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Monthly Log: 2024-02

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Original language: Chinese . AI translations: English , Japanese .

The first monthly recap was delayed by half a month, and for the second one I kept it up: I only started writing when March was almost over (

Same structure as the first one. Roughly these parts:

  1. Input
    Reading: professional books/novels/good articles, all count as reading
    Anime: new shows / old shows, TV season / movies, notes on what I watched
    Others: movies, TV series, etc., put here

  2. Random Thoughts
    Maybe I will write down whatever I’m thinking

  3. Output
    Maybe a blog, but I’m not good enough, so maybe I have no output for a whole month (lol)

  4. Travel
    If I went somewhere, I’ll jot it down. If not, then whatever

  5. Misc
    Small things that don’t fit in the categories above

Alright, let’s start.

Input

Reading

In February I didn’t read much. I only finished one book: The Mythical Man-Month.

This book is so famous that I’d heard of it long before I even started programming.
In an IT field that changes every day, a book published in 1975 still being treated as a classic decades later says a lot about its quality.

Before reading, I expected it to be some huge, dense technical book. But after starting, it felt more like a collection of standalone essays bound together.
Based on his own experience, the author explores various difficulties in software engineering, and ways to solve or mitigate them (or sometimes: there is no way).

I only have a bit over one year of experience. There were parts I couldn’t fully understand, but many parts resonated with me.
Maybe I’ll gain a deeper understanding after I’ve worked on more projects.

If I were to take notes, I could probably just copy the whole book in here. There’s basically no filler, it’s all knowledge points (lol).
So I’ll only briefly retell the two most famous chapters: The Mythical Man-Month and No Silver Bullet.

  • The myth of the man-month
    The author emphasizes that man and month are not interchangeable units. One person doing six months of work is not the same as six people doing one month.
    Here in Japan, “man-month” seems to be used a lot. I don’t really have a solution for that, since I’m still a newbie and can’t think of a better way to estimate effort.
    The main takeaway is: you can’t simply swap man-months, and adding manpower to a late project often makes it even later.

  • No Silver Bullet
    The author predicts: Within ten years, no single software engineering advance (a silver bullet) will bring an order-of-magnitude improvement in productivity.
    Because difficulties in software development can be divided into essential difficulties (complexity, conformity, changeability, and invisibility) and accidental difficulties.
    Most breakthroughs so far address accidental difficulties, and there still isn’t a tool that significantly solves essential difficulties.

    To be honest, I still don’t fully understand this part. I’m too inexperienced, and I don’t know much about software development in 1975. The OOP mentioned in the book is basically standard practice now.
    But I can kind of see what he’s getting at: the hardest part of software development is design rather than programming (maybe that’s the point?).
    I’ll come back to this later.

Other points include:

  • A program becoming a system module costs at least 3x. Becoming a marketable product costs another 3x. So going from program to system product costs at least 9x.
  • The difference between great programmers and mediocre ones can be an order of magnitude.
  • It’s best to form a small “surgical team”-like team.
  • Maintaining conceptual integrity in system design is extremely important.

There are simply too many takeaways. I plan to write a separate post later: publish the notes I highlighted while reading, plus some of my thoughts.
More importantly, these are only first-read impressions. When I reread the book later, I’ll keep updating the reflections. It might be interesting to record the process of understanding deepening as experience grows.

While searching around after finishing the book, I unexpectedly found 编程随想’s review on Douban: 人月神话(不朽的软件工程名著)
Thinking about 编程随想’s story feels a bit bittersweet…

Anime

  • New shows I started in February

    • 僕の心のヤバイやつ
      I watched episode 1 when season 1 aired. It was too cringe and I couldn’t take it. Even cringier than Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions. Even though the reputation improved steadily after episode 1, I still didn’t feel like watching.
      I wasn’t planning to watch season 2 either. But I saw on bgm that season 2 is ranked within the top 100 overall, and I was shocked. What kind of monster is this? Let me see if it’s undeserved (
      I randomly opened a mid-season episode and ended up having a great time. Then I quickly went back and caught up from season 1. Season 1 is still cringe, but if you endure it, it gets better and better.
      Season 2 clearly got a big budget boost. The OP looks gorgeous and even shows off. Maybe the studio invested more after season 1’s unexpectedly good response.
      Season 1’s visuals felt a bit poor; season 2 is very stable, and there are way fewer “down bad” moments. The viewing experience improved a lot.
      The humor isn’t based on characters acting stupid. It comes from the interactions between the leads, and lots of little details that make you smile.
      The emotional depiction is delicate. You can follow the characters and feel their hesitation and small progress (I personally felt pretty immersed).
      An anime that makes you genuinely happy. Very good.

