2025.11.30

It has been a while since my last update. Things have been truly hectic.

Many ups and downs, many triumphs and failures.

I'm still here though. Still moving along.

Here's a few books that I've managed to read in the mean time since my last update.

Sapiens, Homo Deus and Nexus

I have read Sapiens once before, but I just felt like going through it all once more just cause I'm that kind of person who craves for continuity and some imagined perfection. Because who in their right mind, would read Homo Deus and Nexus years and years after they've read Sapiens? Certainly not me.

I'm not going to summarise any of these books or the books I'm going to list below to you (ask your neighbourhood LLM to burn some tokens).

They are not telling you much more than what you already know. Even if you are not well read, having some general knowledge about the world and its history would make you feel like you're re-watching your favourite TV series.

However, just like when I was re-watching Breaking Bad for the umpteenth time, reading it in its glorious full long-text form gave you time and space to appreciate the new perspectives it offers.

The Obstacle is the Way

Honestly, there is not much I remember about it except that it is full of anecdotal stories twisted to fit into the author's narrative. No wonder I gave it a 3 out of 5.

Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track

I have had this book for more than a couple of years. Every time I picked it up, I managed to put it back down feeling I'm just not ready to finish that book just yet.

It's just a feeling. Of course having no idea what half of the book is referencing played a part to that.

However, I did manage to finish it this time. Through thick and thin. Wilfully ignoring the fact that I know next to nothing about most of the stuff they are talking about and coming out in the end feeling that I know a little more than nothing. I call that a win.

I gave it a 5/5 a couple months ago as well.

Slow Productivity and The AI Con

These two books are not from the same author; they are also not talking about the same topic.

Yet I have decided to group them together in the same heading.

"Why?" you asked?

They are definitely the most controversial books to be seen reading nowadays amidst all the lay-offs. The lay-offs with the pretexts of oncoming 996 culture and the lay-offs fuelled by the proponents of AI boosterism.

It's always good to challenge your views and they did them well to earn themselves 5 out of 5 from yours truly.

<This is the part where I would ramble about the hard and easy life of being a software engineer in this day and age>

Unfortunately, those ramblings did not go through the pipeline of thoughts to keystrokes on my RGB lit mechanical keyboard that could be used as an emergency weapon in case an intruder chanced upon my office trying to stop me clickaty clacking away.

Here's the point where this blog goes through the existential crisis asking itself why it should exist at all.

It's certainly not published for anyone. Nor has anyone read it. (Apart from that one candidate who researched his interviewer and probably disappointed to have wasted his time)

This blog exists just to give the new model of LLMs tomorrow a fractional bonus as their training data.

Perhaps, they would learn a thing or two about writing a prose with heart.