AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: How Can I Learn Music Theory?

Top comment by karlstanley

Back in the early 2000s I quit my engineering job and went to music school for a few years. We used Mark Levine's excellent "Jazz Theory Book" to cover the theoretical aspects. It presents theory in the context of trying to understand how to improvise over jazz harmonies - I found it very useful. It's a textbook though: you're going to have to invest some time in it to get the most out of it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/188...

Books aside, in my view the #1 thing you can do to help your music theory understanding is to train your ear: if you can't reliably identify all the intervals within an octave and identify major, minor, diminished and augmented triads, as well as the basic 4-note chords (major 7, minor 7, dominant 7, minor-7-flat-5) by ear, knowing a bunch of rules about tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone won't be all that useful. Back in music school days I practised daily with EarMaster and within a couple of months had gotten solid enough at recognising intervals and chords by ear that it made all the other music learning I did subsequently much much easier. I am sure there are way better ear training tools now!

2. Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?

Top comment by pjmorris

I hilariously overestimate the number of books I can get through when I make these lists, but my current list for 2020 is as follows:

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution

Book of Proof

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation

Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War (for a friend)

Master and Commander

Educated

Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark

Stretch goal: The Power Broker, as a warm-up for Caro's LBJ series

The Bible (perpetual, I don't get through it every year, but I get through much of it, often)

EDIT: I also hilariously underestimate the number of books I want to read. Here's one more I think is vital for my 2020:

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

3. Ask HN: CS, still a good career in 3-5 years?

Top comment by Dowwie

I think you have no idea how privileged you are for having the opportunity to enter the market with your background and a computer science degree in three years. I interned during summers during university starting around 2000. The dot com bubble had burst before I even graduated. The party was over. Managerialism was in full force. IT Managers at what was then a Fortune-10 financial powerhouse were going on an on about how all of IT consisted of commoditised workers and the only way forward was as a manager of offshore consultants. I felt like my degree was worthless. The last ~20 years have proven those managers very, very wrong. In fact, many of those managers didn't go much further with their careers, as they were very reliant on politics, but the talented programmers and admins continued to grow in depth and breadth of in-demand expertise.

Pursue computer science but challenge yourself with it. Don't waste these years just getting by. Double major in something that will help you work with artificial intelligence, if you want to do something practical, but double majoring in something such as philosophy could help you develop skills that you'll use for the rest of your life.

Summer internships can help you gain perspective about what you may want to do after graduation. A lot of people change employers, and some even change careers, within the first four years after university so anticipate change.

4. Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?

Top comment by andreasklinger

I helped building producthunt.com and overclockers.at (and other less successful ones)

Here a few learnings:

1. the community already exists, you just create a communication platform for it

2. make it clear what the community is about [positioning/marketing]

3. make sure the communication/content is interesting [quality]

4. make sure there is enough engagement [perceived critical mass] (encourage people to post, post yourself a lot, fake accounts if needed, only create subforums once the main ones are noisy)

5. have a rhythm - some communities need daily good posts, some live of the weekly newsletter

5. Tell HN: I grew Visa List to $5k per month in a year

Top comment by computator

I'll grant that the site is well designed, but I can't see myself relying on this site or any of numerous "visa info" sites on the web. Visa requirements change all the time. How can I be sure that the info is accurate?

Personally I like Wikipedia as a first pass. Search Wikipedia for "visa requirements for Australians"[1] or "visa requirements for Indians"[2] or whatever your nationality to see very comprehensive info without any ads or animations or fluff. Then before I book travel, I'll go to the actual consulate or embassy website.

Wikipedia is trustworthy, organized, and detailed. However, the consulate or embassy website is the only authoritative source. Every other "visa info" site on the web leaves me nervous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Australi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Indian_c...

6. Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019?

Top comment by henrikeh

Not a recent book, but Ian Horrocks’ “Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts” (1999) is one of those technical books which presents an idea so clearly but also so different from my usual work that I’m just itching to try it.

The essential thesis of the book is that statecharts (a kind of finite state-machine) is not just a valuable tool for specifying user interface interaction, it is excellent for design and implementation.

What intrigues me about this is how solid the argumentation in the book is and how utterly singular this argument is. There is barely anything else written on this subject. Recently it has gotten popular to talk about state machines again; but this book was released 20 years ago!

All in all the book is an easy read and with a laser focus. Definitely recommended just for the sake of expand horizons.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4589003

7. Ask HN: Do you know any good audio books for developers?

Top comment by t3hprofit

Not specifically about programming, but "Every Tool's a Hammer" by Adam Savage was really good. Tons of good information in here, and it tickles the Mythbusters itch.

Are you looking for books about a programming language? or about methodologies, patters, best practices, etc.

As far as about specific programming languages, personally I think the internet is a far better resource. Books are better for the "Soft"er skills (communication, design, etc)

Here are a few I've enjoyed:

* The Phoenix Project

* Accelerate

* Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

* Rework

Finally, if you've never read "How to win Friends & Influence people", do it now! I'm 34 and for whatever reason put off reading this until last month. I wish I had read that book 10 years ago. I'll definitely be adding it to my re-read list as there is a TON of good advice for building relationships, which is arguably more important than many technical things.

8. Ask HN: How do you keep your notes organized?

Top comment by cbanek

I've recently started using https://jrnl.sh/ and I'm hooked. It is on the command line, and easy to use. I've been using it more for daily journal entries, but it has a tagging system so you can do @idea and then search for all the entries with the tag @idea. I've been trying to organize my cooking recipes with tags. Also, it's encrypted on disk, so I just sync it to iCloud and a few backups.

Maybe it's just me, but because it's a diary, I don't feel the need to delete things. If anything, not deleting it is the point. Even if it's a disorganized mess, I would suggest keeping things around! It's really fun to look at your old writings and notes!

9. Tell HN: CNN Lite no longer functional

Top comment by sandworm101

Strange. I was reading it literally a couple hours ago.

It has gone down for extended periods in the past, most likely when the unpaid intern running it had exams or something.

10. Ask HN: Which is the best book on nutrition?

Top comment by runjake

I’ve read most of them. There be dragons. There’s an entire landscape of conflicting information backed by conflicting scientific studies. You’ll go mad trying to find an objective answer.

But I’d recommend Food Rules by Michael Pollan. Honestly, you can get the summary in the first paragraph below: “Eat [real, unprocessed] food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

https://michaelpollan.com/reviews/how-to-eat/

I’d also recommend anything by Dr. Rhonda Patrick. I feel like she does not have an agenda and is putting out best-effort evidence.