Very short read. The format of the book is modeled after classic "Effective Java" by J. Bloch: it assumes that you know rust and want to deepen your kVery short read. The format of the book is modeled after classic "Effective Java" by J. Bloch: it assumes that you know rust and want to deepen your knowledge. The book offers 35 loosely-connected (but not really) recipes. Out of 35 recipes only 20 are about rust the language, the rest is about ecosystem and tooling. Language part of the book is pretty good. Ecosystem part felt like a space filler at times. Java is a smaller language than rust and yet "effective java" is a thicker book. You make your own conclusions what does this mean. Not a bad read, but I would argue that "Rust for Rustaceans" does a better job at exploring advanced rust concepts. ...more
Between 4 and 5 stars. This is a weird genre of self-help/feel-good books for people doing creative work. While it is in a fact list of 10 ways to shaBetween 4 and 5 stars. This is a weird genre of self-help/feel-good books for people doing creative work. While it is in a fact list of 10 ways to share your creativity, the goal of the book is to inspire and help you unstuck. It's super tiny and it would either talk to your soul, or you would find it utterly useless. ...more
Pretty much desired Appendix to the "Second brain". Focused and solid. No fluff and no water.Pretty much desired Appendix to the "Second brain". Focused and solid. No fluff and no water....more
This is very approachable textbook, albeit being tad too verbose. The book structure is almost perfect: starts with hardware level of GPUs with explanThis is very approachable textbook, albeit being tad too verbose. The book structure is almost perfect: starts with hardware level of GPUs with explanation of their drawbacks and benefits, then dives into main processing patterns that are driven by this kind of architecture and finally lays out all popular processing algorithms and applications. As far as intro to GPUs and parallel processing - this book is pretty good.
4 stars -being a textbook it's very verbose, if you read it you can't go away without understanding of what is being said, but the layout does not encourage you to skip parts. If you have basic understanding how parallel sorting works, but just want to see the gpu specific part - tough luck. On the other hand, if you just want to get basic understanding of how parallel sort works - you still have to read the whole chapter with all the intricate details. The book expects you to consume chapters as a whole and read chapters sequentially.
Another thing that bothered me is that principles of GPU parallel processing are pretty much the same as in distributed systems, but the books doesn't care about such generalizations, and everything is presented as GPU specific problems and solution. This felt off.
This is the second book I've read that goes deep into exploring Christopher Alexander's work and shows how disconnected "software engineering patternsThis is the second book I've read that goes deep into exploring Christopher Alexander's work and shows how disconnected "software engineering patterns" became from his ideas. (the first one was "Patterns of Software: Tales from the Software Community" by Richard P. Gabriel)
I liked the thesis of this one: software patterns evolved into something significantly less than what was proposed by Christopher Alexander and (as a result) they lost their significance an may be we should try to reconcile it back. The books shows a lot of examples where Alexander went deep and explored underlying nature, while software patterns went shallow. It was also pretty cool to see how software engineering field is echoing a lot from Alexanders work: agile dev movement, blog post driven development, ego driven design, etc.
While the book has theme and call to action, by no means this is a practical book. This one will leave you with more questions at the end. It's way more on a philosophical exploration side of things, than practical applications. That's why I personally liked it a lot. It's about philosophy of software design in a pretty thick emphasis on the word "philosophy" (while the actual book with this title is super practical and pragmatic)
4 stars? The book drags quite a bit in the middle. Because of loose free-exploration form there were chapters that are just way outside of my interest and i wish they were just summarized in 2-3 sentences. But I understand this is a very personal book and those topics are of interest of the author.
