Book Review: Andy Grove

I have recently completed reading a book by Richard S. Tedlow. It is titled: 'The Life and Times of an American - Andy Grove', not quite aptly though. I came across this book in the Top 10 reads of Business Standard and found it(luckily) with my roommate. I definitely achieved a milestone by reading this book as it is: 1.) my first book which is only published as hardcover edition 2.) the first biography that i ve read. Hence, my opinion might be a bit naive and to some extent prejudiced (towards autobiographies and against biographies).

The book starts in Hungary where Mr. Andras Istvan Grof is born in a Jewish family. It takes a slow pace in describing how he evades Hitler and his minions to reach America. After putting himself through college and graduate school and getting 'Americanized' to Andy Grove, the book revs up its pace after he joins Fairchild (a start up into manufacturing memory chips). At this juncture, the book introduces us to two new people: Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore (yes, the same guy who proposed Moore's law). The trinity is formed. And soon, Intel. Henceforth, the book bleeds blue.

Frankly, i was expecting much more of 'life and times of Andy Grove if not an American'. But the author takes its readers through the complete journey of Intel, and its mercurial rise, and talks intermittently of the main subject. Although the book is very informative, at times i found it very boring when author took up some point and stuck to it for pages.

Ironically, i did love reading it but i would suggest readers not to expect too much of Mr. Grove in it. One would definitely, slowly know what this man is all about. But i would suggest the publishers to publish the next reprint with a * marked statutory warning: Intel Inside.

I would like to share an excerpt from the book. This poem was posted by somebody (addressed to Andy Grove) on internet, when it(internet) was still infantile. And Pentium was Launched and almost, almost drowned.

When in the future we wish to deride
A CEO whose disastrous pride
Causes spokesmen to lie
And sales streams to dry
We'll say he's got Intel Inside(TM).

The Encrypted Email and a much more Encrypted Education

Year 2018,

On a warm afternoon, i was working in my office, sitting beside my window that affords a "beautiful" view of the congested roads outside our apartment, when a message popped up notifying me of a new mail(obviously an e-mail as everything has become 'e' now, it goes by default). In fact its been long since insecure 'e-mails' have become obsolete. But there was a time when they were not, it was 2008:

"Studying for the exam of Network Security, or rather i should say the 'Nonstop Slogging' because of its large syllabus. I took a break to practically look into a few of the concepts i had read until then. One of them was, PGP, abbreviation of Pretty Good Privacy. The motive of choosing this topic was that the book was all praise for 'the man', Zimmermann, who had invented this concept. A laudatory excerpt from the book goes like this...

Bless the man who man who made it,
And pray he ain't dead.
....
He gave it out for free,
Now every common man has PGP.

I do not remember the complete poem, but this is how i got enthused and chose to dig deeper into the concept. Googled PGP (to google then, was to use the highly illustrious search engine, Google), followed simple instructions to download the software. Perplexed by the simplicity of the procedure, i quickly became familiar with it which made me realize the extent of superficiality in the knowledge imparted by the forceful memorization of the permutations and combinations of letters. Sitting on the chair, my book kept on the table, i could visualize each and every friend of mine rote-learning PGP and preparing to 'throw up' in a manner so as to maximize the score.

With scores of ideas frothing up in the brain, while contemplating on each of them one by one, the Mac-book said "Its twenty hours". With a note of thanks to Steve Jobs, i realized that i had challenged Anuja to beat her. Giving up the thought with a pitiful conclusion that the 'whole system is flawed and stubborn', the 'other' thoughts instantly purged out of mind. A transition took place from self 'less' to 'fish' thoughts, setting aside the laptop, getting back to the book, the next topic to memorize was - Message Authentication And Hash Functions."

I am grateful to my interest in the subject per se that today, i at least remember the names of a few topics i had learned while graduating in 'Computer Engg'. But i am pretty sure, these memorized permutations and combinations of letters of english alphabet will fade away soon.