Total 5 books.
Just for Fun, Linus Torvalds
Biography, Read in Dec 2025
Linux flash back In August when works at the company wasn’t so joyful as much as it used to be — partly because of the misaligned goal, unfulfilled promises, stringent security protocol. I was running Windows 11 but for the most of my days, I spent on WSL (linux terminal) writing bash / debugging install script, sometimes pipeline works. On top of the difficult work, company enforced all time VPN that slows & block websites — blocking my productive work hours. I started to look for alternatives. Linux becomes the obvious choice. Lately, Debian 13 has recently been released and rated highly. I gave it a try. It was a solution for me to be productive as well as really trying out the water. It forces me to work more with bash / sh and ultimately making me understand the computer more. I could run multiple instances of company system on Kubernetes of which one was already slowing down Windows like crazy.
In November when the boredom was at its peak and Linus was on the LTT show. This book was mentioned in that show and without hesitation I started to read it. This is very inspiring & entertaining and I really wish I read this book much much earlier (just like any other books on this list …). I wish it was part of the computer engineering course when we studied Operating System. At the end, it’s never too late too learn or probably relearn in this case. Reading this book al
While reading the book, my memories on Linux flashes back. Somehow I’ve never pick up Linux seriously until now.
- When I was around 8 years old. My mom sent me to private computer class where I met my first computer teacher Ajarn Sujin. Little I remembered but I learn a bit of DOS, Windows 3.11, playing games / MS Paint. Dismantling the computer and put them back. We went all the way to disassemble the harddisk and found how beautiful and perfect the disk is as a mirror. I vaguely remember that at some point we installed Linux but there was no game, no UI. What was the fun in that?
- At about 11 years old, I remembered I went to LinuxTLE training and come back with a Linux CD which I might want to try but how to do that since the computers (Pentium 1 era) were so expensive and we only had one at home. Plus, we always used cracked free Windows, so a free OS doesn’t appeal enough. Another chance of running linux slipped away.
- At about 17 years old, at the dawn of home high speed internet ADSL 256kbps. Wifi router 802.11b/g. We started to have internet connection at home but way before smartphone exists, we offered free internet at dental clinic for customers to kill their time while waiting. Linux Mint was the obvious choice for those 2 computers because it was free and sufficient for just internet browsing.
- In the university, I learnt operating system subject. I believe the reference text book is the one mentioned in this book. I learnt how chmod 777, sudo but I didn’t get what is the point of using Linux.
- 5 years ago when I decided to develop in-house system for our dental clinic. The system is fully web-based. Again I stumble upon Ubuntu Linux again for cost reasons since I don’t wanna buy 20 Windows licenses. Linux add extra benefits here since no user knows how to mess up the system (installing games / virus), unlike the alternative — Windows. Web-server is definitely running on Linux as well. Here I started to learn how to live with Linux, how folders work, randomly get things done with sudo.
Now that more games started to run on Linux. Luckily racing games that I play do not run. So another excuse of not using Linux privately. But for work, I really have no complain for the past 6 months of using it. More important note I got from reading book was related to opensource. I started to understand that opensource is more than just a free software. It feel almost like left wing movement in innovation terms.
1984, George Orwell
Fiction, Read in July 2025
Another classic author George Orwell that I have heard times and times. I have no clue why I went for 1984 but not the other titles. At the start, it went very slow because I am not very familiar with the vocabularies and I can’t making any sense what was terms like Ingsoc, Newspeak, and etc. May be it’s the fun of reading fiction to keep on going without actually understanding every words (as oppose of most of science studies). But at one point, the tone of story starts to change (with romance) and I keep reading it non-stop towards to end.
Learning 1: It would have been a big mistake if I hadn’t keep reading until the end because at some point in my life I thought of similar concepts that appear in the story like 1. the uses of much simplified language (much reduced vocabularies / grammars as suggested in ‘Newspeak’) 2. the one truth of political side (without opposition). These thoughts stuck in my mind but I have never developed or tested the theory further. The author has definitely succeed in literally proving what if … in forms of fiction.
Learning 2: I used to value historical fact and fiction differently just because of the fact that they actually happens or not. However, a good fiction can portray as realistic pictures / scenes. From the reader perception, I could hardly distinguish good fiction and the history since myself receive the stories through the same media - ‘words’. Fiction allows us to demonstrate / test the concepts that otherwise humanity would have to wait for thousand years to happen. At that point, when it becomes the history, it may be too late to change or noone would be left to realize that the history has done to us.
