The oddity of the software profession is about reading and reusing the code. How often have you heard about reading code or reading design books, stepping outside of your realm of knowledge and sniffing at what other people are trying to resolve?
I have to admit my book-wormish attitude because my childhood was pestered with a voracity to read and experience through others' life experiences. I used to buy books of edgy authors and enjoy their forays in brutal wordy experiences or carnivals of words. I miss sometimes the adventure of reading unheard construction of words with a flavor resonating with me which is hard to explain. But that's enough! Lately, my experiences were oriented in the business realm of things. Books like "Build to last", "Crossing the chasm", "The black swan".
We were raised to believe the information is the answer to anything. In communism the more you knew about the "real" map of the social network the better you were in understanding the drift, the deep currents and stay at the confluence of the events. The real life was a staged experience, good enough to make you fell you are secure and not overlooked by the society - it reminds me of the Bush's "no one left behind" program. At that time there were no declared paupers in Romania, or jobless or educationless; everyone has the same opportunities and access to the same social services - health, education. Banks were not accessible to people. People don't have extra money, where to go in vacation abroad and global news were filtered out of "social unrest" currents. I remember long moments of silence on my street when Saturday night or Friday night special documentaries with images and content from outside our world were broadcast. We were hungry to hear, see, and escape from our world and one of the simple means were books. Even local authors with some liberty to visit foreign countries were rebellious in a sneaky way, alluding the real problems the party forbade to discuss or even mention. Among us you didn't know who was the spy to report on rebellious thoughts or attitudes.
The books and culture had a different way to reflect reality and the society, as a whole, learned to speak and allude the real issues in jokes and comic stories. Sometimes the art performances were clear acts of confronting the system in a joyful way with the shield of creating just art. So, in order to partake in the underlying cultural act you had to understand more than explicit meanings of the words. How can you accuse of suggested subversive ideas when the performance was an historical play or the period older several tens of years to the current times or the performance was intended for kids? The more in-congruent the intended to the real audience was the more we enjoyed it.
I deviated from my subject, books .... but I will resume in a different post.
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