Andrew Hunt is becoming one of my favorite authors. The first book I read from Andy was “The Pragmatic Programmer“, which is a book full of insights on the life philosophy to become an expert programmer. Now I got my hands in “Pragmatic Thinking & Learning - Refactor Your Wetware” and it is another excellent book. This book is not only for software developers, it is intended for a wider audience and provides lots of tips to improve the way you think - it certainly made me think about the way I put by “mind” into the job.
I strongly recommend it…
The holidays are the perfect time to read, and I’ve been doing a good share of reading. The selected books where “Peopleware” from Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, and “Clean Code” from “Uncle Bob” Martin.
Peopleware ~ Productive Projects and Teams, 2ed
This book was presented to me as a selection of small essays and articles on team management, but it is so much more than that. The first thing that becomes clear to the reader is the voice of experience that is expressed in each chapter. Some of the ideas win your over due to their simplicity, they are so obvious that they can’t be contested by anyone. But seeing then written down, black over white, gives then another aura of comprehension. The authors devote themselves to the issues like the team environment (the physical space that the team needs), team members and their selection and team building. I really like the metaphor of having a “jell” glue team members, and so increase their productivity. Some introspection really allowed me to relate with the requirements to achieve the “jell formation”, and also identify the issues that make it harder to build a better team.
Clean Code ~ A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
The quality of you code is obviously something that should never be disregarded, but after reading Clean Code I’ve gained some very good tools (and specially validated arguments) to say “My code still isn’t ready, it needs to be cleaned!”. The book purposes the idea that you need several iterations to incrementally clean your code. This alone, is not something new, but the author makes a good argument advocating that most of the time that clean up is not done. This leads to severe code rot, and decreased productivity and decreased motivation and… Apart from showing several techniques to improve/clean your code, it also defends the benefits of Test-Driven Development. On this subject, I need to do some more investigations but it seems that the TDD approach has advantages over the usual “ill-defined” testing that is the normal approach. At least the book opened the “appetite” for the subject…
The movie has everything good about the book and adds so much more. The book is too irrational for my taste. I had seen the movie before, but nevertheless it was good to remember this master piece.
Just found this video somewhere on the Web and tough it was interesting. It looks to be a pretty interesting book trailer for Leviathan. Never had the change to read something from the work of Scott Westerfeld… this really seems to be a good change to start!
Unlike some people, I prefer reading a book than watching a movie. This is specially true when I know that a book has already been transformed into a movie. The problem is that after reading a good book my expectations are so high that I get discouraged to watch the movie. I think it’s the fear of getting disappointed with the movie or something like that. There are at least three books/movies that belong to this category. I simply loved the books, but I’ll have to convince myself to watch “Perfume The Story of a Murderer” and “Blindness“. The third movie I also have high expectation is the upcoming “Alice In Wonderland” (from Tim Burton). “Alice” is the current bedside book…
My last post was almost 3 weeks ago. It might seem a long time ago but, after a very stressful last work week, I’m currently enjoying a well deserved vacation. So, I haven’t had much time to write! After hitting the beach for a week, I’m sure this vacations shall be a time for resting, resting, resting and… a lot of reading.
The photo (on the side) shows some of the expected reading materials:
- “The Girl Who played with Fire”, Stieg Larsson.
- “I, Robot”, Isaac Asimov.
- “One Continuous Mistake”, Gail Sher.
- “The Children of Men”, P.D. James.
- “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software”, Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides.
Has you can see by the contents of the above list, I like to read a lot, and the topic is not very focussed… I’m considering adding some comics to the list. Maybe I’ll read “Watchmen”!
The Pragmatic Programmer is an excellent book. This is not a book focused on programming techniques per se, but it provides very useful information on how to tackle daily problems. Essentially it made me thing on the approach I use to solve my daily tasks, simply by describing the characteristics of a pragmatic programmer.
