Books - pc.cafe

Winning Arguments

From online reviews, it seems many readers of Stanley Fish’s Winning Arguments were disappointed that the book doesn’t actually tell you how to win arguments. It’s actually rather fatalistic in describing futile arguments: those that are full of emotion and recrimination

The Demon In The Freezer

I suspect when Richard Preston started writing The Demon in the Freezer, he intended the book to be entirely about smallpox — it’s eradication and potential resurrection, either by accident, warfare or terrorism. But after the anthrax-laced postal mailings that occurred shortly after the

Sometimes the Magic Works

As a career programmer, and on whimsical occasion an aspiring author, I’ve always thought that programming is more like writing. Aside from the obvious parallels in entering text and following syntax and grammar rules, good code is expressive, succinct and has style. And

Masters of Doom

Hewlett and Packard. Jobs and Wozniak. Gates and Ballmer. High-tech success stories often revolve around a notable duo, and in the computer game industry, there is no more better-known story than that of id Software, creator of the Doom and Quake series of first-person

The Art of Darkwatch

Written when I was still on twitter. I don’t know if it’s my lack of inspiration or the power of twitter, but lately most of my blog ideas have stemmed from twitter threads. The latest was a tweet lamenting the lack of

Gearheads: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sport

I’ve been to the Armand Hammer museum and SF MOMA a few times, but for the most part, modern art leaves me cold. So when I found the first fifty pages of Brad Stone’s Gearheads: The Turbulent Rise of Robotic Sports devoted

Thoughts on Design

Perhaps my favorite thing about the San Francisco airport (with the food court dim sum a close second) is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art store in the International terminal. I try to always stop there and pick up a design book that

Console Wars

The most entertaining part of Blake J. Harris’s Console Wars is the forward by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. That isn’t a knock on the book — the forward is just really entertaining banter. The rest of the book is entertaining, too, and

The Hunger Games

I wrote this before the movie, obviously. I read the The Hunger Games almost accidentally — it happened to be at the top of the list of Kindle books I could borrow while trying out Amazon Prime, and I remember seeing an entertainment news personality

What Should I Do With My Life

Like his previous work, The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson’s What Should I Do with My Life: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question has an irresistible title. I can’t think of anyone who hasn’t had

The Upright Thinkers

Aside from the first week at my junior high school, where they apparently assumed I was a poor immigrant kid who would be a low performing student and thus assigned me to classes with other low performing students, I was generally considered a “gifted”

To Program Is Human

Digging up old book reviews, I discovered for some reason I wrote two reviews of To Engineer is Human. Here is the second one. Or maybe the first. When I worked in Silicon Valley, it seemed everyone wanted the title Software Architect. It’s

Carl Melcher Goes to Vietnam

Written after my Epinions phase but still quite a while ago. Last week, I checked out the local Dave and Buster’s (it’s a happening place on Friday night, like Chuck E Cheese with a bar), and I was reminded of the Epinions

Yeah, I’m Introverted, Now Leave Me Alone

I wrote this before reading this book. During a childhood camping trip in Catalina, while all the other kids ran off to the beach, I sat at a picnic table, went into library mode, and settled into a good book (can’t remember which

How I Met Unity

This is the preface I wrote for the first edition of my game programming book Learn Unity 4 for iOS Game Development. My preface was removed in the second edition, so here it is for posterity. Technically, I first started programming on a TRS-80

More About Ada

A few years ago, I wrote about how a history of computer programming would feature women who haven’t received enough recognition (which in itself is a good reason for everyone to learn about the history of computers), most notably Ada Lovelace. Since then,

The History of Programming

On my list of things-I-want-to-do-but-I’m-not-serious-just-talking is a history of computers, or at least a history of computer programming, something like Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy or Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization. I got this interest during my one

Slay the Dragon!

I got around to reading Slay the Dragon! Writing Great Video Games a little while ago because I’m interested in writing, I work in game development, I met one of the authors when he was a producer at Crave Games and I worked

To Engineer Is Human

I have some experience with the design and development process for software and semiconductors, so the layman’s typical surprise at the appearance of bugs in programs and microprocessors always pains me. Software and integrated circuits are essentially machines with thousands to millions of

Ultimate Punishment

Starting off my Books section in this blog with an old (really old - I think I wrote it on Epinions) review. The death penalty, like abortion, is one of those issues that seems to inspire strong opinions in just about everyone, regardless of