Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky

A collection of essays on software development written by one of the leading gurus in the field. The majority of the essays deal with the practice of programming and managing developers, especially within a small software company. They are interesting, pragmatic, relevant, authoritative and funny.

A couple of quotables:

... the history of the evolution of C++ can be described as a history of trying to plug the leaks in the string abstraction.

The idea of advertising is to lie without getting caught. Most companies when they run an advertising campaign, simply take the most unfortunate truth about their company, turn it upside down ("lie"), and drill that lie home.

All of the essays have previously been published on the author's web-site but the book also includes some new introductions and, besides, a book is much more convenient for reading in the bath, or on the train.

Tree-top Egyptian Geese

On our walk round the University lakes this afternoon we heard the rasping honking of Egyptian geese but they were nowhere to be seen, neither on land nor on the water.  Then a passer-by pointed them out in the top a tree.  There were two of them about 10 metres above the ground.  Unlike other geese, Egyptian geese are quite at home in trees, indeed they actually nest in them.

Red Kite over Broad Street, Reading

This Sunday, just before noon, Zoe and I were walking up Broad Street, the main shopping street in Reading. It was a fine sunny day and there were lots of people about.  Suddenly Zoe pointed to the sky.  There a red kite was drifting eastwards just above the level of the roof tops.  It was so low that all the markings on its underside were clearly visible.  This was the best view I have ever had of one of these birds, and it was from a town centre not from the countryside.

The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory by Jorge Luis Borges

Another collection of short stories, this time written when the author was in old age.  These are just as fascinating and deal with the same kind of ideas as those in Labyrinths, which he wrote when he was young.  I particularly liked A Weary Man's Utopia, The Book of Sand and Blue Tigers.

Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science by Simon Mitton

I picked up a copy of this book on a quick visit to the local library but was not expecting very much from it: I had already read Hoyle's own autobiograph 'Home is where the Wind Blows' a few years ago and don't remember being particularly impressed by it.

The first chapter of 'A Life in Science' with its somewhat cloying details of his childhood tended to confirm my low expectations (but maybe this is because these details are derived from Fred's own writings). But then Hoyle gets to Cambridge and the book suddenly takes off as he meets Arthur Eddington, P.A.M. Dirac, Rudolph Peierls. Then he goes off to Portsmouth to do war work. He stays with Herman Bondi and Tommy Gold: during the day they work on naval radar, during the evenings they talk astrophysics and, start generating new ideas and papers at such a rate that the RAS papers secretary can hardly cope.

After the war Hoyle returns to Cambridge and becomes one of the central figures in astrophysics for the next three decades. I had not really appreciated the key role Hoyle had played in the understanding of stellar structure and the creation of the chemical elements. Mitton covers all of this in just enough depth for me to follow and to want to find out more about these subjects. He also covers the controversies that Hoyle got involved in, for example that with Martin Ryle, and tries to give a balanced view, pointing out where Fred was being unreasonable or paranoid.

Over the years I had got the impression that many British professional astronomers and astrophysicists regarded Hoyle with a mixture of fondness and awe. After reading Mitton's account I now understand why.