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The Programmers' Stone
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 17, 2025
I haven't finished the book, but I am already at the middle of chapter 7. My thoughts are:
- The packers/mappers perspective is very interesting; I can see either the writers or their sources have categorized the type of people often seen in the workplaces by their work patterns. The classifications are not without reasons, but I feel that the definition is being too broad, as most people are probably not strictly one or the other, but in between, not to mention that different people may have differing approaches to different situations. Also, the characterization of packers seems to be overly harsh, even though the book itself agrees packers are not without merits - as they are crucial in some repetitive, manual labours.
-I am not the best linguist myself, but I found myself reading multiple times and checking the dictionary for every paragraph when reading through the chapters. Instead of using a simple language that can be easily understood, the Programmers' Stone opted to use confusing babbles of words and usage of vocabularies from some stories or fictions of some works that readers may not have heard of before. There are many references to works that I had to search for on the internet before I knew what they were referring to, and some I simply skipped because I cannot find the references. Not to mention some grammar and spelling mistakes.
- At the very least, the writers seem to know their stuff and have a lot of real-world examples, such as the Japanese economic rise after World War 2, and why copying the Japanese approach doesn't really help other businesses outside Japan. Or the advantages of people doing repetitive work after the agricultural era. Or the examples of the good and bad programming practices. Honestly, these parts are the best things from the book; they are entertaining to read, and I think the writers should focus more on these examples and how they affect programming.
- The packers/mappers perspective is very interesting; I can see either the writers or their sources have categorized the type of people often seen in the workplaces by their work patterns. The classifications are not without reasons, but I feel that the definition is being too broad, as most people are probably not strictly one or the other, but in between, not to mention that different people may have differing approaches to different situations. Also, the characterization of packers seems to be overly harsh, even though the book itself agrees packers are not without merits - as they are crucial in some repetitive, manual labours.
-I am not the best linguist myself, but I found myself reading multiple times and checking the dictionary for every paragraph when reading through the chapters. Instead of using a simple language that can be easily understood, the Programmers' Stone opted to use confusing babbles of words and usage of vocabularies from some stories or fictions of some works that readers may not have heard of before. There are many references to works that I had to search for on the internet before I knew what they were referring to, and some I simply skipped because I cannot find the references. Not to mention some grammar and spelling mistakes.
- At the very least, the writers seem to know their stuff and have a lot of real-world examples, such as the Japanese economic rise after World War 2, and why copying the Japanese approach doesn't really help other businesses outside Japan. Or the advantages of people doing repetitive work after the agricultural era. Or the examples of the good and bad programming practices. Honestly, these parts are the best things from the book; they are entertaining to read, and I think the writers should focus more on these examples and how they affect programming.
December 5, 2023
Ok, it's a free, online and outdated book.
I should have expected less of it.
But, I can ditch the feeling that this book could have been so much more.
The main concept it brings is very well established in the first chapter. Mappers vs Packers are a good metaphor of how some cognitive processes work. But the remainder of the book just rumbles around the subject and gets more and more aggressive by the page. There are a lot of scientific gaps and "leaps" taken that are hard to just swallow.
I should have expected less of it.
But, I can ditch the feeling that this book could have been so much more.
The main concept it brings is very well established in the first chapter. Mappers vs Packers are a good metaphor of how some cognitive processes work. But the remainder of the book just rumbles around the subject and gets more and more aggressive by the page. There are a lot of scientific gaps and "leaps" taken that are hard to just swallow.
December 24, 2022
Changed my life.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews