books

Today I finished up The Mythical Man Month by Frederick Brooks, which is a surprisingly relevant collection of essays about software engineering, despite being written 42 years ago. Some of the essays I found quite boring, but those were usually essays that also detailed systems specific to the 70s. Most of the book tends to deal with the people of software engineering, and management tactics around the profession. I won’t rehash them all here; however there is one section in No Silver Bullet - Refired that I found particularly compelling:...

We have been taught to dread death, as if it were the end of the show. It won’t happen anymore. And therefore to be afraid of all the things that might bring about death; pain, sickness, suffering. And if you don’t know you see, if you are not vividly aware of the fact that you are, basically the works, you have no real joy in life… Being a stranger in the earth....

46 book in 52 weeks, just 4 shy of my goal of 50! Despite coming up just short, I think 2015 was one of the most thoughtful and well rounded years of reading I’ve ever had. I still read an outsized proportion of sci-fi and fantasy books; however I also read more non-fiction (thanks largely in part to Mandy and Stephan). Here is the rundown of my favorite books I read in 2015:...