books

The Rust Programming Handbook

by

I read this book because I often watch the YouTube videos of the author, so I was curious to see how he uses this different medium and read something different about Rust. Obviously the book cannot be compared to the official Rust book, also because the goals are different.

It presents all the topics with good examples; at the end of every chapter there is a summary and exercises that help to better understand the different topics. I appreciated the chapters dedicated to the peculiarities of Rust, like Ownership, Borrowing, References, and the Borrow Checker, and the chapter dedicated to concurrency.

If someone asked me how to learn Rust, I would say: read the official book and afterwards keep a copy of this book on the desk as a practical guide. Just to give an honest review, I have only one doubt about the last chapter dedicated to Docker.

I wonder if it could be skipped or made shorter. In any case Francesco, you did a great job.

The Ai Con

by

For irony, yesterday I finished reading The AI Con, on the same day ChatGPT 5 was presented.

As the title says, the book talks about the cons of AI: environmental issues, exploitation of people, copyright, educational problems, political problems, and so on.

I understood that a book like this can feel anachronistic nowadays (especially for AI fanboys — not for the people who really study the topic and are actual experts, but they are few), but I still recommend reading it.

One advantage of the book compared to AI is that you can hear different perspectives.

A technical blog is not a waste of time.

by
Writing for developes

Often lately I thought (and maybe not only me) that maybe writing tech blog posts or newsletters is not helpful anymore (I’m talking about posts that should have some value, not clickbait ones).

This book, one of the best tech books I’ve read this year, changed my mind and gave me back the enthusiasm to keep writing.

The authors explain how to write different types of posts, using theory and real examples.
They also give some suggestions on how to use AI to check mistakes in your posts, not just grammar, but also to investigate if the post is unclear, and so on.
But they clearly say: “don’t use AI to write the post” – it must be personal, your idea, your style.

It’s not easy nowadays, and that’s exactly why it’s more beautiful.

Bare-Metal Programming: A Great Book to Start with STM32

by

The last book I read dives into bare-metal programming, which means writing code that runs directly on the hardware, without an operating system. If you’re curious about embedded systems beyond platforms like Arduino or Raspberry Pi, this book is a great starting point.

The book is titled Bare-Metal Embedded C Programming, and it uses the NUCLEO-F411 development board, based on the STM32F411RE microcontroller. It’s a powerful yet affordable board ideal for learning low-level programming.

Who is this book for?

Both beginners and experienced developers will find it useful. It starts with setting up the development environment—installing the IDE, the toolchain, and the software required to upload code to the board.

Although the author works with Windows, I tried the examples on both Linux and macOS without issues.

What’s inside?

Each chapter includes:

  • A theoretical introduction
  • A practical coding section

This structure helps you understand the concepts before jumping into implementation.

What you’ll learn

Throughout the book, you’ll get hands-on experience with:

  • ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter)
  • SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface)
  • I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit)
  • And many other low-level features of STM32 microcontrollers

If you want to explore bare-metal embedded development and move beyond high-level platforms, this book is definitely worth reading.