- Most of my books are more than 20 year old. Some are from my dad and his older brothers. That means they are sixty+ years old! (FYI my dad, Socrates Litsios, recently passed away, had a PhD from MIT (operational research in EE department)).
- I have never been a linear student (except with audio books). I tend not to read books but to read publications. And even then, I skim the publications, I do not read them. However, I do a lot: I program prototype on prototype during my spare time. I implement software for real professionally, mostly in rocket science areas that rely on math. Therefore most of these books still resonate with me, having used much what is in them. That is why I keep them.
- Once a year I throw out the books that no longer resonate. A month ago I put 30 of these books on a chair on the sidewalk, including my Collected Algorithms from ACM books (mostly Fortran in print). At the end of the day only three books were still there! Explanation: many people work for Google or in finance in Zurich.
- None of my books are actually what I work on. Yet many of my books are still inspirational.
- For example: category theory. When I hired a Haskell team here in Zurich I was a bit surprised to find how much they thought lowly of category theory. Or to be more specific, they did not find category theory useful. Yet that is mostly because to know something is not about reading up and know the theory. To know something is to push your knowledge until you feel its limits, and by doing so become even more productive, because you know what works. With category theory, only "mechanized category theory" is valuable for a developer. The difficulty then is a Haskell developer will say "Haskell is mechanized category theory", when in fact it is just one way to do that mechanization projection.
- My back burner long term theme this year has been to have a better understanding of theoretical physics. I have reading math book for this purpose.
- The side note here is that when I was about seventeen, I was pretty upset when I understood that no model in physics "was for ever". Now I find the limits of modelling reality a pretty cool subject, but it took me some time to get over the "feeling of uncertainty" of physics. This also explains why I have always been a math aficionado.
- Another side note is that I don't read books like these cover to cover. I keep them beside my bed and read a few pages here and there over a period which typically is more than a year.
- Last side note: I listen to audio books while driving, shopping, etc. These are books I very much enjoyed to listen on the subject of people in theoretical physics. Graham Farmelo is the star author here with his genuine understanding of what makes these physicist tick:
All original content copyright James Litsios, 2021.