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Colony One Mars

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I bought this book because Amazon recommended it to me and it got good reviews. There's a lesson there somewhere. You see, I didn't realise when I bought it that the book is self published, and its a little bit... awkward. Its little things, like clearly needing an editorial pass to make the phrasing flow better, and the fact that the text on the spine of the book is upside down. Literally the first line of the book has a weird justification that looks like Microsoft Word at its worst. Now, I'm not opposed to self published books -- the Silo series (Wool, Shift, and Dust) are self published for example, as is Unix: A History and a Memoir and I liked all of those. That said, first impressions do matter I think. Overall I'd say the sort is interesting, if a bit shallow. The level of plotting is probably in line with what you'd expect from a talented teenager. For example there's not much foreshadowing, characters instead just outright state their nefarious intentions. In the end, I got 85 pages in and realised I just don't care, so I stopped. This book is definitely going in the charity pile.

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Project Orion

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I was quite excited when this book arrived. It's a bit old (early 2000s) and therefore a bit hard to find, so when Amazon randomly had a "new" copy I snapped it up. This copy is definitely unread, but yet still yellowed with time and the binding is a bit sad. Project Orion is the story of America's attempt to build interstellar space ships powered by small nuclear explosions in the early 1950s. The story is told through the lens of one of the children whose father was a principal researcher on the project and who has now interviewed a lot of the players as well as reading de-classified historical documents. It should be noted that much of the program is still classified -- for example the exact minimum amount of plutonium you need to make a big explosion. The 1950s seem to have been an interesting time for nuclear research, as the technology was seen as both generally hopeful in the sense of finding peaceful uses for this destructive capability, while also being terrifying with the prospect of mutually assured distruction. This project started before NASA existed -- at the time each major branch of the military was competing…

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The Innovator’s Dilemma

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So David at work has been talking about this book quite a lot recently, and that meant I had to read it despite the failure of Debugging to delight me. Interestingly, the book starts by telling the story of the hard disk industry, which aligns well with Chip War's approach of telling the story of the semiconductor industry. Apparently the universe thinks I need to know more tech history! The book asserts that disruptive innovation occurs when incumbent players become too good at serving their current market with improved products or services. While this might seem like the result of rational management, often those products end up over delivering compared to what customers want, and as a result then costing more than customers really want to spend. Disruptors on the other hand often launch with a worse product which doesn't meet the needs of the incumbent's customers, but does address the needs of some previously unserviced market segment. That's great for everyone, until the new player adds sufficient functionality to now be competitive with the incumbent player, but at a lower price point -- that's when life gets sad for the incumbent. An interesting point in the discussion is that the…

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Chip War

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I think it was Hugh who recommended this book. I'm greatful as it was an excellent read and definitely didn't make me duck over to eBay to buy an Intel 4004 chip set to play with. The book uses the backdrop of our current struggles to retain supremacy in high tech manufacturing versus an ambitious China to tell the story of the semiconductor industry in general. It's a global story of massive proportion, with a huge amount of the global economy now dependent on a product which didn't exist 75 years ago. The story starts just after world war two, with Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments battling it out to produce integrated circuits from newfangled transistors for the Apollo and Minuteman 2 programs. Importantly, Silicon Valley saw consumer market adoption of semiconductors and cheap efficient Asian manufacturing as key to driving down prices and increasing yield rates. At the same time the Pentagon saw integrated circuits as key to maintaining a technological advantage over their Cold War rivals -- the Soviet Bloc was winning in terms of quantity of armament, so the plan was to win with quality of armament. Effectively, the Pentagon sought to bankrupt the Russians by making…

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Dust

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Hugh Howey is a master of suspense and as a result I found this book hard to read -- it's clear things are off the rails and characters I care about are going to get harmed (another Howey trademark it seems), but you just have to keep on marching through. As a result I found myself taking frequent breaks to think about what was happening, but finding myself having to pick the book up again. That is, this book is really really good, but Howey isn't afraid to have a character experience the consequences of their actions. That said, I don't really understand the purpose of the marriage sub-plot. I am sure its there for a reason, but it felt oddly out of place against the rest of the story arc.

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Debugging

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One of the other architects at work was running a reading group for our North American comrades, and I felt left out so I figured I may as well just pick up the book to see what the deal was. This book is a bit old, and was written at the time to try and be funny, but to be honest I don't think the humour has aged well and it makes the book jarring to read. Overall I'd describe the book as having been written in the style of a long form chatty blog post, which is a bit unusual. 90% of the readers of this book will be looking for advice on how to debug software systems, but the book frequently uses hardwaare systems as examples. That speaks to the author's background, but its not super helpful for modern audiences living in a software defined world. The book is also a bit dated in terms of terminology and expectations of the work environment -- for example, the discussion of repeatable testing doesn't mention automated regression testing at all, and the only mention of automated tests is fleeting at best. Another example is that the author recommends that you…

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cpython internals

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I have been paid money to write Python code since about 2006, so I figured it was probably time that I should understand some of the inner workings of Python. I therefore picked up two books on the topic, this one being the first of the two.

This book to be honest isn’t completely what I expected. Its very well written and quite interesting, but its more about the things you’d need to know to become a Python core developer, rather than the things you should know as a user of Python like how the Python dictionary implementation is built.

(If you want that specifically, this video is an excellent introduction).

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CPython Internals Book Cover CPython Internals
Anthony Shaw
May 5, 2021
396

Get your guided tour through the Python 3.9 interpreter: Unlock the inner workings of the Python language, compile the Python interpreter from source code, and participate in the development of CPython. Are there certain parts of Python that just seem like magic? This book explains the concepts, ideas, and technicalities of the Python interpreter in an approachable and hands-on fashion. Once you see how Python works at the interpreter level, you can optimize your applications and fully leverage the power of Python.

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Shift

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This is the second book in the Silo series, following on the Wool, which I recently read. I think to a certain extend this book is better than the first one -- I certainly found it compelling. An excellent read that explains how the universe described in Wool came to be, but yet also sets the scene for the third book in the trilogy.

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Solve for Happy

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Mo Gawdat was kind of a big deal, at IBM, Microsoft, and then Google. But he was unhappy, so he decided to take an engineering approach and try to systematically “solve for happy” and work out why adding more money, shiny objects, and adoration of others didn’t actually make him happy.

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Solve for Happy Book Cover Solve for Happy
Mo Gawdat
January 10, 2019
368

Solve for Happy is a startlingly original book about creating and maintaining happiness, written by a top Google executive with an engineer's training and fondness for thoroughly analyzing a problem.

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Starter Villain

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Now, I might be biased because I like John Scalzi's stuff, but this book was really good. It starts slower than a normal Scalzi book, and takes a couple of chapters to really get going, but I am glad I was patient with it. Apart from that its a quick easy read. Its a typical Scalzi book, light hearted and fun. I think this one requires you suspend disbelief a little harder than others (except perhaps for Redshirts) but that doesn't make it less enjoyable.

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