I feel that I would enjoy the book more if it was in audio format. It's not super technical and doesn't require high concentration to follow. Audio format would be 5 stars, I think. ...more
I guess you would either love this or would find it absolutely useless waste of words. It's a collection of zen-like small chapters about art and creaI guess you would either love this or would find it absolutely useless waste of words. It's a collection of zen-like small chapters about art and creativity. If you ever struggled with artistic block, had ridden the wave of inspiration to its end or were ever puzzled by your own creations you would recognize a lot of what being said in this book. And this is why i liked it so much - it spells out many things I've definitely experienced but never tried to formulate them. The theme of the book is a prescriptions on how to live a life of an artist: practices, principles, caveats. But again it's zen-like koans, not guidelines. Themes to meditate on, not an action list. Also it's somewhat skewed towards art not just creative work, which I find to be more interesting. There is some woo-woo-ness that one might find annoying, but also every creator sometimes struggles with the question of what is the source of the work and if the creator is the author or a messenger. I find this topics to be fascinating and Rick's angle that implies some "magic" haven't bothered me.
Do not recommend dead-tree version. Audio is a way to go. Also Ricks calm deep fried voice with the gong at the end of each chapter is an excellent remedy for insomnia....more
It's a bit hard to rate this book fairly. On one hand this is very rare content: straightforward description of what CTOs do. It's very precise and coIt's a bit hard to rate this book fairly. On one hand this is very rare content: straightforward description of what CTOs do. It's very precise and covers pretty much every aspect of the job. No hype, no pump-up, no "radical candor" BS. Straight description.
On the other hand it kinda-sorta-maybe lacks deep insights. I think the most insightful is chapter 3 - about Engineering Strategy and (maybe) chapter 4. Everything else is plain and milquetoast. Sometimes you can get a glimpse that Will might have more to say on topic (for instance the chapter about demotions), but decided to stay clean and dry and that resulted in him saying "demotions exist. sometimes it's a good choice" and that's pretty much it.
I understand that this is authors choice of a style ("dry and clean") but when being compared with big "big-bad-tech" books ("Super Pumped", "Bad blood", "the Fund"), it feels very ... idealistic and unrealistic. Office politics, power games, none of this things being mentioned even once.
Of all Will's books I liked "Elegant Puzzle" the most. There are tons of books about middle-up management, but Elegant Puzzle was full of insights, new spins and angles to the bitten up topics, I keep writing extensive notes after every chapter. "Stuff engineer" and this one feels the opposite: these are very lonely books in their category and I appreciate Will taking the effort in writing them, but after finishing them up I keep questioning "Did I actually learn anything new?"...more
Not really a book, more of a long white paper: very dense and dry with enormous amount of references. As a white paper it is very approachable, but inNot really a book, more of a long white paper: very dense and dry with enormous amount of references. As a white paper it is very approachable, but in order to appreciate it fully you'll need to follow the references as the "book" doesn't spent any time summarizing them. What I liked: - PyRUMID (Point queries, Range queries, Updates, Memory, Inserts, and Deletes) model to describe workload. It's a useful improvement over more popular RUM. (chapter 2) - solid overview of design space dimensions and forces affecting design. This is the core of the paper. (chapter 2)
The chapter on mapping workloads to data structures (chapter 3) worth skimming, but don't expect to see some revelation. This is pretty much old story of B+ trees vs LSM and how different modifications can compensate for workload patterns that are antagonistic to the original design of above mentioned data structures.
Everything else felt a bit like a filler to me. But it is relatively short. Solid 3 stars...more
Between 3 and 4 stars. The Zettelkasten method looks interesting, but it took me 4 days to finish this book, despite it being short and not really a hBetween 3 and 4 stars. The Zettelkasten method looks interesting, but it took me 4 days to finish this book, despite it being short and not really a hard one. I had to spend a lot of will power to slug to the end. It's pretty repetitive, it wonders a lot through a loosely related topics and i found myself being lost way more often than usual. I'm curios if it was written with help of Zettelkasten method ?...more
It's a bit unfair to give 4 stars to this book. It's a great literature and the topic (life of great mathematician & physicists with elements of intenIt's a bit unfair to give 4 stars to this book. It's a great literature and the topic (life of great mathematician & physicists with elements of intense fiction) is super cool. The pop science part of the book is always very well executed: it's clear and entertaining. However it's just not my cup of tea. Hyper sexual story of Heisenbergs fever felt weird because it's fictional (I didn't know that until I've checked wikipedia and googled around) Hyper sexual story of Schrodinger illness felt really-really uncomfortable after reading about his true personal life on wikipedia....more
Amazing read. At first I was annoyed by metaphors and analogies, but after trying to read about the same topics on Wikipedia I've started appreciatingAmazing read. At first I was annoyed by metaphors and analogies, but after trying to read about the same topics on Wikipedia I've started appreciating how much effort was put in making enormously complex (and frankly quite boring) topics digestible and fun. The pinch of drama was a chef kiss....more
The main thesis of the book can be summarized like this: there is no evidence that the principles led to the BW success, howeveBetween 4 and 5 stars.
