Books

New and shiny...old and busted?

Scott Galloway — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:34:56 GMT

I had a comment on this blog the other day which I really got to thinking about following a discussion on a private list about how we market technologies. This is one area I'm really not qualified to talk about in any kind of 'semi-official' way but it's one of the things which bubbles under the surface of my day to day job.

It's a constant irritation working at MS...frankly some people hate us, with a passion. A fair number of the people I've talked to at work are confused by this...day to day we really do work hard to improve the working lives of the people who buy our software. But that's the thing, at it's heart MS is a business, it makes money by selling software...in the end it doesn't matter how user focused we are, if it doesn't shift boxes of Product X then it doesn't make it. The comment I was referring to earlier is an example of that dichotomy...yes, people still use VBScript based 'classic ASP', just as a huge number of people still use VB6 based windows applications and more recently WinForms apps. You wouldn't really think it though by looking at our marketing output...why? Simple, it doesn't sell new Windows licenses or Visual Studio 2008 SKUs...Microsoft is a business remember!
I'm not being down on Microsoft here (I choose to work there and I truly love the company!), it's a reality for every business and for software businesses especially. Book authors, consultants, trainers, almost everyone feeds off of the leading edge of new releases. The 'new and shiny' is where all the momentum exists, it's interesting to talk about and fun to learn. The issue (if there is one) is that just because a technology has become 'legacy' doesn't mean it's irrelevant. Some of the greatest programming books I have are for technologies I haven't written a line of code in for years. Nevertheless I spend time every year or so reading through those old books; as the saying goes 'Everything old is new again'

On the topic of books, just noticed this on the CodingHorror blog:Programmers Don't Read Books -- But You Should. I constantly find the lack of reading by developers a source of disdain...Jeff mentions ~~four~~ five (innumerate fool) books which are the absolute bare minimum you should read:

Code Complete 2	Don't Make Me Think	Peopleware	Pragmatic Programmer	Facts and Fallacies

Hopefully I don't have to add this any more for anyone who has ever read more than a couple of posts on this blog...but it's called 'mostlylucid' for a reason! Nothing here unless I explicitly say otherwise reflects any opinion except my own (and even then, lack of sleep and extreme moodiness has an impact). You can think what you like about me but none of these comments is in any way attributable back to my employer.

Q: If there were two of you, which one would win?

Scott Galloway — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:47:39 GMT

Love this...that is all...

Bah...I can't get no sleep...at least I have a good book!

Scott Galloway — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:48:53 GMT

Well another night where I can't sleep...alarm clock is set for 5:30am (have to do some work before a meeting) and I'm currently tracking about 5 hours sleep tonight. Weirdest thing is that I fell asleep on the sofa during Cavemen; probably best all round...managing to make a sitcom with no com is quite an achievement...really is dire! Hmm...wonder if I should try a 'proper' sleeping aid?
Anyway one good thing about my inability to sleep is that it gave me some time to catch up on my reading; currently reading Halting State by Charles Stross essentially it's a sci-fi crime drama set in Edinburgh of 2018. I lived in Edinburgh and worked in the software industry there for about 5 years, it's a very accurate book...even down to the recruitment consultant's offices! Highly recommend this book, it's about a bank robbery inside a MMORPG about half way through but as usual from this author it's just brilliant.
Just noticed, this guy is really prolific, in 2006 alone he published 5 books! Anyway, so far I've read a bunch of his books and every one has been great - haven't read the 'Merchant Princes' ones though, seem a bit on the 'crappy Neal Stephenson' vibe. For the record, Neal Stephenson was my absolute favorite author at one point with Snow Crash and Diamond Age (two of the best cyberpunk books ever...well, after early William Gibson) but the whole 'Baroque Cycle' is just slow, boring literary masturbation in my opinion... Cryptonomicon was on the verge but at least it's still readable. I mean Quicksilver is 960 pages about: "Adventure, romance, politics, history, theology, magic, science, money and calculus", makes you want to dig your eyes out with a spoon!
So one for the comments...what's your favorite books?

Geek philosophy - The Singularity is Near

Scott Galloway — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 03:26:27 GMT

Are we living in a simulation?
Whilst randomly surfing I came across this site, basically it's a link site to a series of papers investigating the question of whether what we currently perceive as reality is really just a simulation of the past being run by some future entity. Obviously The Matrix was the biggest popular look at this but it is a fascinating (though by it's nature, unanswerable) question. Certainly gives the whole 'creation' argument a new spin...wikipedia entry here.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
-- Genesis 1: 1-4 (KJV)

What if what 'God said' was a whole bunch of code :-)
I am a believer in something called 'The Technological Singularity' and I recently finished a great book on the subject called 'The Singularity Is Near' by Ray Kurzweil. One of the really interesting things in this book is the notion that if we survive for another 25-30 years, technology will have advanced to the point where we can essentially live forever...quite compelling!
Anyway, just another of the bizarre notions which floats around in my mind, what better way to explain the universe than it being a man(or post-human)-made simulation...