Learning 3: Ending in retrospect has been seeds throughout the story but as a human reader it tricked my mind to hope for different ending. As it turned out, it was fun to be wrong.
On one hand I regard this book as textbook for social study. I wish I read it long ago (maybe during high school) but in reality I think I wouldn’t appreciate it this much if I was told to read it or if I were much inexperience.
The Unicorn Project, Gene Kim
Fiction, Read in May 2025
Right after I finished the first book of this series The Phoenix Project and I heard that there’s another one following up, I bought this book without any second thought. However, it took me over a year to actually pick it up and resume my reading habit. I’d actually carried this book once in 2025 when I came to Japan hoping that 3 months in Japan would be enough to finish. I ended up never had opened it. This time around in 2025, I came over to Japan for 1 year assignment. I made sure to carry few books and hoping to finish some would be awesome. It was a golden week holiday in Japan when we travels around kansai region. I made sure to carry The Unicorn Project in my backpack. I am surprised that I could pretty much reading it non-stop whenever I have a short break - waiting for food, queuing for attractions at USJ, quick break at Osaka Expo, in the car, before bed, on the beach waiting for dinner, and etc.
The main things that really hook me into reading non-stop was how realistic it reflects my current life at work. Since January I am in constant motions of integrating systems for Haneda airport project. I have been trying the change the way we work, combining dev & ops, automate the build & deploy, doing things end-to-end, motivating continuous learning among teams. These are nothing new and the rebellion gang in the book surprised me with similar approach. After months of trying, I came to the conclusion that I am not good enough to make the change happen. Reality doesn’t converge to a happy ending like in the fiction. I will need to recollect myself and once again try to overthrow the existing orders.
The key takeaway for me is that we shouldn’t get carried away by the status quo / corporate structure and it’s important to keep repeating the vision for why we do what we do. Additionally, five ideals are an awesome corner stones how we should do any works.
- Locality and Simplicity
- Focus, Flow and Joy
- Improvement of Daily Work
- Psychological Safety
- Customer Focus
Exercises in Programming Style, Cristina Videira Lopes
Programming, Read in April 2025
While I was reviewing the code and being so frustrated with the new code someone was trying to add to the legacy codebase, I thought why people wouldn’t just take a break and start to think if this is how it should be done or if there’s a better way of doing it. Primoz sitting next to me and probably hearing this recurrent complains everyday for couple of days. He gave me a link to this book.
Unlike any other programming books that tell you this is the best way to solve this constrain / problem. The world is heterogeneous we should start embracing different races / culture / a sour cup of coffee?. The same school of thought can be applied to the programming subject very well. In our company lately, we speak so much about that this is best practices and there’s only one way of doing it with microservices, dependencies injection, interface, docker, and etc. I didn’t think that was the way but I have no good reason to say why. This book learn me the universe of programmings styles which are definitely much much more biggest than I thought it was. The book explains the very reasons why each styles are developed from the original purposes / constraint that may be already forgotten. Just simply not seeing the style often doesn’t mean that it’s a bad way of doing it.
This book is highly recommend for any mid career programmer (which I consider myself one of those) where you came across few projects and about to start to develop your personal bias toward one way-of-working, one technology. We shouldn’t frame ourselves to any particular styles but instead enjoy the different beautiful colors and tones.
The Accidental Superpower, Peter Zeihan
History, Read in April 2025
In today’s company where we work remotely, we rarely have opportunities to do casual talk with colleagues. Meetings are always scheduled for topic. The good thing about working for T-Hive is that there’re always opportunities to meet physically and regularly. During one of the PI session (physical meeting), Gasper started talking about books that he’s read and he recommended me this one that he finished lately. From his description, it was likely from the category that I would be interested in but it was quite thick and hard to carry around.
I am always curious how USA has become the most powerful country that dictates the course of today history. I am always curious why it wasn’t my home country which way we are inferior and can we change the course of future history. Everyone I talked to has their own theory about it. This book likewise offer another theory that roots on geography which was unheard of from me. It was not so easy to follow because there are vocabularies that I am totally familiar with (politics..) and the whole map. I need to have google maps on my hand to locate the countries, rivers, regions that are mentioned in the book. It’s always very interesting the learn about the history, relationships, and countries dynamics just by looking at where the countries it situated alone.
As much as the theory and predictions given from the book sounded but I wouldn’t call it a grand theory — single theory that is a root to every derivative. And I would still be optimist and believe that society will continues democratize and decentralize in the age of information & innovation where geography plays lesser roles. It may take time. Any dominant positions are temporal. Humanity will find ways to make the world a better place for every individual.