Etudes are musical exercises that isolate specific skills for practice. They also generally have artistic merit of their own. These exercises in programming are in the same spirit, and they too have aesthetic merit. This is not an easy book, but if you undertake to work through it, you will become a better programmer.
Wraps up the great war well enough, but feels rushed. The conclusion was inevitable, and so is a bit empty. The middle books, Grey Lensman and Second Stage Lensman, were much more satisfying (and get 5 stars!)
My favorite book by Sawyer. His most sympathetic main characters. The physics and the philosophy fit perfectly into the stories and never overwhelm the characters. Has all of the wonder of the best Arthur Clarke stories, but with well-drawn characters with whom you can identify and for whom you care.
I don’t think you can learn a programming language from a set of questions and answers. There is good advice here, but it is hard to find it.
A cybernetician in a dystopian future finds a 300 year old cyborg head on the massive rubbish pile beneath the floating city of the elites. The brain is still alive and he reactivates the girl, cobbles together a new body for her and names her Alita (Gally in the Japanese) after a dead pet.
And Gally begins her journey to recover her memory and her identity. This plays out as the drama of adolescence: finding herself, first love, rebellion against parents: but hidden in her past and her memory are powerful battle techniques. What was she?
The story plays out over nine volumes, covers many additional plots including a mad scientist, rollerball-like sports, hyperviolent battles – just about every manga trope you could ask for – and finally, the shocking secret of the elites' city, and a mystical revelation.
I’m actually giving the 4 stars to the English edition - I bought this one because I was curious how the puns were handled in the original. My french isn’t good enough to appreciate it. (But this edition has translations and explanations, which I hadn’t expected.)
The Asterix stories are great fun!
How can you not be delighted by a machine intelligence called Purr-Puss whose logo is an elegant and cute stylized siamese cat?
I don’t yet understand the material well enough to review the book. Stay tuned.