Got the cold...it sucks!

Scott Galloway — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:19:25 GMT

Pah...had a cold all weekend and it's still hanging on...symptoms are fairly easy to control with decongestants, Dayquil / Nyquil etc...but the way my body deals with sickness is making me sleep for vast lengths of time; in the past 3 days I've probably been awake for 10 hours in total!
So, plan is to get back to work tomorrow...well, we'll see...not looking too likely so far! It also sucks that my family are all about 5000 miles away...only thing worse than being sick is being sick with no-one to complain to about it...
Anyway, on the rare occasions I've been awake I've been catching up on reading...books of choice:

Pro C# with .NET3.0, Special Edition
Excellent book, covers WCF, WPF, LINQ as well as very complete coverage of all .NET features...recommended! Also an excellent club in danger situations!

Programming WPF
Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths wrote this...all I need, really excellent book and very readable (which helps)

Professional ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX (Programmer to Programmer)
Again, all you need to know is that Matt Gibbs and Dan Wahlin wrote this, very complete coverage of everything you need to know about this technology (best Wrox book I've seen in a while too!) (image looks kinda flaky...just a book cover though!)

Data Structures and Algorithms Using C#
Oh dear...hmm...about the worst book I've read in a while...great idea and really valuable in theory but this book is terribly edited and full of errors. Also, oddly incomplete in it's coverage DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!

So as you can see, getting back up to speed on development topics, I'm talking to some different teams at MS about getting back into a development related position...nothing immediate but it certainly figures in my plans!

"As simple as possible but no simpler" : my obsession with Muji

Scott Galloway — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:01:17 GMT

I thought I'd share with all of you my obsession with all things Muji, for those who don't know Muji is a Japanese store which sells 'minimalist' items for everyday use. Now, they don't *seem* to be minimalist for any other reason that it makes the stuff cheaper, from the site's own 'What is MUJI?":

"Lower priced for a reason."
"This phrase encapsulates how we can provide our Muji products at lower prices. We
launched our Muji brand by designing and developing products that might almost be
regarded as substandard if based on traditional criteria, although they are, of course, actually
of good quality.
Through the careful selection of materials, streamlining manufacturing processes,
and simplifying our packaging, we have continually introduced high quality Muji brand products onto the market, at lower than usual prices. Presently there are more
than 7,000 items sold as Muji products. Muji's natural and simple design proposes rational
lifestyles for today's world. Muji products - there is a reason why we can provide such good
quality products at lower prices."

I have to say though that even for such a disheveled individual as myself, the simplicity of what they sell really appeals...no branding of any kind, primary colors and brushed metals...it just all feels so pure. Take for example this item, an atomizer:

Very simple, pared down to the form it requires and nothing more...in it's own way I find this more beautiful than the jewel encrusted gold items which would generally be seen as the ideal atomizer...why am I talking about minimalist Japanese stores...simple, it sums up my philosophy to coding (shamelessly stolen from somewhere or other...possibly Einstein)...
"As simple as possible but no simpler"
I've been chasing through a fair bit of source code over the past couple of weeks for both work and for fun, the best code in my opinion retains clarity by being factored down to the point that it's easily understandable by someone reading it for the first time.
Showing off in code is not a good thing, making obfuscated, difficult to read spaghetti code does no-one any favors...this even extends to basic class and object design; it should be obvious when and where you initialize (and if necessary) destroy objects...when it's not, mistakes creep in very easily.
So to everyone who writes code, get familiar with what it takes to write *good* code...not fancy, not jewel encrusted, tooled gold code, just basic pared down to the bones code...I guarantee it'll be less error prone and it might just be faster!

Oh, and for tips read Brad Abrams' book "Framework Design Guidelines", learn what is says and take it to heart...

P.S., Muji now has a US store, cheap, pretty good quality and pure...hard to beat!

Great book...

Blog Author — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 02:13:00 GMT

I’ve been reading the current debate on Microsoft’s position on an anti-discrimination bill in the US right now, I have no right to comment on this other than to say that I value consistency and fairness above most other things in life.
What I am reminded of though is a book I’m reading right now, Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham – this is a truly brilliant book, examining all sorts of stuff to do with ‘hacker philosophy’ including the obsession ‘hackers’ have with freedom of speech and freedom of expression. I hadn’t really twigged before just how intertwined hacking (oh. I’m using hacking in the ‘proper’ sense here) and civil liberties actually are anyway, fantastic book which I recommend everyone to read.