The main thesis of the book can be summarized like this: there is no evidence that the principles led to the BW success, however the evidence that it led to toxic company culture is overwhelming. And this is what makes this blow so heavy. Anyone reading the principles can understand that those are the recipes for creating a pressure cooker, but the success of BW is supposed to be a proof that this cooker would generate extraordinary result. The book provides believable enough sketch of where did the success of BW actually come from but also left me in doubt as I don't have enough financial chops to verify how probable is this explanation.
I wish book had more to say on financial side of things and spend less time on sexual harassment side of things. The later topic is important, but most of the described incidents are in "alleged" category, this gives the book this pinch of a gosssipy taste I wish it didn't have.
Overall interesting read and perspective, especially if you've read Dalio's books. Feels a little bit one sided (the Ray's side is presented through the voice of BW lawyers just denying the accusations), but it's a good counterbalance to the hype around Dalio and his work.
If you like reading about "big bad tech" (books like "bad blood", "super pumped", etc) this is the book for you....more
The book is very broad and somewhat shallow. It covers pretty much everything that exists in IT world. (Programming was all about making a computer toThe book is very broad and somewhat shallow. It covers pretty much everything that exists in IT world. (Programming was all about making a computer to do beeping sounds, now we have scrumbans, architecture diagrams, serendipitious meetings,etc,etc,etc... sigh) It's hard for me to tell who is the target audience. If you're are on a junior side, the book contains too much of irrelevant for you details. If you're on a senior side, the book just spends too much time of the things you already know. There were nuggets of interesting stuff here and there, but overall this is one of those weird ones that covers everything but for no ones interest. ...more
I'm a simple man: Robert Sapolsky writes a book - i read it. This book consist of two parts: the biological/naturalistic argumeBetween 3 and 4 stars.
I'm a simple man: Robert Sapolsky writes a book - i read it. This book consist of two parts: the biological/naturalistic argument for absence of a free will ("a thing without a cause") and a moral consequences of this. The first part is pretty solid, comprehensive and quite technical. If you enjoy scientific explanations of how neurons are firing in a brain, this part creates a nice arc between biology and philosophy. (with pretty good detour into quantum physics)
I'm not sure if this is the best book to read to get familiar with free will skepticism. I feel that Sam's Harris "Free Will" is significantly more pointed introduction. But Robert Saposlky did a great job in presenting all technical evidence for the argument.
The second part is about morality and implications of accepting the claim. And this part felt way more wishy-washy to me. Switching from biology to history didn't do it for me. While I do see the presented moral failures of the past and agree that addressing them was a good thing, I'm not quite buying that we are in the same position regarding putting moral blame and assuming free agency of people.
This book is long and heavy and audio version is full of "See the accompanied PDF for the foot notes", which makes it even longer and heavier. ...more
This book has a special place in my heart. I tried reading it in mid-2oies and wasn't able to understand it. While I was intrigued by the promise thatThis book has a special place in my heart. I tried reading it in mid-2oies and wasn't able to understand it. While I was intrigued by the promise that we tend to misinterpret randomness as skills, most of the arguments didn't make sense to me, the writing style felt off - too many short references to seemingly random topics. And I gave up, but keep bumping on the same topics: biases, heuristics, probability, informal logic,etc After reading 100+ semi-related books, I've re-read FbR in my late 30ies. And the book makes total sense now. So i think this book would either send you on a journey or you would discover a gold mine of conversation topics if you have somebody to discuss it with (somebody who gets it) or it will be total "meh. i don't understand what the fuss is about"....more
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