Book reviews

content/reviews/books/a-devils-chaplain.md

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
++++
+title = "A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love"
+date = 2019-07-16
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["en-au", "books", "reviews", "richard dawkins"]
++++
+
+[Goodreads summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61536.A_Devil_s_Chaplain):
+Richard Dawkins's essays are an enthusiastic testament to the power of
+rigorous, scientific examination, and they span many different corners of his
+personal and professional life. He revisits the meme, the unit of cultural
+information that he named and wrote about in his groundbreaking work The
+Selfish Gene. He makes moving tributes to friends and colleagues, including a
+eulogy for novelist Douglas Adams; he shares correspondence with the
+evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; and he visits with the famed
+paleoanthropologists Richard and Maeve Leakey at their African wildlife
+preserve. He concludes the essays with a vivid note to his ten-year-old
+daughter, reminding her to remain curious, to ask questions, and to live the
+examined life.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+{{ stars(stars=2) }}
+
+A better name for this book would be "Dawkins, by Dawkins". It's a collection
+of articles written by Dawkins, selected by Dawkins himself.
+
+The first thing I noticed is that, for a "smart" person, Dawkins surely can't
+write. It seems he tries to shove so much stuff in an article that, at some
+later point, you start asking yourself what the heck was the point he was
+trying to make to start with.
+
+The other thing I noticed is how much he likes to quote other people. The very
+first article is so full of quotes, it feels like more than half of it is
+simply quotes. And absolutely a sloppy job in stitching them together.
+
+On top of that, there is a constant feeling that Dawkins believes he's
+"Neo-Darwinian Prime": The only person capable of talking about new Darwinian
+theories, and calling other theories wrong. I have the feeling that, in the
+foreword for a Stephen Gould book, Dawkins claimed the book was wrong. But,
+then again, with the mess Dawkins do with its ideas, I'm not actually sure if
+it was a review or a foreword.
+
+And even if, through this book, Dawkins claims that he has a good relationship
+with Gould, the fact that he keeps claiming he believes Gould theories are
+wrong, and that general feeling that he's the only one that can claim to be
+neo Darwinian makes me believe that he, actually, didn't.
+
+In general, I'm not even sure if this book gives a good impression of Dawkins.

content/reviews/books/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks.md

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
++++
+title = "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks"
+date = 2019-07-16
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["books", "reviews", "en-au", "bruce a tate", "clojure", "haskell", "io", "prolog", "scala", "erlang", "ruby"]
++++
+
+[Goodreads summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7912517-seven-languages-in-seven-weeks):
+You should learn a programming language every year, as recommended by The
+Pragmatic Programmer. But if one per year is good, how about Seven Languages
+in Seven Weeks? In this book you'll get a hands-on tour of Clojure, Haskell,
+Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, and Ruby. Whether or not your favorite language is
+on that list, you'll broaden your perspective of programming by examining
+these languages side-by-side. You'll learn something new from each, and best
+of all, you'll learn how to learn a language quickly.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+{{ stars(stars=1) }}
+
+A couple of random thoughts about this book:
+
+First off, you have the idea that, for each language the author would spend
+one week (I'll not get into the fact that each "week" has 3 days only). This
+is a great idea: How much of the concepts of a programming language can you
+capture in just one week. Are the interfaces good? Are they simple and easy to
+understand? The fact is, the author did not spend one week on each language.
+In the Clojure chapter, he mentions that he got the idea after a month. So
+instead of trying to capture the good and bad points in one week -- which,
+again, it's a good thing, so one can understand how "ergonomic" a language is
+-- the author decided the reader should only take one week per language.
+
+Second, there is a huge about of "obvious", "obviously" and "simple". Sure, it
+may seem obvious for the author, but most of the time, things are not obvious
+for people who never saw anything related.
+
+Not only there is an abuse of "obvious" things, sometimes the author seems to
+either not understand some concepts of the language or tries to simplify an
+explanation to the point it sounds wrong -- and I just realized that 'cause
+I've read books about some of the languages.
+
+And there are times when the author shows a piece of code, with something
+completely new, and forgets to explain what that new thing means. I'm glad
+I've read books about Clojure and Haskell before, otherwise I'd never
+understand what the thing really was.
+
+On the general, it's a book about seven languages. Instead of reading this
+book, I'd suggest getting the list of languages and going after them in other
+ways instead of reading this.