Current book list...

Blog Author — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 19:03:00 GMT

So, I’ve been off-blog for a couple of weeks…this is due to my usual intrinsic malaise as well as being heads down on a project at work. But, another reason is the multitude of books I’ve bought recently (these as usual also reflect my current obsessions )…

Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion – this is a just phenomenal book on the wonderous Source Control system Subversion, covers everything you’d need to know if you wanted to shift off the decidedly aged SourceSafe and on to something more stable (and don’t want to wait / pay for VSTS)

A New Kind Of Science – hmm…interesting basically tries to explain all science using mathematics, cellular automata etc…not sure about this HUGE book yet…

Essential .NET Volume 1 -not new (actually pretty old now) but this is a book I try to read every year or so – pretty much THE book if you want to know the nitty gritty of how .NET works…if you think you’re a fairly advanced .NET developer and haven’t read this book…well you’re kidding yourself…

Lucene in Action – My current obsession, this book covers the Java version but the .NET Version is pretty much method compatible (case is the only thing which is different). This book shows the tremendous power of this Search engine framework…all you need to know…

Advanced .NET Remoting – second edition of the definitive .NET remoting book, also just a great example of how you should write a book on such an advanced topic, clear, great examples…the lot. But is is ADVANCED! See the next book for a gentler introduction…

Remoting with C# and .NET – great introduction to .NET Remoting…worth a read if you want to get a good idea of what remoting can (and can’t) do. Only criticism would be the coverage of Client and Server activated objects…felt this could do with more fleshing out.

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide to Intelligent Systems – another of my current obsessions, this is a great book introducing the various types of ‘intelligent’ systems, not too mathsy either.

Well, that’s my current list – haven’t finished them all yet but should keep me busy for a while!

UPDATE: Should point out, thet the 'New Kind Of Science' review is not meant to be a recommendation as a scientific approach - more as an interesting read. I am totally aware that Wolfram's views are not universally accepted within the scientific community (e.g., http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0464.html?printable=1 ) I'd only recommend it as a throught-provoking read for those interested in computational approaches to science..

Eric Rounds it off

Blog Author — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:03:00 GMT

Following on from Part 3 , Eric Lippert has posted Part 4 of his series of posts on Hashing and security he also discusses Keberos...If you're really into this sort of stuff but not from an overly mathematical background (like me) the best book I've found on Cryptography is Practical Cryptography by Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schnier this covers pretty much everything the non-NSA employee could need to know about this topic.

State of play...

Blog Author — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:57:00 GMT

Well, sorry I've been light on the posting for a couple of weeks - been a bit caught up in some stuff going on (my uncle died) as well as starting a new project at work. I haven't been entirely away from blogs though, here's a few articles I've been reading recently:

Also been buying a couple of decent books (and a couple of crap ones which I won't mention)

ASP.NET Cookbook -Pretty decent book, lots of little ASP.NET snippets, not for pure beginners but has some interesting solutions to stuff which can be confusing.
Head First Design Patterns - Certainly provides a novel way to examine the use and implementation of many of the GoF patterns, unfortunately it's in Java so yopu have to do a bit of manipulation to get the examples working in C# (also you have to know when C# implementations are different than Java, e.g. delegates and attributes)
The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer - Basically covers how to use Windows Installer, good book but I'd have like to have seen more involved coverage of using VS.NET - covers it but kind of lacks the depth I wanted.
Artificial Intelligence : A Guide To Intelligent Systems - Not actually got this yet, my current minor obsession (influenced by this video on Channel9)
Introduction To Machine Learning - As above...looks like a pretty decent book.

Apart from that, I'm currently looking at using the XPathNavigator for use in a path-sensitive URL rewriting system for a new application I'm building at work- so urls like http://me/you/other/thisitem.aspx can be mapped dynamically on to a 'sitemap-like' navigation structure. Trying to avoid using RegEx based rewriting ala .TEXT - in mine the path defines the context so I don't need to carry object identity information in the URL e.g., http://www.mostlylucid.co.uk/archive/2005/02/04/1649.aspx - in mine I would have the path info as well as the object identity statically mapped in XML (well, editable but rarely updated...). Any opinions / great implementations you've seen of this sort of thing (information on most efficient in-memory storage using binary-search-trees (e.g., Scott Mitchell's series on data structures) etc...would be greatly appreciated)