Tobias

I got around halfway through this book before realizing that learning a new programming language through a thick textbook might be the single worst way to do it. Ordinarily this wouldn't be news to me, but in this case I wanted to try it anyway.

See, learning Java in 2025 is different from learning Rust, or Zig, or Gleam in 2025.

With its first release in May of 1995 it has now enjoyed almost 30 years of development. That's quite impressive, but it also means that over the years, the language has gained many more features to accomplish the same things in new and different ways.

Reading blogs, or articles, or even the documentation it is quite hard to understand what modern Java actually looks like and how it differs from old Java. Stackoverflow is often especially bad for this, since it disallows duplicate questions and accepted answers are often 10+ years old. Sometimes those answers get updated, but often times they don't.

So I thought it would be a good idea to buy the most recent edition of one of the most well regarded textbooks to circumvent this issue.

And to be fair to the book, it is very comprehensive, specifically mentions the modern ways to do things right from the get go and overall just very well written.

So my issues with this book aren't at all about *this* specific book, they are about the format. As so many others do as well, so does this book try to incorporate a set of exercises after each section. And they cover the content from those chapters fairly well. However, you can really only implement a bunch of completely meaningless classes so many times before you want to punch through your monitor.

Java Books in particular for some reason seem to gravitate towards exercises where the reader has to implement classes to closely replicate an org chart. `Person`, `Employee`, `Manager` being the de-facto standard way to explain classes and inheritance, when that is an objectively (pun intended!) terrible way to explain the concept. I understand that authors want to make this concept relatable, but pick literally any technical concept where object-oriented programming actually provides benefits to explain it. Otherwise people learn from minute one to focus excessively about arbitrary abstractions instead of actually solving technical problems.

The one saving grace of this book is that it summarizes the important takeaways of every chapter at the *beginning* of each chapter in about 10 or so bullet points. That is amazing, I wish every textbook would adopt this. It is *much* more helpful to have this at the beginning, because it guides the reader towards paying particular attention to the important bits during the rest of the chapter. For the chapters that I did work through I read these bullet points at the beginning (as is intended) and then again after reading the chapter to make sure that I didn't miss anything important during it. Sometimes this made me go back to a section because I noticed a gap in my understanding, but most of the time having this section at the top primed me well enough to grok it in one go. It's hard to believe how rare this approach seems to be, considering how simple the idea is. Just put the learnings at the top people, it helps!

Now that I have this book I'll probably come back to it to figure out some of the modern best practices, but only after building at least a few medium-sized real-world projects with the language. I certainly wouldn't recommend buying the book for that purpose, but if you have access to it through a library then it might not be the worst choice for that.

In conclusion: If you want to learn a programming language, build things with it. Don't read a book. Just build. And *maybe* come back for the technicalities later.

Kaput offers a compelling explanation for Germany's current economical struggles by observing its policy decisions around energy, tech, manufacturing, finance and immigration over the last thirty years. Münchau presents a robust, albeit sometimes controversial, assessment of Germany’s reliance on manufacturing exports, branding it as a neo-mercantilist fixation that neglected vital sectors like digital innovation and economic flexibility.

Central to Münchau’s thesis is the assertion that Germany’s economic model, heavily anchored in manufacturing exports of automobiles and machinery, has made the nation disproportionately susceptible to global market fluctuations. Empirical data reinforces his perspective, showing exports constituting roughly half of Germany’s GDP, a notably higher proportion compared to other major economies. This structural dependence, while historically profitable, now emerges as a distinct vulnerability.

The critique of Germany’s digital infrastructure emerges as one of Münchau’s most compelling arguments. Germany's persistent lag in digitalization is so bad it's hard to believe. Münchau attributes this shortfall to decades of strategic miscalculations, where policymakers favored traditional industries over investing in digital technology. He draws a contrast with Tesla’s dominance over German automotive giants in electric vehicle innovation to show the tangible consequences of Germany's technological stagnation.

Münchau also explores the entrenched networks between Germany's political elites, financial institutions, and major industries, framing this "old boys’ network" as a critical obstruction to economic dynamism. Using Landesbanken, regional public banks historically governed by politically appointed boards, as a case study, he demonstrates how political patronage often compromised sound financial decisions. The costly financial collapses of institutions like BayernLB and WestLB illustrate how such cronyism has stifled entrepreneurship and diverted resources away from potentially transformative economic activities.

The examination of Germany’s energy policy further amplifies Münchau’s critique, notably the controversial reliance on Russian natural gas. The Nord Stream pipeline, championed by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and criticized for its geopolitical naïveté, ultimately left Germany significantly vulnerable when geopolitical tensions escalated and Russia curtailed gas supplies in 2022. Münchau convincingly argues that the resulting energy crisis was foreseeable, illustrating how politically influenced economic policies can have severe long-term ramifications.

While Münchau presents a rigorous critique, the analysis occasionally tends toward excessive pessimism, potentially overlooking areas of genuine German strength. For example, Münchau pays relatively limited attention to Germany’s substantial contributions to global innovation, such as BioNTech’s groundbreaking COVID-19 vaccine and Berlin’s burgeoning startup ecosystem.

I can accept that focusing only on the missteps is a strategic choice to present a more easily digestible narrative, however there are so few caveats mentioned in his hypothesis that it becomes suspicious. Potential readers are well regarded at accepting this selective presentation with a big grain of salt.

Overall, _Kaput_ serves as a pointed critique and an great stimulus for policy discourse, urging Germany to refocus its economic strategies to align with contemporary global realities. It's not the definitive text on any of the topics it covers, but it serves well as a light introduction to all of them.

If you're interested in the economic policies of Germany, but aren't sure where to start, this book might be for you.

If anything it's an enjoyable read.

By no means is this a *bad* book, but it isn't anything special either.

I fell in love with the world & characters of Runeterra after watching Arcane Season 1 and 2. So when the Ambessa novel went up for pre-order I jumped at the chance to dive back into the world.

And it certainly delivers on that front. Throughout the show, Ambessa remains one of the more mysterious characters, tightly controlling what the people of Piltover are allowed to know about her. The book massively expands on her backstory and gives substance to her behavior as a character that previously had to be inferred.

Clark does this in a way that feels consistent with what we already know about the character and the world she lives in. Clark genuinely manages to capture the characters essence and there's no jarring difference between the book version of Ambessa and the Show version of Ambessa. This also holds true for the other characters we know from the show like Mel and Rictus.

Unfortunately the rest of the story is just very forgettable. It meanders from one battle to the next travelling all over Noxus, with a little bit of political squabbling in between, all while introducing a myriad of semi-generic characters with no way to know if any of them will even make a second appearance.

I'm not so much complaining about the complexity of the web of characters, but rather that most of them lack any distinguishing details about their motives and principles. For a character that's known for actively controlling the narrative, there's a surprising lack of decision making on Ambessa's part. The few decisions that she does make feel hollow. The story just kind of happens to and around her.

This is unfortunate, considering that Arcane itself is *all* about the characters and their decisions. The show truly mastered the art of making decisions of all sizes feel complex and highly impactful. It's of course unreasonable to expect a short spin-off novel to retain the same level of story-telling mastery that an award-winning show which took 6 years to produce and cost $250 million dollars does, but I still feel a little underwhelmed.

With that said, I started out with the opinion that it isn't a *bad* book and I stand by that. It's just not *great* book either. It's a relatively generic fantasy novel, set in a pre-existing universe, uplifted by a few beloved characters. I enjoyed my time reading it and I would recommend it to anyone who is already invested in the characters and in the mood for an easy story.

If that's not you, skip it.