The Most Interesting Tech Reads In July
BJARNE STROUSTRUP ON LEX FRIDMAN PODCAST
- https://lexfridman.com/bjarne-stroustrup/
- Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, is perhaps the famous first sentence of any novel
- It reminded me of Bjarne’s contracting observation which could be paraphrased as
Messy code is all alike, every beautiful peace of code is beautiful in its own way.
- In his own words
It’s easier to recognize ugly than to recognize beauty in code and for the reason is that sometimes beauty comes from something that’s innovative and unusual and you have to sometimes think reasonably hard to appreciate that. On the other hand, the messes have things in common and you can have static checkers, dynamic checkers that find large number of the most common mistakes and you can catch a lot of sloppiness mechanically.
WORKING IN THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY, CIRCA 1989
projects always turned into awful death marches with lots of late nights and weekends in the weeks leading up to the release date. Burnout was high. But few people quit over it because we thought it was just how it had to be
- so true, so applicable, and so important to have historical consciousness and being able to appreciate the solutions to problems the pain of which is no longer felt
SCRATCH IS A BIG DEAL
- https://www.bryanbraun.com/2022/07/16/scratch-is-a-big-deal/
- This goes agaist the famous E.W. Dijkstra Archive: On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (EWD 1036) and is fully in line with an intuitive approach championed by Bret Victor, beast of burden
HOW TO READ FAST
- https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/12/how_to_read_fas.html
- read a lot
- this is like code
- high initial cost, low margin cost
- read bunch of code slowly, but in a delightingly devouring fashion
- each next piece of code will be easier to read and understand
NAT FRIEDMAN’S BELIEFS
- https://nat.org/
- Enjoyed the non-apologetic intro
As human beings it is our right (maybe our moral duty) to reshape the universe to our preferences
- Disliked the stress on speed, understand the urgency, but there is no delicacy in speed
- Small teams mantra is also symphatetics
APPLYING CARDIAC ALARM MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES TO YOUR ON-CALL
- https://fractio.nl/2014/08/26/cardiac-alarms-and-ops/
- Found this link in an SRE book
- Another great insight from medical enrivonment — after the Checklist Manifesto
ON PROVING YOURSELF | THESEPHIST.COM
- https://thesephist.com/posts/prove/
- an apology of ambition, against complacent class
THE NEW GEOPOLITICS BY BRUNO MAÇÃES — PROJECT SYNDICATE
HOW I REGAINED CONCENTRATION AND FOCUS — INNOQ
A (currently very strict) zero-news-diet.
HOW LONG WILL THIS TAKE? | SETH’S BLOG
Pathfinding takes longer than path following. Discussions lead to changes in spec. Dependencies always add time.
