I was thinking what to write about in the first blog post to give you an idea (and to better understand myself) what the shape-taste-smell of the blog would be. And somehow the book “Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary” by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond immediately popped up in my mind. I guess it because some ideas in the book are the same I’m writing those lines right now. So, it is kind of “saying hello” through a book review. Hopefully, it’ll make sense when you’ll finish reading. And now we are gonna take a turn towards Linus Torwalds.
The book
Of course, book reviews by itself are purely subjective. So my subjective opinion would be - the book is one of “must-reads” in the IT industry. It’s not technical at all, but it will make you a better, more curious, more aware software engineer. And also a bit better person. There are a lot of “eternal” classic books in the IT world like Mythical Man-Month, Pragmatic Programmer, Hackers and Painters, Cathedral and Bazaar, etc. If somebody in the universe has a beautiful library with all that books, “Just For Fun” for sure is lying on the same shelf (assuming books are categorized by content, not by cover color or whether they have nice pictures or not).
Content & style
Linus with $author did a great job writing this book. Both the style and content are very engaging. It is really easy to read. “Main road” goes through Linus`s life. Sightseeings are everything related to creating Linux and influencing opensource movement. So yes, it is kind of memoirs, but at the same time, it’s a history of why we have Linux, why it’s free, why opensource exists, how the latter was born and so on. It’s like learning the history of your own country - why it is democratic, why there is corruption and so on. It’s not a life/death information, but definitely, can make you look smart in a casual conversation can help you better understand why some things in IT are what they are. Besides that Linus talks about his life philosophy, which is quite interesting and not what you would expect.
I’ll not give content outlines here (why? hint: you definitely should read the book) other than this excerpt:
There are three things that have meaning for life. They are the motivational factors for everything in your life––for anything that you do or any living thing does: The first is survival, the second is social order, and the third is entertainment. Everything in life progresses in that order. And there is nothing after entertainment. So, in a sense, the implication is that the meaning of life is to reach that third stage. And once you’ve reached the third stage, you’re done. But you have to go through the other stages first. So, if you know that life is all about this progression, then obviously your purpose in life is to make this progression. And the progression is not one single progression. Everything you do is part of many progressions. It can also be, “What can I do to make society better?” You know that you’re a part of society. You know that society is moving in this direction. You can help society move in this direction. So what this builds up to is that in the end we’re all here to have fun. We might as well sit down and relax, and enjoy the ride.
And this is exactly why I’m starting this blog - this is one of my progressions, and I want to have fun along the way. So, this is it for a semi book review, semi introduction post. I hope you enjoyed reading (and will enjoy that book).