Head First!
10 Ways to Tap into Your Natural Genius
by Tony Buzan · first published 2000
8mentions
4recommended by
7HN commenters
2011–2025first – last mentioned
57% recommend43% neutral
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
From the ones I've read: The Head First series of books are really really nice... other such books... D Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts; B Eckel's Thinking in Java; Skiena's The Algorithm Design Manual; M Nielsen's Neural Networks and…
on “Book Review: Designing Data-Intensive Applications” ↗…entire statement of the theorem, and from that drawing, the proof was trivial to derive. Couldn't agree more. Some of the best CS books I've read have been ones with a tonne of illustrations, like the Head First series.
on “How to Understand Things” ↗Part of what you are asking is "How do you study in earnest?" Head First books have a lot of good practical tips for how to learn new material, such as "read in bed just before sleeping." I did that a lot in high school and college.
on “Ask HN: How Do You Read?” ↗They have a 2nd edition coming out this month https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/head-first-design/05960... I would recommend picking up a free chapter of the old one to see if you like the style of presentation. Personally I just love the way they present information.
on “Ask HN: What programming design pattern book has had the biggest impact on you?” ↗…first programming book was K&R as well. It was an excellent introduction to programming. You might think that coming from K&R, I wouldn't have liked my second and third books, which were two of the first Head First series. They took essentially the opposite approach from K&R, but I enjoyed them too and learned quite a bit. Something about the content lended itself to a more visual approach to the material (maybe…
on “The Pragmatic Programmer: 20th Anniversary Edition (2023)” ↗Any large chain bookstore such as Barnes and Noble or Borders will probably have several Head First titles in stock.
on “Ask HN: Head First Books?” ↗> Time to start up MY startup, Rent-A-Tiger This reminds me of something said in the introduction to the Head First book series. The human brain hasn't really caught up with technological developments; it has a hard time looking at "boring" things like text/data and paying attention and retaining information, but it…
on “A Startup That Designed Its Office to Confuse Workers” ↗The Head First series uses similar techniques to help aid book learning. At least there is precedent :)
on “Rusty Ownership and the Lifecycle’s Stone” ↗