When comparing How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built vs Rationality: From AI to Zombies, the Slant community recommends How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built for most people. In the question“What are the most influential books every programmer should read?” How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built is ranked 4th while Rationality: From AI to Zombies is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built is:
How many studies of code have been done that only cover cutting new code? What happens to code across time? What are the trade offs between easy to maintain and easy to update/upgrade.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Maintainence and Refactoring
How many studies of code have been done that only cover cutting new code? What happens to code across time? What are the trade offs between easy to maintain and easy to update/upgrade.
Pro Will make you smarter
Your intelligence is being used to defeat itself. Learn how to stop that.
Pro Mindblowing ideas
From (friendly) AI to (philosophical) zombies. Also Pebblesorters. And why humans are insane.
Pro Fictional interludes
These are quality science fiction short stories in their own right.
Pro Funny
Pro Engaging
Cons
Con Not enough citations
Just Google it.
Con Has some highly technical references in places
Things like physics (relativity, quantum mechanics), mathematics and computer programming. Scared? Didn't think so.
Con Long
The chapters are relatively short and digestible essays and short stories. The problem: there are 333 of them. On paper, this would take volumes, but this is an ebook. You'll get a lot out of it long before you finish though.