Category: Books

2018 in books

Intro

2018 is coming to a close and so I thought that it would be a good idea to again look back on the books that I have read in 2018 and to share what books I have liked the most with my readers. I will mark the most liked books in bold like Aaron Swartz did in his lists. Also, I will expand a bit under the books which I liked the most and which are kind of controversial.

Perhaps this will be inspiring to someone or they will recommend me similar books that I must definitely read. As I have written already, reading (programming) books is a really rewarding hobby since it helps you grow holistically as a person. You could find my 2016 reads here.

2018 list

I have gone through a total of 14 (+4 compared to last year’s count. I guess it is because I spent a lot of time in 2017 on my education) books in 2018. They have 4843 pages in total which is not bad.

  • “The Pragmatic Programmer” by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas;

A pretty important book in its own regard. It is not opinionated but it talks about various certain lessons that the authors have learned over tens of years of experience of being in the computer software field. It is one of those books that you would read before falling asleep. The exercises are kind of simple but they make you think about what you just read.

  • “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee;

A very important piece on topics such as racism and discrimination; totally immersive writing which makes you feel like you are there and it hooks you into reading more and more. Read the Lithuanian version for a change. Atticus Finch is really a hero. My review as posted on Goodreads:

Honestly, 5/5. No comments. No wonder Atticus’ story has inspired thousands of attorneys and it has been rated by British librarians as a book to read before you die even above the Bible.

  • “Surely, you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!” by Richard P. Feynman;

Adventures of a curious character, as the book says. Indeed, popular scientists like Feynman sometimes might seem like they are not human beings anymore, that they had transcended us. However, books like this give us a glimpse into such life and we can see that after all, we are not so different and that we too can achieve such things. In general, it is a very inspiring book. Some people complain about the egoistic tone at some places but I think that if you look past it, you can definitely find a very captivating story.

  • “Italian short stories for beginners” by Olly Richards;
  • “Murder On The Orient Express” by Agatha Christie;
  • “Algorithms to Live By” by Brian Christian;
  • “Inside the Nudge Unit” by David Halpern;

Essentially it is a book about bringing back the scientific method to governmental decisions. It is very interesting to read about this and before this, I never knew that such units even exist. They mostly started using a form of A/B testing to the governmental communication to improve its efficacy. And, surprisingly enough, it has improved a lot and barely any money had been spent on this. It shows that sometimes we do not have to look deeply to find issues which are not hard to fix and would bring a lot of benefits if fixed.

  • “The Soul of a New Machine” by Tracy Kidder;
  • “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kiyosaki;

Essentially this book is about a change of the mindset: you should view your money as an asset, not as a liability. I loved this since me and the majority of other people get stuck in this rut of life where we can only see the short-term goals, and we cannot wait until the next pay-check. This book will teach you how to change that thinking and could be a good start of beginning to acquire more and more assets which would generate you more and more money. The main idea is to make money work for you but not work for money.

  • “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius;
  • “Dataclysm” by Christian Rudder;
  • “Code Complete” by Steve McConnell;

You can find the top list of things that I have learned from this book here. I wrote that blog post at the beginning of 2018… that is how good the book was 🙂 I feel like this is a gentle step forward after “The Pragmatic Programmer”. Afterward, I would recommend everyone to delve into some kind of programming language or paradigm specific book as to learn the nitty-gritty details. Or, you should read through and do exercises of some kind of algorithm book.

  • “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss;

The stories and lessons thereof of a former FBI negotiator. You might think you know human psychology but real us actually shine under stressful and life-or-death situations such as those that were a daily encounter for Chris Voss. Contains a lot of golden advice for negotiation and just in general day to day life because actually, we negotiate all the time even though sometimes we might not recognize it. My Goodreads review:

Everything you wanted to know about negotiation. The author writes in a very clear, lucid style. Reminded me of Richard Dawkins’ style of writing. This book will introduce you to the concepts of labelling, mirroring, all kinds of leverage that you could peruse to your advantage, and of course – the black swans. If you always thought that negotiation is something only people in FBI and other agencies do – you are wrong. It is worth for everyone to pick up this book because negotiations happens all of the time in our lives. As the author puts it (I’m paraphrasing here) – conflicts happen each day and you cannot avoid them. So stop thinking of your partner as your adversary and think about them as of your counter-part. The adversary is always the problem or idea being discussed. Very awesome book.

