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☕ Welcome to The Coder Cafe! Today is a recap of my paternity leave, focusing on the things I read and learned. Get cozy, grab a coffee, and let’s begin!
At Google, we get 18 weeks of paternity leave (yes, that’s amazing). Since the birth of my baby at the end of May, I’ve been out of the office and will be back at work next week. These months were the best time to spend with my newborn, but also a nice chance to read, learn, and try new things. Here are some of the technical and non-technical things I got into.
Technical Stuff
Code Health Guardian
I started reading Code Health Guardian. Let me jump straight: it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read on software engineering. Period.
Don’t be fooled by the use of “AI“ in the subtitle (“The Old-New Role of a Human Programmer in the AI Era”). The focus is on code health. It covers various topics such as complexity, causes of complexity, documentation, interfaces, code discoverability, and functional programming.
To me, it felt like a more modern (and better) version than Clean Code.
A quote that perfectly summarizes my love for this book:
Clever in programming is a compliment, clever in software engineering is an accusation.
I strongly recommend this book.
Systems Thinking
Learning Systems Thinking is a book about the concept of systems thinking.
What’s system thinking? Modern software is no longer just isolated applications; they are becoming systems of software. Systems thinking invites us to shift our perspective from focusing on a single software to looking at the larger system it belongs to, and how the parts interact.
One interesting idea in the book is the Iceberg model. It suggests that what we see (the events) is only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface, there are patterns of behavior, deeper systemic structures, and even mental models that shape how the system works:
The lesson is that when working with systems, we should move from reacting to events to understanding the patterns and structures that create them, so we can design better long-term solutions.
The book was a good introduction. Yet, in retrospect, I would have liked it to give more concrete actions or applied examples. I will need to follow up with another resource to go deeper into practical applications of systems thinking.
NOTE: Have you read my post on complex systems? It’s the most-read post of The Coder Cafe.
Learning C++
During my leave, I started learning C++.
Why? At Google, many systems are developed in C++. One I’ve been involved with is Borg. Because I hadn’t done C/C++ since my studies, every pull request I made was painful. I wanted to improve that.
I started with A Tour of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup. It’s refreshingly short for a C++ book (about 300 pages). That was my entry point. Let’s see what will come next1.
NOTE: Did you know that Google uses C++ without exceptions? Mostly for performance and maintainability reasons, functions return an
absl::Status2, which is similar to Rust’sResult.
Whitepapers
At some point, I wanted to delve deeper into distributed systems, but I felt like I had already read most of the well-known books on the topic.
What I had completely missed until then was the angle of technical whitepapers. Most of them are more challenging to read than blog posts, but they offer a depth that can’t be matched.
I read a few during my leave, including F1: A Distributed SQL Database That Scales and Amazon DynamoDB: A Scalable, Predictably Performant, and Fully Managed NoSQL Database Service.
After my paternity leave, I plan to continue exploring more of them as they have become one of my favorite sources of technical insight.
For discovery, I used
‘s papershelf.Non-Technical Stuff
The Mom Test
The Mom Test is a great book that explores patterns and anti-patterns when discussing business or product ideas with customers.
The core idea is this: if we pitch an idea to our mom, she will tell us it’s great, even if it’s not. Customers often do the same. They don’t want to hurt our feelings, so they give polite feedback instead of useful feedback.
The solution is to avoid asking opinion-based questions like “Do you think it’s a good idea?” Instead, we should ask about real experiences and behaviors, questions that even our mom couldn’t fake. For example:
Bad:
“Would you buy a product which did X?”
“How much would you pay for X?”
Good:
“How are you dealing with it now?”
“Why do you bother?”
“Talk me through the last time that happened.”
I haven’t run customer interviews myself, but I’ve participated in some. Interestingly enough, many of the anti-patterns from the book showed up in those meetings. This wasn’t a book with an immediate outcome for me, but it broadened my perspective, and that’s always valuable.
The Art of Explanation
The Art of Explanation is a book written by a BBC presenter and journalist. The author describes how to clearly explain any topics, focusing on ten main attributes:
Simplicity: Is this the simplest way we can say this?
Essential detail: What detail is essential to this explanation?
Complexity: If a topic is complex, we can’t dodge the complexities and hope to explain something well. It reminded me of this illustration:
Efficiency: Is this the most succinct way we can explain this?
Precision: Are we saying exactly what we want to communicate?
Context: Are we provided all the necessary context for people to understand the topic?
No distractions: Are there any verbal, written or visual distractions? (It reminded me of rule #9 here.)
Engaging: Are there times when it’s easy to lose focus? Lots of good things on how to maintain a good flow, such as making sure we move from one sentence to another logically.
Useful: Have we answered the questions that people may have?
Clarity of purpose: Above all else, what are we trying to explain?
