April 4, 2020

Clean Code by Robert C. Martin - Code quality is your responsibility

If you care about quality of your software, happiness of your colleagues, and professionalism of yourself, you should read this book. You will very soon pay for bad code, much sooner than you may expected. We spend most of our development time in reading code. The ratio of reading and writing is around 10:1. So please write clean code, that will help you and your colleagues a lot. Clean Code - A Handbook of Agile Software Craftmanship, by Robert C.

December 8, 2019

A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout - All about complexity

Writing computer software is one of the purest creative activities in the history of the human race. Programmers aren’t bound by practical limitations such as the laws of physics; we can create exciting virtual worlds with behaviors that could never exist in the real world. Programming doesn’t require great physical skill or coordination, like ballet or basketball. All programming requires is a creative mind and the ability to organize your thoughts.

July 9, 2019

Why I need a good laptop? And a good laptop only

In my life, beside sleep, maybe using computer is the most time-consuming and meaningful activity. That’s why I choose it carefully, invest a lot in it, both hardware and software. Hardware Why to choose laptop over desktop: mobility. I can bring laptop almost everywhere in the world. In the weekend, if bored with staying in the same room, I can go to cafeteria, park, or mountain and continue to code. I cannot do so with a PC.

May 6, 2019

Building Microservices by Sam Newman - Think about it carefully before using it

This post summarizes points that I feel interesting and worth remembering. Contents are copied from the book. “The Microservices architecture has many appealing qualities, but the road towards it has painful traps for the unwary. This book will help you figure out if this path is for you, and how to avoid those traps on your journey.” - Martin Fowler Building Microservices - Designing Fine-Grained Systems, by Sam Newman. Image source: O’Reilly

February 3, 2019

How Google Works - An inspirational journey

This book have a lot of “ah”, “oh”, which I cannot do anything else but agree. So I will mostly quote statements from it that would best demonstrate my thoughts. How Google Works by Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg, with Alan Eagle. Image source: howgoogleworks.net Convention Regular texts are my words, which is not many. Italic texts and blockquotes are citations from the book. Some of them are cited by the authors.

January 22, 2019

Sapiens by Harari - Enlightened and interesting viewpoint about history

Sapiens by Harari draws a big and beautiful picture about our history. It tells us how small and powerless we are as individuals by the flow of time. Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. Image source: James Clear Advancement This book states a new and open view about our agricultural revolution. It discusses benefits of individuals and species. Sometimes, advantage of individuals does not mean advantage of species, and vice versa.

November 14, 2018

Notes from "Hints for Computer System Design" by Butler W. Lampson

Disclaimer: This post is a reflection of my mind after reading this paper, it is not a summary or review, and should not be used for reference. But for fun is ok. Besides what mentioned here, this paper has a lot of other wonderful ideas. Designing a computer system is very different from designing an algorithm. The overall idea that I get is “simplify”. Simplicity ensures functionality and enhance performance.

May 17, 2018

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Funny, easy to catch philosophy ideas

For Asian readers, those jokes may seem not culture-fit. They would be more relevant to Western society. I did not get the point of some jokes. But the good point is Asian readers can learn philosophy and Western culture at the same time. However, knowing some basic philosophy ideas before reading would be better than knowing nothing. If you do not know anything about philosophy before, I suggest Sophie’s World.

May 14, 2018

The Three-Body Problem - beautiful imagination about ourselves

As material for story telling, this book uses Eastern and Western cultures. The story is thrilling, attractive from beginning to end. Via thoughts of some individuals, this book represents breaths of a country. Via breaths of countries, it represents a civilization. Via rise and fall of civilizations, it shines and guides human’s thoughts. Human’s thoughts then inherit and evolve, as individual and as a whole, to reform destiny of worlds.

January 4, 2018

Overview of blockchain and bitcoin

Disclaimer Articles in this series use contents from many resources in the internet, whose roots are hard to trace. Majority of ideas are from secondary research. I also do not provide any financial information, such as which cryptocurrency to invest, when to buy or sell, or price prediction. I am only taking a look on technology and application viewpoint. First, let’s start with what blockchain and bitcoin are. What is it Blockchain is a technology.