I learn to code because I liked computers. I don’t mean to make this out to be a “it’s so simple anyone can do it!” You need to have a relentless drive to learn, which is why I wrote my book, The Imposter’s Handbook - as an active step to learning what I didn’t know I didn’t know.
I spent the first decade of my career doing everything I could to learn what I needed to know so I could get paid. That’s not completely true: I also didn’t want to be found out for the fraud that I felt I was. I have a degree in Geology, not Computer Science! Why am I sitting in the board room of Accel Venture Partners as my clients sign an offer sheet for $10M based on code I wrote?
In 2014 this all changed. I had just sold my business, Tekpub.com, and I decided to take a little time to dig into the Computer Science “stuff” I never learned. It took me a year to find the right resources and assemble it all and in 2016 the book was published.
This book makes me jealous as the author has an incredible ability to communicate the densest of topics (Cryptography) in an engaging, wonderful way.
It draws you in and you find yourself transported to battlefields and war rooms of the past. I’ve always taken cryptography for granted - I type httpsinto my browser and navigate to a site and all’s well. I know things are reasonably secure - but why?
It turns out that RSA, the algorithm that underpins things like SSL and SSH, is a landmark of human achievement and did something that millennia of mathematicians and scientists could not: provide secure, end-to-end encryption. A wonderful story.
In his first book since the bestselling Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure, The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.
Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable…
This isn’t a coding book - it’s more about getting your mind in the right place so you can focus and unleash one of your amazing superpowers: your creativity.
This book literally changed my life a year ago, as I was on year two of recovering from a heart-breaking divorce. Long story short: the tools is about action, not theory. Dr. Phil Stutz is turning the field of psychology upside down with his approach to offering actual tools to get through your problems rather than digging deeper into what makes you think the way you do.
He just doesn’t care about your childhood - instead he wants you to have the tools you need to let go of what holds you back, which is a key for self-taught programmers so they can avoid the dreaded Imposter Syndrome.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ''I love the life these tools have allowed me to have' - JONAH HILL, director of Stutz
Change can begin right now. Learn to bring about dynamic personal growth using five uniquely effective tools- from psychotherapist Barry Michels and psychiatrist Phil Stutz, subject of the Netflix documentary Stutz, directed by Jonah Hill.
Can you imagine what your life would be like if you could tap into a new source of power - one that has been inside you all along - to solve your own problems and become the master of your life?
You’ve heard of Einstein, Turing, Newton, and Hawking - but do you know who Claude Shannon is? Would you be surprised if I told you that he’s probably done more for our current way of life than all of the others combined? It’s true, and it’s unbelievable.
Claude Shannon was a quiet, quirky man who had what you might call The Most Genius Move of the last foreveryears: he took an obscure discipline of mathematics (Boolean Algebra) and applied it to electrical circuits, creating the digital circuit in the process. If you’ve ever wondered how 1s and 0s are turned into if statements and for loops - well here you go.
Oh, but that’s just the beginning. Dr. Shannon took things much further when he described how these 1s and 0s could be transmitted from point A to point B without loss of data. This was a big problem back in his time (the 1930s and 40s), as telegraph and radio relied on electrical signals that could attenuate - even when sent over copper lines.
Shannon showed that you could use these same media, sprinkle in some math, and you would have a near-perfect message on the other end.
While describing this process he also invented the idea of data compression, encoding, entropy, and the foundation of modern computer networking. And no one has ever heard of him. Oh yeah - he also invented the one-time pad (OTP) which is used to this day and is the only known unbreakable form of encryption.
Winner of the Neumann Prize for the History of Mathematics
**Named a best book of the year by Bloomberg and Nature**
**'Best of 2017' by The Morning Sun**
"We owe Claude Shannon a lot, and Soni & Goodman’s book takes a big first step in paying that debt." —San Francisco Review of Books
"Soni and Goodman are at their best when they invoke the wonder an idea can instill. They summon the right level of awe while stopping short of hyperbole." —Financial Times
"Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman make a convincing case for their subtitle while reminding us that Shannon…
There’s a section right at the start of this book where the author tries to quantify the value of things he’s learned over the years, and the result is startling.
Think about this for yourself, just in terms of the code you’ve written - how much do you think that’s worth? Your ability to learn things is your key to thriving in this industry, but how well can you recallthose things when you need to?
That’s the point of this whole book: learning to take notes and assemble them into your own personal database. This book led me to Obsidian, which I use relentlessly, and also to Notion, which I also use relentlessly. Writing things down gives me peace of mind and helps me focus and I highly recommend you do the same.
“One of my favorite books of the year. It completely reshaped how I think about information and how and why I take notes.” —Daniel Pink, bestselling author of Drive
A revolutionary approach to enhancing productivity, creating flow, and vastly increasing your ability to capture, remember, and benefit from the unprecedented amount of information all around us.
For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge. There has never been a better time to learn, to contribute, and to improve ourselves. Yet, rather than feeling empowered, we are often left feeling overwhelmed by this constant influx…
This book is extremely cringy, but that’s the entire point.
The author has studied powerful figures from the past and examined the things they did to wield enormous power and “play the game”. Reading through this book takes a particular focus, and for me it was trying to understand what other peoplewere up to - specifically my coworkers.
Humans are a competitive bunch - it’s the simple truth - and the key to getting ahead at work is to see how you’re being manipulated to another’s advantage. If you plan on moving up in your career you’re going to need to be armed with a basic understanding of the Human Chess Game because it’s everywhere.
The Bad Bosses and Crappy Coworkers of the world are reading this book and using it as a guide to get ahead - but that becomes meaningless if you can spot their tricks and can defend yourself. To me, reading this book is like studying martial arts: you don’t do it to go kick someone’s ass, you do it to defend against someone else’s aggression.
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature.
In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.
Coming from the perspective of a neurosurgeon, I have witnessed many successes and failures over more than four decades. I recognized decades ago that communication with patients at a level that involves emotions is a necessary part of being a complete physician. This involves being empathetic and, henceforth, digging deep to find the strength to be transparent, vulnerable, compassionate, understanding, and, when needed, forceful (some would call this paternalism). Although the five books I have chosen to highlight vary widely in content, they have one common theme – finding within us the will and wherewithal to succeed.
My book is a collection of monthly Editor-in-Chief letters to the readership of World Neurosurgery, a journal that I edit. Each essay is short and sweet. The letters were written for neurosurgeons but have been re-edited so that they apply to all human beings. They cover topics such as leadership, empathy, vulnerability, stress, burnout, and on and on…. These essays are relevant for all who strive to craft a better version of themselves.
Life lessons learned by the author during his 40+ year neurosurgery career are shared and translated into real-life scenarios. Between the covers are many lessons that are derived from the experiences of the author and then applied to all humans. The mastering of these lessons should translate into a sense of pride and satisfaction. In keeping with the theme of the book, this process should culminate in the feeling at the end of the day that ‘Today was, indeed, a good day.’
Today Was A Good Day: A Collection of Essays From The Heart Of A Neurosurgeon
About the Book Today Was A Good Day: A Collection of Essays From The Heart Of A Neurosurgeon features many topics that pertain to how neurosurgeons interact with others and how each of us can use introspection to modify how we are using tools and strategies such as empathy, respect, stress management, and much more. This book provides some insights into leadership, effective communication, and fulfillment from the perspective of a neurosurgeon, and it causes the reader to think about and consider many, many attributes of a leader. We all want to have a good day. This book provides strategies…
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