I should have read this book years ago, but the introspection felt good because the self-evaluation was quite positive. Still, there are things to improve…
To read is something that I always enjoyed a lot, but during the last weeks I just devoured pages after pages (for no aparent reason whatsoever)… It started by these two last week and this week I read La Colmena* by Camilo José Cela (a Spanish literature Nobel prize winner). The book, borrowed from a friend, depicts the Spanish society in the post civil war period in a very interesting way. Composed of a lots of short everyday episodes of society, what the book lacks in a continuous argument it provides by giving the reader a very interesting description of the spirit of those living in Madrid.
Another book that also provided a somehow crude vision of society was Last Exit To Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. In this case, the problems of society described are presented in a much more violent way.
Both books proved to be very controversial when they were published. The first was prohibited in Spain due to censorship, and the second originated a court case that lasted several years facing charges of obscene publication act.
* The original title is La Colmena (or The Hive), but I read the portuguese translation A Colmeia.
I learn a bit about my reading habits, likes and dislikes. Usually I take down a book at a time, from beginning to end without stopping or interleaving books. Although a great fan of crime novels, I reading all sorts of literary themes expect when it comes to historical romances where I really need to get motivated to start.
In spite that, a long time ago I got introduced to the works of Peter Hamilton in the form of Pandora’s Start. This sci-fi novel didn’t get my full attention right from the start but things picked near the middle. Unfortunately, when the story was getting good I took the book with me in for a working travel (to fill the void while traveling) and the book was forgotten in the nightstand in a lonely hotel room.
Realizing that the book was lost, and with no time to get it back the best way to avoid a lonely voyage home was to buy any available book right in the nearest bookstore. The selection fell upon a crime novel by Stieg Larsson called The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Unlike the previous book, this novel good my full attention and after no more that 24 hours of intensive reading scattered over 3 or 4 session the book was completed. I have to suggest this excellent novel, the first of a trilogy published postumasly, to anyone who enjoys a good novel.
It turns out that I really prefer crime to sci-fi, but I didn’t abandon Pandora’s Star. A ‘used’ issue is already on the way from amazon.
The last post was so long ago that it’s hard to remember. Usually, the lack of posts comes associated with some huge amount of work. I could say that this is another example how my work takes to much of my own time, but that would not be completely true. In fact, I have been working long hours but the main reason for not having time to write is another…
I don’t see myself has a sysadmin, but I like to do my own experiments… like building a file sharing server (one that no one will hever use), having a wireless network in place (to be used once every month by a computer that could easily be connected using a wired connection) or mounting a home theater PC (an placing the old computer box in the living room and understanding that it really looks ugly and out-of-place).
No, this time it wasn’t one of “my crazy” projects. I just decided to learn a new language… I didn’t actually decided it! Let’s just say that Python started to grow on me. And front my point of view, Python is far better that bash script or perl or any other scripting language out there. With it you can do the simplest things, like inspecting some file’s content or you can do the most complex procedure (including, for example, DB access).
A friend talked about Python with me, and for someone with background in C/C++ and some bash script, Python turned out to be really (REALLY!) simple. I’ve been using it for a couple of months and I already converted all my ‘~/bin’ scripts to Python.
My real interest began after finding “Python for Unix and Linux System Administration” and reading this really hands-on and example based ‘introduction’.
I’m considering adding some comics to the list. Maybe I’ll read “Watchmen”!
To read is something that I always enjoyed a lot, but during the last weeks I just devoured pages after pages (for no aparent reason whatsoever)… It started by 
Another book that also provided a somehow crude vision of society was 
I learn a bit about my reading habits, likes and dislikes. Usually I take down a book at a time, from beginning to end without stopping or interleaving books. Although a great fan of crime novels, I reading all sorts of literary themes expect when it comes to historical romances where I really need to get motivated to start.
Realizing that the book was lost, and with no time to get it back the best way to avoid a lonely voyage home was to buy any available book right in the nearest bookstore. The selection fell upon a crime novel by Stieg Larsson called The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Unlike the previous book, this novel good my full attention and after no more that 24 hours of intensive reading scattered over 3 or 4 session the book was completed. I have to suggest this excellent novel, the first of a trilogy published postumasly, to anyone who enjoys a good novel.
