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FROM THE SHARED SHELF · 2006–2026 SAMPLE

What Is the Name of This Book?

Raymond Smullyan

1 reader recommends it across 1 discussion

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THE WORD OF MOUTH

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Original Hacker News comments, in the readers’ own words.

pwp
"What Is The Name Of This Book?" by Raymond Smullyan is a great book if you like puzzles or want a playful way to improve your logic/reasoning skills. It does a really good job of incrementally building up to more complicated problems. It starts out with puzzles using basic if p then q style logic and moves all the way up to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem in a way that is both accessible by and entertaining to someone as young as 10. It took me about two weeks to a month to read and give each question due thought at a pretty leisurely pace, though I am sure most would take many much less time. (I had to stop to keep up on homework/study for tests for about a week of time.) I don't know if I became a better programmer from it, but it is very much inline with the hacker spirit. You can get it probably from the library/inter-library loan (as I did initially), but you will probably fall in love with it and shell out the $10 to get the used copy. Hope you enjoy, pwp