Tangentially related, is this book worth the hype? I don't read a lot of genre fiction, but don't like to miss out on the exceptional (just finished and loved Flowers for Algernon, as an example).
Edit: Sounds like an enjoyable, low commitment book. Will give it a try, thanks for the feedback.
It's an ok book. I thought Artemis was his most interesting book and also the most underrated. It's got some nice world building, I could imagine an expanse-like series based on it.
Also the main character is a tough girl which is nice.
I liked the Martian but it was a bit too cheerful for a pretty rough situation. And the characters a bit one dimensional. Artemis is a bit grittier.
Project Hail Mary didn't quite resonate with me somehow. It's ok but not a rereader.
I loved the book as entertainment. It's brisk, engaging and though at least one reply here mentioned terrible writing, I disagree. Weir has a certain overly strident, cheery style that some might not like, and fair enough, but it is what it is: validly his specific style, and not all that bad for narrative flow as long as it doesn't rub you the wrong way.
The story is also just sentimental enough in an unusual enough way that I fell into it enough to be moved where it counts.
If you want to read it for anything resembling hard science concepts though, forget about it maybe. Weir lays on just enough of his usual technical babble to give a richer scifi feel to the book, but much of the core events are hand-waved into existence well away from anything resembling realism. That's okay though, because realism isn't really the point of the book anyhow.
In "The Martian" I thought the technical stuff was closer to touching on realistic details, since it was about a comparatively simple Mars mission gone wrong. Here though, we're talking about using near-current technology -with a clever plot device for an exotic fuel source- being used to zip around nearby star systems at just a hair under the speed of light, and most of that is complete, utter fantasy in disguise.
I'll give this to Weir though, he's damn imaginative at crafting a lot of very plausible sounding, deeply detailed technical talk, despite it mostly being completely invented.
I don’t get it. Sending a query to a remote server is going to be much slower than sending the query to local database. When has Postgres not been enough on its own?
I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way!) that every design choice comes with real trade-offs. There’s no magic database architecture that optimizes every dimension (e.g., scalability, performance, ease-of-use) simultaneously.
Social media often pushes us into oversimplified "winner vs. loser" narratives, but this hides the actual complexity of building great infrastructure.
Recognizing and respecting these differences makes us smarter engineers, better community members, and frankly, just more enjoyable people to chat with.
PS Thank you for helping me add a new book to my list :-)
9 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 30.0 ms ] threadWhat's the beef between PlanetScale and Neon? Benchmarking, uptime, vibe coding?
The quote at the end doesn't really help me. Which one is good for what?
Edit: Sounds like an enjoyable, low commitment book. Will give it a try, thanks for the feedback.
Also the main character is a tough girl which is nice.
I liked the Martian but it was a bit too cheerful for a pretty rough situation. And the characters a bit one dimensional. Artemis is a bit grittier.
Project Hail Mary didn't quite resonate with me somehow. It's ok but not a rereader.
The story is also just sentimental enough in an unusual enough way that I fell into it enough to be moved where it counts.
If you want to read it for anything resembling hard science concepts though, forget about it maybe. Weir lays on just enough of his usual technical babble to give a richer scifi feel to the book, but much of the core events are hand-waved into existence well away from anything resembling realism. That's okay though, because realism isn't really the point of the book anyhow.
In "The Martian" I thought the technical stuff was closer to touching on realistic details, since it was about a comparatively simple Mars mission gone wrong. Here though, we're talking about using near-current technology -with a clever plot device for an exotic fuel source- being used to zip around nearby star systems at just a hair under the speed of light, and most of that is complete, utter fantasy in disguise.
I'll give this to Weir though, he's damn imaginative at crafting a lot of very plausible sounding, deeply detailed technical talk, despite it mostly being completely invented.
I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way!) that every design choice comes with real trade-offs. There’s no magic database architecture that optimizes every dimension (e.g., scalability, performance, ease-of-use) simultaneously.
Social media often pushes us into oversimplified "winner vs. loser" narratives, but this hides the actual complexity of building great infrastructure.
Recognizing and respecting these differences makes us smarter engineers, better community members, and frankly, just more enjoyable people to chat with.
PS Thank you for helping me add a new book to my list :-)