He did some short format writing, but The Martian was his first published novel, I think. He was a software engineer before that.
Artemis follows the same pattern of a capable main protagonist solving problems, so it is not very different from the other books in terms of characters, but it is much better in character depth and development than The Martian.
Just as a general advice that has only occurred to me recently: if you don't like a book, stop reading it and read another one. There are great books, and there are mediocre, and also you some might work better for you, and some worse. If you start with a book that you don't like, and power through it anyway, you might be reluctant to try another one.
You've mentioned sci-fi, but didn't mention Robert Sheckley. If you haven't read any of his stories, drop everything and read Citizen in Space, for example.
If you'd rather go for something more modern, fun, but also a little sad, try The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.
For something extremely entertaining, but also mysterious, try Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson.
If you're into videogames and like drama, try Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. That's the best book I've read in the past 5 years.
This, and Artemis too. Basically anything by Andy Weir at this point.
There's literally no general speed limit on the Autobahn. My car has winter tires right now and I'm legally required to have a small sticker on the dash that reminds me not to exceed their rated maximum speed of 230 km/h.
The same is true about escaping from the police car if they try to stop you. You'll be charged for dangerous driving, but not for the pursuit itself.
It's not criminal, but you would get points on your licence.
Despite this design, it is possible to write useful programs.
Interestingly, this applies to C++ too.
I'm surprised no one mentioned it. Hellblade (full title: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice) had me in literal tears. Not only it's a decent game, it's also an essay on heavy topics like mental health and the story of viking invasions.
to be fair, the way it's worded I can parse as "a language for web programming", instead of "a programming language for the web"
Funny how there's a solid lack of quadruple "A" games here in the comments.
Install GnuCash, learn accounting, and start tracking your money and use proper financial language. There is a lot of good financial advice out there (budgeting, investments, debt reduction), and all of that is much more efficient if a) you know where your money goes and where it comes from, b) you are proficient with financial software, and c) you can talk to the banks in their own language.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but that estimate could have been wrong by a factor of 10 easily. The idea of an "average video" being 50MB, for example, is questionable: at typical bitrates of 1080p videos this would amount to about a minute-long video. I don't think that's an average video at all. It also doesn't account for many things, for example the cost of replicating new videos to the CDN.
I also don't find the idea of YouTube not being profitable ridiculous or hilarious. YouTube definitely wasn't profitable before monetisation, and Google used to run it for prestige and data collection purposes at a financial loss. They clearly have been trying to make it more profitable, but whether or not they have crossed the break-even point in the past or are still hoping to cross it in the future is not as clear to me as it is to you.