Merge branch 'release/20200512'

content/reviews/books/fledgling.md

@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
++++
+title = "Fledgling -  Sharon Lee, Steve Miller"
+date = 2020-05-12
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["books", "reviews", "scifi", "liaden universe"]
++++
+
+[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5585180-fledgling):
+Theo Waitley has lived all her young life on Delgado, a Safe World that is
+home to one of the galaxy's premier institutions of higher learning. Both
+Theo's mother, Kamele, and Kamele's onagrata Jen Sar Kiladi, are professors at
+the university, and they all live comfortably together, just like they have
+for all of Theo's life, in Jen Sar's house at the outskirts of town.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+{{ stars(stars=2) }}
+
+First things first: I did enjoy the fact that the universe has gender roles
+inverted -- with women being considered "strong" and "intellectual" and men
+being the ones that want to look pretty -- and this is not throw at your face
+at every moment, although it gets explicit by the end of the book, but by
+then, you're already good with it.
+
+On the other hand, some things feel... weird. Not about the genders, but in
+the story itself. There is some great secret, something the main characters
+want to hide, doing a lot of schemes to conceal it and when it is said what it
+is... it feels dumb. Ok, someone is clumsy, but that's natural in someone's
+family and WHY THE HECK IS THAT A SECRET?!?
+
+Also weird are some dialogues. At some point, there is one character asking a
+question and getting annoyed at it at the same time, like he didn't like to
+hear the question he just asked. Some discussions just jump into conclusions
+-- in the right conclusions -- which, again, feels weird. And there is a short
+arc in the middle of it that leads absolutely nowhere. It is throw in the
+story, affects absolutely nothing and goes away without a trace.
+
+Maybe it's because I got the book from Humble Bundle and jumped straight into
+the 12 book of the series (the "Liaden Universe", although this is the first
+book about a sub-series of one of the characters, or so it seems), but I
+didn't feel compelled by any of the characters.

content/reviews/books/rust-in-action.md

@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
++++
+title = "Rust In Action - T.S. McNamara"
+date = 2020-04-28
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["books", "reviews", "rust", "t s mcnamara"]
++++
+
+[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45731908-rust-in-action):
+Rust in Action introduces the Rust programming language by exploring numerous
+systems programming concepts and techniques. You'll be learning Rust by delving
+into how computers work under the hood. You'll find yourself playing with
+persistent storage, memory, networking and even tinkering with CPU
+instructions. The book takes you through using Rust to extend other
+applications and teaches you tricks to write blindingly fast code. You'll also
+discover parallel and concurrent programming. Filled to the brim with
+real-life use-cases and scenarios, you'll go beyond the Rust syntax and see
+what Rust has to offer in real-world use cases.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+{{ stars(stars=4) }}
+
+{% note() %}
+The version of this book I got is not the final version, it's part of
+Manning Early Access Program, which allows people to read and participate in
+"constructing" a book. A lot of things may change in the final version, so be
+aware of this.
+{% end %}
+
+I have to say, I don't buy the "introduces the Rust programming language" part
+of the description. A few points seem related to people that already have some
+knowledge about the language, and jumping straight to some non-trivial problem
+appears to skip a few "introduction" points, in my opinion.
+
+One have to ask what "in Action" means. Sure, you'll write your one RFC
+754 for dealing with floating points, so you can understand why some floating
+values get to 6.000000000001, and while you won't ever write your own floating
+point processor, you have to ask yourself: What is being explained about Rust
+here? Sometimes, the problems feel more like "I want to solve this" than "I
+want to explain this feature of the language", while it should be the other
+way around.
+
+Another confusing point: The output of a program appears before its code.
+While not that weird, you end up with some sections showing the output,
+explaining a bit and then, way later, you get the code what actually produces
+that output. I remember reading a bit about the output and some discussion
+about it and I got really confused about what was producing that output.
+
+The Rust part seems a bit out-of-date, too. There are some `extern crate`,
+which is optional at this point. Updating the code to reflect the latest
+version of the language (the syntax, that is) would be better.
+
+On the other hand, I have to give the author the props for managing to explain
+things _really well_. Why you should use something, how can you apply
+different things to the same data and so on. That's the book greatest
+strength.
+
+So, is it a bad book? Not at all. It has some quirks, but overall is well
+explained and, if you keep an eye on the language from outside, it answers a
+lot of stuff that you won't figure out anywhere else.