If you have an Android or iPhone, or if you work on a MacBook or a Linux machine, then you are running a descendant of the Unix operating system, which appeared 60 years ago – and this book tells you the story of its creation and how it came to “conquer” the world of computers.
It’s written by Brian Kernighan, who was one of the Unix developers, together with Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and others. You cannot get any closer to the process than with this book, which is also full of anecdotes and tales about how Unix came to be.
I totally enjoyed reading this, and it brought back memories from the “old times” of computing!
The fascinating story of how Unix began and how it took over the world. Brian Kernighan was a member of the original group of Unix developers, the creator of several fundamental Unix programs, and the co-author of classic books like "The C Programming Language" and "The Unix Programming Environment."
Richard Dawkins usually challenges you to think and reason about how the world came to be, and this book focuses on the many ways that animals and plants (yes!) achieve flight.
I particularly liked how the book starts with the very ancient animals (how could any animal, originally sea- or land-based, eventually get to fly) and ends with man’s inventions, from parachutes to moon-reaching rockets.
I also think that the illustrations are part of the book; it’s not something that was added later, but an integral part of the reading experience. I have read most of Dawkins’ books, and this is close to the top of my list of favorites!
Richard Dawkins on how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies.
'A masterly investigation of all aspects of flight, human and animal... A beautifully produced book that will appeal across age groups' Alexander McCall Smith
'Dawkins has always been an extraordinarily muscular, persuasive thinker. What feels new here is that he writes with such charm and warmth' The Times
Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown,…
I think that the atomic bomb project can only be compared in complexity to putting a man on the Moon, and this Pulitzer Prize winning book by Richard Rhodes describes all the process, from the discovery of fission in the 19th century to the Manhattan Project and the dropping of two bombs to end the Second World War.
The book covers so many famous names (Einstein, Curie, Fermi, Teller, Heisenberg, Dirac, von Neumann, Feynman, and obviously Oppenheimer, among many more) and also discusses sidelines, such as the secret missions planned to impede the Nazis from developing their own weapon.
I’m neither a physicist nor a historian, but the book grabbed me, and I finished it in a very few short days.
With a brand new introduction from the author, this is the complete story of how the bomb was developed. It is told in rich, human, political, and scientific detail, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly -- or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan…
Functional programming is a programming paradigm that uses functions for developing software. This book is filled with examples that enable you to leverage the latest JavaScript and TypeScript versions to produce modern and clean code, as well as teach you how to apply functional programming techniques to develop more efficient algorithms, write more concise code, and simplify unit testing.
The book provides comprehensive coverage of the major topics in functional programming to produce shorter, clearer, and testable programs. By the end of it, you’ll have developed the practical programming skills needed to confidently enhance your applications by adding functional programming to wherever it’s most suitable.
