Re:Book list for streetfighting computer scientists
by disgruntledphd2 on Sunday November 15, 2026 @12:12PM
(#50508604)
> is any of this stuff useful to a street fighter, or hacker, any more?
Potentially more important, tbh. I recently worked (mostly vibed) on a project that was me (a data person), an engineer (backend/frontend, mostly web) and a project manager.
One of the things that stood out to me was how often I could tell the developer person, nope that won't work and this will mostly based on reading the data equivalent of these books. I additionally noted that he was SO MUCH BETTER than me at most of the development side of things (testing/building verifying), and have come to the conclusion that expertise still matters.
Like, I could contribute to the codebase and the problem because I do data and it was a data system ultimately (gui based ETL tool reimplementation), and that helped me catch the LLM when it was spouting nonsese/spinning me a web of mostly unintentional lies and half truths.
I'm much worse at that task in areas that I'm less familiar with, hence, returns to expertise.
And more generally, many of these books are wonderful and even if they weren't useful would still be a worthy use of your time (I second the recommendation for Volumes 1 (first chapter) and 4b (chapter 0)).
Potentially more important, tbh. I recently worked (mostly vibed) on a project that was me (a data person), an engineer (backend/frontend, mostly web) and a project manager.
One of the things that stood out to me was how often I could tell the developer person, nope that won't work and this will mostly based on reading the data equivalent of these books. I additionally noted that he was SO MUCH BETTER than me at most of the development side of things (testing/building verifying), and have come to the conclusion that expertise still matters.
Like, I could contribute to the codebase and the problem because I do data and it was a data system ultimately (gui based ETL tool reimplementation), and that helped me catch the LLM when it was spouting nonsese/spinning me a web of mostly unintentional lies and half truths.
I'm much worse at that task in areas that I'm less familiar with, hence, returns to expertise.
And more generally, many of these books are wonderful and even if they weren't useful would still be a worthy use of your time (I second the recommendation for Volumes 1 (first chapter) and 4b (chapter 0)).
edit: dangling paren