Head First!

What Hacker News says

1. kylecazarNov 2025
   My 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 the nature of OOP).

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2. sloakenDec 2020
   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.

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3. ignoramousJul 2020
   > It turned out that a simple drawing could capture the 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.

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4. DoreenMicheleSep 2019
   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.

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5. ignoramousJul 2019
   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 Deep Learning; J Kurose's Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach; R Lafore's Data Structures and Algorithms; J Bloch's Effective Java.
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6. turtleyachtNov 2022
   The Head First series uses similar techniques to help aid book learning. At least there is precedent :)
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