The book gave me a practical checklist I can return to whenever I need to convey something complex. It was also a reminder that being clear isn’t a gift, it’s a skill worth practicing regularly.
Made to Stick
Made to Stick is a book that focuses on the question of why some ideas have a lasting impact while others don’t. The authors introduce their SUCCESs framework to make ideas stick:
Simple: Find the core of an idea. The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be. I loved this line:
When you say three things, you say nothing.
Unexpected: A great way to catch attention is with a surprise. We can’t demand attention; we must attract it, and one of the easiest ways is to convey something unexpected by breaking an existing pattern.
Concrete: Our brains are wired to remember concrete data.
Credible: The more credible we are, the more an idea will stick.
Emotions: A great way to make people care is to convey emotion, to make them feel something.
Story: How can we make them feel something? Via stories and great storytelling.
Made to Stick helped me learn that ideas don’t just succeed because they are true; they also succeed because they are communicated in a way that people remember. I strongly recommend this book as well.
Building a Second Brain
Building a Second Brain was one of my favorite reads during this time. I loved it so much that I even wrote a dedicated post about it:
For me, this book was a real game-changer in how I capture and reuse what I learn.
Steal Like an Artist
Steal Like an Artist is a book on creativity built around a simple idea: nothing is completely original. As creators (writers, musicians, or anyone producing work), the author suggests we should “steal” from anything that inspires us and sparks our imagination.
I didn’t find this book as compelling as others, but it does offer a few useful insights. One that stuck with me is the difference between copying and creating: copying a single person is plagiarism, but drawing from many influences is what makes something feel original. The trick isn’t to imitate, it’s to transform and remix ideas until they become your own.
Four Thousand Weeks
Four Thousand Weeks is a productivity book, but with a very different take than most books on the topic. The title comes from the fact that our lifespan is roughly 4,000 weeks.
During my paternity leave, I felt overwhelmed at times by everything I wanted to read and do, and this book helped. Its message is simple: instead of trying to produce more and more, we should accept that our time is limited. We will never get everything done. What we can do is focus on the few things that matter most and give them our best attention.
It helped me find some peace and reminded me to focus on what matters most to me.
Fiction
Last but not least, I couldn’t spend this paternity leave without some science fiction and fantasy reading.
On the sci-fi side, I started exploring the Warhammer 40k universe by picking up a few books about the Night Lords faction. If all you know about Warhammer 40k is the painting and miniatures, you should also know there’s a massive, surprisingly coherent lore built around it. I always assumed it would be some cheap sci-fi, but I was wrong; it’s much richer than I expected.
On the fantasy side, I usually enjoy epic fantasy such as The Lord of the Rings or The Realm of the Elderlings. Yet, I wasn’t in the mood for long and heavy stories. I wanted something lighter and more relaxing. That’s how I found the “cozy fantasy” genre. I read with Legends & Lattes and The Spellshop. Nothing really epic happens in these books, but the atmosphere is calm and comforting. Perfect for a quiet morning coffee (after a tough night).
Being a Dad
Above all else, these four months were a great opportunity to spend a lot of time with my kid (thanks, Google, for that).
I’m not going to elaborate too much on how it went, as it’s very personal. The only thing I want to emphasize is how having a baby is one of those rare experiences in life. Let me explain:
If we traveled to Japan and loved it, we could still say next year, "I’m going back to Japan again.”
If we enjoyed a tlayuda, we could say this weekend, “I’m going to make some tlayudas again.”
If we enjoyed that Coldplay concert, we could say, “Next album, I’m going to see them again.”
With a baby, things feel different. Experiences are truly unique because of how quickly they grow. Especially in the beginning, a baby changes day in, day out: a new way of looking at things, better head control, a new way to grab an object, etc. Because babies change so quickly, every experience becomes one of a kind. Tomorrow is already going to be a different day, a different experience.
But if we look beyond, we might even say that most experiences are truly unique:
We might return to Japan, but we will notice new things, meet new people, or experience it differently.
We might make tlayudas again, but they won’t taste exactly the same.
We might see Coldplay again, but maybe we’re with a different person, in a different city, at a different point in our lives.
Being a dad brought me this truth: life itself is unrepeatable in its details. It is not inherently good or bad; it is simply what makes so many experiences unique and fatherhood so magical.
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💬 What have you learned in these past months? Anything you’d like to share?
📚 Resources
More From the Lattes & Stories Section
Effective Modern C++ perhaps? Let me know what you would recommend as a follow-up.
First of all, congratulations on becoming a dad! Most of the reason why I switched to working remotely, was my new appreciation for the time I am able to spend with my kid. As you said, you don't get this back, ever. Enjoy the journey! It's tough, but worth it.
I also wanted to thank you for the book recommendation ("Code Health"). I'm running a reading group currently and we're about to pick our next book. Now I have a new candidate!