More books

[rhu]

Started to read A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Didn't care for it: I don't need to be told to eat my spinach; the charts were misleading in the ways Tufte warns about; and the author has the need to denigrate the theories with which he disagrees. For example, he keeps on emphasizing in the chapter on technical analysis that lots of statistical studies have shown that, after commissions and taxes, TA is no better than buy-and-hold. But that implies that (1) with modern discount brokers ($8/trade) and an IRA (no short-term capital gains taxes), at least some TA systems would be better than buy-and-hold; and (2) if one is basically a buy-and-holder, at least some TA systems can profitably be used to time one's entry. So: which ones would work? That he won't tell us, because he so firmly believes in the positive-bias random-walk theory he can't bring himself to provide useful information that might demonstrate that his pet theory is only 99% accurate. Pfeh.

Am in the middle of Peopleware, a book about managing teams of software developers. An engaging read, even if I already realize that I'm quite fortunate to work at a company that does most of what the authors describe.

The Art of SQL was eye-opening. (SQL is a computer language for writing database programs.) This book is for people who know SQL syntax but don't yet have a deep understanding of the implications of relational theory on how a functionally correct query can nonetheless be completely wrong (and have performance, scalability, and contention consequences).

Forced my way to the end of The Sons of Heaven, the last Kage Baker "Company" novel. Will post my review in a separate post, behind a cut, for the benefit of mabfan and whoever else still hasn't read it.