A book of such promise is Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty, yet it fails. The first third of this work followed the hopeful theme, intertwining the story of programming, its style, and the author's complex relationship with his Indian heritage, desire to be an artist (writer, etc), and his ability to make money programming. An interesting twining that continued to encourage me to read, yet some worrisome signs developed.
The first worry was skipping a long section on how computers work. This *is* my field of Computer Science, so I wasn't interested in reading the basics. Yet worse was noticing some inaccuracies. They established a certain level of understanding in Computer Science that was concerning, particularly in light of the author's non-technical background. Livable, er readable, sure.
It was then the author's intent to show the great intellectual contributions made by Indians. I have no dispute of this point, except that it wasn't actually fitting with the established theme of the work. Finding that Sanskrit has a codified language of great antiquity enabled the author in this quest. Alas, it was long pages that grew increasingly divorced with the first part of the title, "The Beauty of Code" and further focus on the later, "The Code of Beauty". And this code deriving from Indian literary traditions.
In the end, the book concluded. A crescendo of final claims that each read like next page would be the last, until such time as there was really no text left. I learned something about Indian culture by reading this book, except that was not why I read it. I did not gain in what I sought, so I cannot recommend reading it, nor care to provide a link to it.
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