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Books I Read in 2023
Taking a quick look back at the books I read. Some I read thoroughly, while others I just skimmed through.
The Era of Community Design: Creating "Towns" by Ourselves
This was introduced in the blog post below, and since it was the beginning of the year, I decided to challenge myself with a genre I don't usually read.
[Revised 3rd Edition] Learning PostgreSQL from Internal Structures
It was packed with content that is worth glancing through, even briefly, when using PostgreSQL.
Readings in Database Systems, 5th Edition
Known as the "redbook," "Readings in Database Systems" is a classic piece of content in the world of building your own (R)DBMS.
I came across this and gave it a read (it's entirely available on the web).
While it's not the most recent information, it broadened my scope of knowledge, including the history of databases.
Introduction to Concurrent Programming
I read this because I didn't quite understand concurrency control while building my own database as a hobby.
It provides a broad explanation of knowledge related to concurrent programming.
[Hands-on] How Linux Works
I read this as the designated book for a reading group I've been attending for several years.
It gave me a good grasp of the overall picture of Linux's main mechanisms.
Designing Data-Intensive Applications
This was the best book I read this year.
I saw some mentions that parts of the content might be outdated, and I considered waiting for the next edition, but I don't regret reading it now. Having read "Database Internals" previously might have made it easier to absorb the content.
The Making of a Manager
My EM recommended this to me, and it was excellent.
Software Architecture: The Hard Parts
While the content isn't bad, I felt there wasn't much new to learn, possibly because I had already read "Monolith to Microservices" and "Fundamentals of Software Architecture."
Web Performance Tuning Taught by Masters
I read this for my first participation in ISUCON. I was grateful for the well-paved path it provided.
(Though, in the actual competition...)
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
I read this on a colleague's recommendation, and it was good.
Learning Rust from Scratch
I read this as the designated book for a reading group I've been attending for several years. I was able to learn Rust and computer science elements.
Penetration Testing by Building a Port Scanner
I also read this as the designated book for the reading group I've been attending for several years. Since I was at a level where I was just learning the term "pentester" for the first time, it was very educational.
Datadog Cloud Monitoring Quick Start Guide
I read this because it's the monitoring platform we use at work. The content mainly focuses on explaining Datadog's features, and there was less practical discussion than I had initially expected. (As the title suggests, my expectations were just misaligned.)
Database Related Papers
I have been participating in a group called "Database Paper Morning Reading Group" for nearly a year now, and I've read a fair number of database-related papers.
Even though I say I "read" them, it was more of a light reading—glancing through them during the limited time of the morning sessions and listening to the subsequent discussion.
However, perhaps thanks to consistent participation, I've become able to tackle papers more casually outside of the morning sessions as well. Here are some that I personally read relatively thoroughly:
- Amazon Aurora: Design considerations for high throughput cloud-native relational databases
- Amazon Aurora: On avoiding distributed consensus for I/Os, commits, and membership changes
- Efficient Locking for Concurrent Operations on B-Trees
- A symmetric concurrent B-tree algorithm
- Concurrency control and recovery for balanced Blink trees
- Zanzibar: Google’s Consistent, Global Authorization System
- The Evolution of LeanStore
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