“The Lean Startup”, book review

Published on: 01.02.2016

The_Software_Paradox-Book_Cover

Number of pages: 296
Written by: Eric Ries
Publish by: Self published

Conclusion
If you are interested for solid/scientific way to test your software business ideas, than read this book.

Review
I have found about this book from a friend.
He recommended it that I should read it.

Book is almost 300 pager so it is not a quick read.

Idea of this book is that you should first test your idea/assumption with some measuring and after that, according from result from measurement, either pivot or persevere.
You have test with measure so that you can always objectively learn something.

This is called Build Measure Learn feedback loop in book:
Build-Measure-Learn-feedback-loop

Pivot mean to change, or abandon original idea, and persevere to continue with it.
But you should first test and measure, before implementing final solution, so that you do not waste time on something that will not be useful in the end.

So far, when I have used this approach in practice it always worked.
At least, you learn something from it 🙂

“The Software Paradox”, book review

Published on: 13.12.2015

The_Software_Paradox-Book_Cover

Number of pages: 62
Written by: Stephen O’Grady
Publish by: O’Reilly Media

Conclusion
This is very interesting book regarding software business, read it.

Review
I read this book because it is very short, around 60 pages. I can read it fast, and if book is not good at least I did not spend much time on it.
But the book is great.

Software paradox means that even as software is more used everywhere and is more strategically important than ever before, but making money from software is getting harder and less profitable.
This is basic idea of book that is explained in first chapter.

Chapter 1 describes what is software paradox.
Chapter 2 present evidence for software paradox and present four generations of software valuation.
Chapter 3 explained what have influenced decline in revenue from software, examining competing with free, available, customer and developer empowerment.
Chapter 4 is describing how few companies are coping with software paradox.
Chapter 5 has some advice on what to do.
Chapter 6 is just final thoughts.

Point of this book is that businesses should shift from making money from software, to making money with software.
Because profits from making money from software are declining and will got to zero (in most case).

“VSAT Networks Second edition”, book review

Published on: 30.11.2015

VSAT_Networks_Second_edition-Book_Cover

Number of pages: 296
Written by: Gerard Maral
Publish by: Wiley

Conclusion
If you do not know anything about VSAT networks, then you will be benefited from reading this book.

Review
This book is around 290 page, with lot of pictures, graphs and math equations. So it is not like 290 pages full of text.

Reason why I have read this book is that from 2015 I started to work as Electrician Officer Entertainment on AIDA cruise ship. There I have responsibility for TV satellite system. Because I like to know science /theory behind things I read this book to have better understanding about subject.

Book have 5 chapters. Introduction, Use of satellites fro VSAT networks, Operational aspects, Networks aspects, Radio frequency link analysis.

Most important thing to know in VSAT network is that average propagation delay for star shaped network is 0.5s and for meshed networks 0.25s.

Book has lot of math, equations and graphs, so it is very good from academic point.
In this book you can lear how to calculate everything in VAST network.

“Getting Started with Beautiful Soup”, book review

Published on: 01.04.2015

Getting_Started_with_Beautiful_Soup-Book_Cover

Number of pages: 130
Written by: Vineeth G. Nair
Publish by: PACKT Publishing

I have been using Beautiful Soup at least for last 3 years for web scraping.
I learned it by practice and reading documentation.

As far as I know this is first book about Beautiful Soup, so I was really excite to read it.
I prefer learning from book, tutorial as second choice, last choice is from documentation.

Form somebody who is starting to use Beautiful Soup I would recommend this book, even somebody who had used Beautiful Soup (like myself) can find value in it.

What I have learned from “Getting Started with Beautiful Soup” book:

  • Beautiful Soup can be used to change the content of an HTML/XML document.
  • how to set input encoding for Beautiful Soup document
  • default output encoding for .prettif() and .encode() is UTF-8, but it can be changed also.
  • different formatters (minimal, html , None , function) can be passed as parameters to prettify(), encode(), and decode()
  • get_text() return all text from page (including JavaScript)