Revisiting the Classics

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a sucker for buying new books, sometimes before I've even finished what's still sitting on my shelf.

This usually happens about once a month, not necessarily with just physical books, they could be digital but there comes a time during the month where I discover something new I'd like to pick up. This could be a recommendation from a friend, or someone I work with. It might've been mentioned in a podcast or maybe even popped up on my feed while I was scrolling Twitter.

From this admittedly bad habit, I've accumulated some bangers over the years, they're books I'll keep forever nonetheless. Don't get me wrong, I do reference my old books from time to time but I don't ever recall rereading any of my favourites from start to finish.

Why is it different now? Well, I'm not the same engineer I was when I first read those books, hell I wasn't even the same person. Taking another lap of these books gives me a chance to unlock or discover something I missed before, especially with a fresh perspective and a heap of more experience behind me.

The types of books I'm itching to revisit seem to be more high-level, even philosophical. I say philosophical because the first book I've picked up to reread over the next two weeks is "A Philosophy of Software Design" by John Ousterhout. Very well known and an absolute classic.

I hope to be a little more practical and apply what I'm rereading in different ways this time around, hopefully past experiences can even solidify some of the topics. I don't usually get excited by the idea of rereading old books but here we are! We've all got them lying around, give them another go.