Review

My year in books (according to Goodreads). 8443 pages read in 26 books. I mostly binged on thrillers and series I am already following. Just one non-fiction! I am currently reading / being stuck in these: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig - this is a reread. I read it as a teenager, and I am not getting through it at the moment. Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder by Dave Barter - collection of articles. The title might be the best bit. Edges by Linda Nagata - I am not very excited. Fiction Mark DawsonI just continue reading his multiple series. Sandstorm (Charlie Cooper Thrillers #1) - a new series in the Group Fifteen universe. It is a short book and quite entertaining. The Red Room (Atticus Priest #3) Pistolero (Beatrix Rose #5)Uppercut (John Milton #22)The Chameleon (Charlie Cooper Thrillers)Viveca SternA new series by Viveca. I confess, I only read them because of the cosy setting in Sweden. It is more "Nordic cosy", than "Nordic noir". ...

2020 was a bit unexpected to say the least. Here is a quick review from my perspective.This is the second year we are living in the countryside and hour from Barcelona and over the year it turned out to have been a pretty good decision. JanuaryPretty uneventful. I mostly cycled indoors and met the BRCG crew once for a longer ride. A storm hit Spain and led to a bit of damage on our house. ...

The Phoenix Project Someone recommended this to me and I got it for free on Kindle, so I thought I give it a go. I kind of like the concept of a novelized version of a DevOps book. I also liked the main characters and the general setup. It seemed a bit weird that a lot of best practices are completely unknown in the fictional company, but I guess this might also exist in the real world. For most of the book I was question myself why I would even read it, it is close enough to what I had to deal with in some of my jobs and I don't really find my life exciting enough to be made into a book. One of the problems I see is how rapid change is shown in the book. A very large company is turned around in less than a year and this is even managed in spite of the awful internal company politics. The Unicorn Project After reading The Phoenix Project I thought I give this one a try to see the other side of the fictional company. The Unicorn Project is the developers view of The Phoenix Project, the timelines overlap and some characters are also shared. That being said, I found the main character of this book super annoying. Apparently she is "really, really good" and keeps repeating this a few times. There is even half a chapter, which just describes how "really, really good" she is. Getting through the book with her as the central character was painful. As the first book, this one is also a long list of best practices put into a story. In this book it is put to the extreme though. And there is no reality where all of these could be applied in the short time-frame of the book. If you are interested into a novelization of a developers life I would suggest to just read The Phoenix Project and skip this one. On Goodreads The Phoenix Project The Unicorn Project

The Manager's Path Cover I should start a list of books I wish I read earlier. This one would definitely be on that list. Thankfully it is fairly recent, so I don't have myself to blame. Most people that I know in some kind of lead or management role stumbled into them. This was certainly the case for me. One day you are the lone developer in a small shop or start-up and without your fault it does start to grow. All is well until you have a handful of people in the team, suddenly there is a need for some structure and dare I say the word "management". A lot of developers, including myself, are introverts and also prefer the technology side of a company. Taking on the role of a lead or manager will force you to talk to more people and reduces your time on the keyboard. I never wanted to manage people, but working at my start-up (guideguide, war stories another time) I realised that someone had to do it and if I cared for the company it probably had to be me. This is where "The Manager's Path" comes in. It explains the path you might take from being a lone contributor to taking on more responsibilities like mentoring, leading on the technical side, to managing teams and finally being a CTO. It explains every role in great details with real life examples and asks questions to assess your own situation. Even if you are happy to just being a developer this might be helpful to understand the other side and what to expect from your lead. Maybe it also helps to decide that management is not for you yet and you want to learn more about the technology before you take the next step. Or you decide you just are happy where you are and might never go further than on the technical side. I did see myself in a lot of the chapters and wished I had someone tell me these things 20 years ago. Now I will keep it on hand as a reference to look up when I have to reassess roles and help others to grow. While my title is Technical Director at the moment, in the book I am somewhere between manager of team(s) and manager of managers with a sprinkle of CTO. I wonder if there are similar books for other professions, reading this book might be good, but a lot of things are specific to technical careers. A five star from me. ★★★★★ The Manager's Path on Goodreads My random highlights

I am a relatively long user of the Kindle. I got my first Kindle Keyboard in November 2010 and had to replace it twice, once for theft and once because a broken display. I liked it so much that I was never tempted to switch to one of the newer versions. Most of them come with better displays, back-light, are smaller and lighter, but at the same time remove one feature that I especially like: the page turning buttons. Last year’s Oasis changed that, but the weird charging case turned me off. ...