What Am I Reading?

Jon Ousterhout. 2018. A Philosophy of Software Design

• Based on a design course that he teaches at Stanford University. A discussion of software complexity and it’s impact on software properties.

Marco Vermeulen et al. 2019. Functional Programming in Kotlin.

• Functional programming from first principles, using Kotlin examples. This book pitches itself as the Kotlin equivilant of “Functional Programming in Scala”, which was a significant book for that language.

What’s next?

Michael L. Scott. 2015. Programming Language Pragmatics (4th ed)

• The languages textbook that I’ve been meaning to read for years. Maybe I’ll get through it this time before they release a new version and I repurchase it (again).

Brandon Sanderson. 2006. Mistborn: The Final Empire.

• I’ve certainly known about Sanderson’s novels for a long time, but I’ve never dug into any of his series. On his website, he suggests this is a great series to start with.

Alan Moore. 2023. Miracleman: The Original Epic

• This is a re-release of the original series, which was originally published in the 1980s. I’ve been a fan of Moore’s work since reading Watchmen.

Completed

Dave Leeds. 2025. Kotlin: An Illustrated Guide.

• Dave has spent a few years writing this book chapter-by-chapter on his website, and has recently published it as a book. This is my favourite Kotlin book; Dave does a great job of explaining complex topics.

Brian Bendis. 2001. Alias

• A comic series about Jessica Jones, a former costumed superhero named Jewel who left that life behind to become a private investigator. Not a typical superhero comic, and an unusual title for Marvel.

Richard Wagamese. 2012. Indian Horse.

• Winner of the Canada Reads People’s Choice award in 2012. Richard Wagamese traces through his fictional characters the decline of a culture and a cultural way. A very moving and significant story of the impacts of racism, and cultural displacement.

Ian Sommervile. 2019. Engineering Software Products.

• A unique approach to teaching software engineering and focuses on the type of software products and apps that are familiar to students, rather than focusing on project-based techniques.

Aldous Huxley. 1932. Brave New World.

• One of the OG dystopian fiction novels. I haven’t read it since high-school but it seemed like a good novel to revisit. For some reason, dystopian novels resonate right now.