    • 愚蠢天使与恶魔共舞
      Fairly fun, a comedy. OP is good. Watched a bit.

    • 反派大小姐等级99～我是隐藏BOSS但不是魔王～（悪役令嬢レベル99～私は裏ボスですが魔王ではありません～）
      The long black-haired heroine is pretty. In similar shows I’ve seen, the heroine usually has no romantic line with a male character, but this one clearly has a male character that seems likely to develop into a romance. Kind of special.

  • Continuing

    • 狩龙人拉格纳
      Story is good. Keep watching.

    • 勇气爆发 Bang Bravern
      Keep watching and see what kind of shenanigans it pulls.

    • 事与愿违的不死冒险者（望まぬ不死の冒険者）
      Has some story. It’s fine.

    • 治愈魔法的错误使用方法
      Has some story. It’s fine.

    • 我独自升级
      Watching mainly for the fight animation.

  • Paused for now

    • 金属口红

  • Want to watch but haven’t yet

    • SYNDUALITY Noir 第2クール
    • 药屋少女的呢喃
    • 不死不幸
    • 迷宫饭
    • 佐佐木与文鸟小哔
    • 葬送的芙莉莲

  • Revisiting older ones

    • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
      It finally hit streaming. Great art. Don’t remember much of the plot, so I rewatched it. Worth it just for the visuals.

Others

Recent TV/movies. I’ll try not to spoil.

  • 劇場版 少女☆歌劇レヴュースタァライト
    Revue Starlight, forever god. I’ve watched the Revue starting at 17 minutes in episode 1 of the TV series dozens of times. Too good.
    The movie premiered in 2021. I wasn’t in Japan back then so I couldn’t see it. Even though there were BD sources later, I still didn’t watch it, saving it for the big screen.
    This time I finally fulfilled that. I caught a re-screening and watched it at Ikebukuro Shin-Bungeiza. They even placed Karen and Hikari’s capes on the small stage in front of the screen. In the center was the Position 0 symbol, with three beams of light shining on it. The atmosphere was perfect. Amazing.

    As for the story: while watching, it felt like there was a huge amount of information. “This part is so cool”, “I don’t know what’s going on, but this part is so cool”.
    But after finishing, when I tried to recall what the movie was expressing, I realized I understood nothing.
    Felt like I drank some strong alcohol

  • 排球少年
    I haven’t watched the TV series. I’m not that into sports anime either, but it’s still worth watching: a group of like-minded friends, respectful rivals, pure competitive spirit. A youth I’ll never experience (

  • 布达佩斯大饭店
    The plot feels like not much, but the centered framing photography runs through the whole film.

Random Thoughts

Even though I’ve lived in Japan for a year, my Japanese hasn’t improved much. I don’t get to use Japanese much in daily life or at work.
The “natural immersion learning method by leaving it alone” didn’t make my Japanese improve much.
Some things I encountered recently made me realize I really need to learn Japanese properly. I plan to start by shadowing anime dialogues to practice.

Output

Nothing. Congrats

Travel

In February I basically didn’t go anywhere and didn’t take many photos. Sad.

Misc

In early February, Tokyo finally got snow. This winter has been relatively warm, so this might’ve been the first snowfall. It started around noon and got heavier and heavier. At night there was also strong wind, giving it that “snow flying everywhere” feeling.
I wanted to take a few photos of snowy Tokyo at night, but I couldn’t stand the cold after a few minutes and ran back inside.
Unfortunately the snow didn’t last long. It basically stopped around midnight, then it started raining in the second half of the night. By morning there wasn’t much snow left. I gave up on going out to shoot.
But hey, it did snow at least once. Winter feels complete.

Closing

Finally squeezed out the February recap before March ended. Late-stage procrastination isn’t easy (

I thought there wouldn’t be much to write, but once I started I still rambled quite a bit.

In a few days March will be over too, so I can prepare a new file.