Recent Reading:
The Last Man Who Knew Everything by Andrew Robinson. Oneworld Publications
I found this book really interesting. It is a biography of Thomas Young, famous for both his modulus of elasticity, and for the double slit experiment which established the wave behaviour of light.
Young was a both a polymath and an autodidact, and his achievements are much wider than just the two items named after him. He was the first person to correctly explain how the eye worked, and he was instrumental in the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone.
Andrew Robinson's book deals not only with Young's triumphs, but also with the frustrations of being a polymath on the edge of a time when specialisation was on its way in. Previously, scientists were gentlemen of means who had the time and the money to dabble in any number of fields that interested them. After Young, scientific research became a field for paid professionals with narrow specialities. Polymaths tended to be good at a large number of things, but not the absolute best in any of them. Of course, their ability to bring together disparate fields also enabled them to found new branches of science and the arts, but such achievements were usually not recognised until after their lifetime.
Robinson has produced a very readable book about someone whose achievements have been overshadowed by those who came later.
Recommended.
The Lion and the Unicorn by Richard Aldous. Pimlico (Random House)
This magnificent account of the rivalry between Gladstone and Disraeli is a revelation for anyone who, like me, thought history was a boring list of kings and queens. The book brings to life the role and functioning of the British parliament in the 19th century, which was, in general, dominated by the wealthy, and run in their interests.
And who 'won'? Well Gladstone outlived Disraeli, and became prime minister several times after Disraeli's death. Disraeli's legacy was the idea that the job of the opposition should be to oppose the government, and he laid down the foundations of the modern Conservative Party, and developed the 'One Nation' ideology that kept it as the natural party of government for near a hundred years.
Gladstone left a Liberal Party severely split over the issue of Irish Home Rule, and doomed within twenty years to be squeezed out between the confident Conservatives and the growing electoral power of the Labour party. On the other hand he did give his name to the gladstone bag!
Queen Victoria survived them both. She adored Disraeli and despised Gladstone. In fact her comment on the two of them makes a fitting epitaph: 'When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr Gladstone I thought he was the cleverest man in England, but after sitting next to Mr Disraeli I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.'
A really good read..
Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. Prentice Hall
The biggest single problem I had when I moved from working for myself as a programmer back to the mainstream was dealing with other people's code. For nearly twenty years I only had to deal with my own code. Suddenly I had to understand and change other people's code. It was quite a culture shock, and one of the most difficult things I've done.
I wish I'd found Michael's book earlier, it would have helped ease the transition. Of course, not everyone else's code is legacy code, but even if you are not handling true 'legacy' code, this book will help you deal with the problems you face.
The book is in three parts. The first is a discussion of how you go about changing software that is badly structured and has complex interactions and side effects. Where do you start, and how do you make sure that you don't break things further down the convoluted chain of dependencies. The answer to the latter, of course, is testing, testing, testing, and the author makes a good enough case to persuade even the most sloth like to get into the testing mode.
The second part of the book is organised almost like an FAQ with chapters devoted to common problems like 'I don't understand the code well enough to change it'. This one crops up all too often, and is an excellent example of how the author doesn't avoid difficult questions. The final part of the book is a useful catalog of mostly pattern based techniques that can be used to break dependencies.
The book is well written and features clear examples that are written in either C++, Java, C and C#, and the problems caused by the different features, or lack of them, available to the different languages are discussed and work arounds suggested. I enjoyed reading this book.
Highly recommended!
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