  • “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle

A controversial book. Kind of reminds me of Stoicism. The point that nothing exists besides now is kind of appealing to me and I think that it has a kernel of truth. Ignore the religion stuff while reading it. My review from Goodreads:

I think that the mindfulness parts and the idea that nothing exists besides what is now have a kernel of truth to them. Practicing such a view of life definitely helps to be more calm and view things as they are. In my opinion, this is related to the Stoic view of life in which it is being said that the only thing that you can influence is you yourself and your reactions. However, I did not like some of the explanations that involved “God” or “the Lord” himself because they, to be frank, just do not make any logical sense and because “God” is dead. On the other hand, just like the author says: “words only convey some kind of meaning, they themselves are worthless and completely made up” (paraphrasing).

To read in 2019

One of the first books that I want to read in 2019 is “The Design of Everyday Things” by Donald Norman. I feel that it is useful for programmers and everyone involved to read a bit of literature about usability and user experience. I saw it recommended in a lot of lists.

Afterward, I will try to read something related to algorithms like “Introduction to Algorithms” (CLRS). I feel that algorithms and estimating the complexity of our programs is very important thus I will brush up on that.

Finally, I want to read something related to machine learning or artificial intelligence. These fields are very fascinating to me and, honestly, I do not have that much knowledge of them. We will see what actual books I will choose.

Related Posts

10 nuggets of knowledge that I picked up from “Code Complete”

My notes and my Code Complete book

You could probably find “Code Complete” by Steve McConnell in any of the top 10 lists of books recommended to read for all programmers. I recently finished reading that book too. I have to confess that at times the tips and knowledge in there was a bit too basic and fundamental but, on the other hand, I also think that it has a lot of golden nuggets of knowledge.

While reading it, I was writing down notes after every section. Essentially, they were three/four ideas that I thought were the most important in each section. Sometimes, they were paraphrased from the conclusions of each section written by the author himself. In other cases, I summarised them myself, in my own words.

Note that some of these things I knew already, obviously. However, I think that they are still very important to know to all programmers, independent of their skill level. Let me know what you think of it and if you picked up any other things from that book! Here is my assorted list of 10 ideas that I got from this book:

  1. Defects in the requirements/architecture stage are very costly money-wise. In general, the later the errors were detected, the more you will have to pay in terms of money or time. For example, if you noticed issues in those two things in, for example, the implementation stage then you would have to go back a lot: not only you would have to re-do your requirements/architecture but you would have to design your code again and essentially almost start from scratch. Also, that’s why code reusability is paramount. (Chapter 3)
  2. Software development is a heuristic process – there is no methodology that works for all cases. That is why prototyping is important – do not be afraid to write small pieces of code for testing something out. (Chapter 5)
  3. The imperative of software design is to reduce complexity. It should be rethought or thrown away if it does the opposite. Keep accidental complexity to the minimum. Essential complexity is inevitable. Learn how to know which is which. Try at least a few designs before settling onto the final one. (Chapter 5)
  4. Make sure that related statements are in groups, close together. Relatively independent groups of statements should be moved into their own functions. Also, code should be written to be read from top to bottom. That’s why early exits are important, IMHO. (Chapter 14)
  5. Consider jump tables. They offer a good opportunity to reduce complex code with a lot of conditional statements. They can be index-based or staircase-based (when not exact values are used but ranges instead, you have to duplicate values). Think if you need to put index calculation into a separate function instead of duplicating code. (Chapter 18)
  6. Testing by itself is not very effective. Consider combining multiple quality assurance techniques according to your organisation goals to achieve maximum effectiveness. Make quality objectives clear because people will optimise for them. You should also formalise this process to make it even more clearer. (Chapter 20)
  7. Use binary search with hypotheses to narrow down the search space of where the error might be. Understand the root of the problem before trying to fix it because you might introduce more defects while fixing it. Set the compiler to the pickiest level possible. It will save more time in the long run. Don’t ignore the warnings. The compiler is your friend. (Chapter 23)
  8. Do not stop with the first code-tuning technique, there almost always exists a better one. Move expensive operations out of loops. Always benchmark your changes because results vary wildly depending on a plethora of variables. Apply optimisation with care: readability and maintainability are still paramount. As Sir Tony Hoare said: “premature optimisation is the root of all evil”. (Chapter 26)
  9. Consider rewriting a routine/function if its decision count is more than 10. Make boolean checks positive. Do not use double negatives. Write boolean checks according to the number line so that they would flow nicely from left to right. (Chapter 19)
  10. Always think if arrays are really suitable for you. Research shows that programs with container data structures – queues, stacks, et cetera had fewer bugs. Use enumerated types instead of constants because they enforce more type-checking and thus it makes the program more correct. Abstract data types should be oriented as much as possible to their functional purpose. Don’t create ADTs just to store arbitrary data. (Chapter 12)

Related Posts