Shadrack Lilan

Writing

Essays and book notes.

  1. Review of Poor Numbers by Morten Jerven

    Review Kpedekpo and Arya commented on the status of national accounts in Africa.

  2. Akrasia

    When I started this blog, I hoped to churn out at least one article every two weeks. However, it has been over 8 months since my last post and I felt frustrated because it was not the first time I set a seemingly easy goal but failed to follow through.

  3. Review of Zero To One by Peter Thiel

    “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” This was by far one of the best books I have read in a while. Peter’s thesis was that successful companies are the ones that: Create a monopoly. Tackle a problem that no one else is willing to do.

  4. A Review Of My First Year As A Software Engineer

    Today marks a month to my one year anniversary as software engineer. I began working for a local startup in Nairobi without ever doing a software engineering internship. I am forever thankful to my manager for taking a chance on an unproven, fresh out of college kid who barely took enough computer science classes to really understand what’s happening under…

  5. Setup Vim for Javascript Development

    There are a lot of tools that you can use to edit your code, and none of them more intimidating than vim. There is a saying that a good way to freak out the non computer savvy public or new linux users is to ask them to close vi/vim/neovim instance from the terminal.

  6. Review of Man’s Search for meaning by Victor Frankl

    This is by far the best book that I have ever read in terms of how it connected with the soul. I think I live in an interesting time where there is collective sadness and I wonder what the issue could be. Victor Frankl divides this book into 3 sections i.e.

  7. Review of Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin

    Evolution doesn’t design things and it doesn’t build systems; it settles on systems that historically conveyed a survival benefit Chapter 1 Satisficing: settling on an option that’s not the best but good enough. The decision-making network in our brain does not prioritize.

  8. Review of Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

    I had read several books and listened to several podcasts that recommended this book. I must say that this book was worth every penny. The book is a series of letters from Seneca to his student. He writes them at the end of his life and he packs a lot of wisdom in it. Seneca’s words touch on different facets…