Book Review: The Four Tendencies As a general rule, I'm skeptical of personality typing systems. I badly want them to work, but for most of them, I'm not persuaded that they provide any more insight into your personality
COVID vaccines and safety around pregnancy The Motivation As a favor to Amy, I put together my best investigation of the question: Are there any legitimate safety concerns around the COVID vaccine, especially for women who are either pregnant
Non-Technical First, Break All the Rules - Book Review Recently I've been trying to read through the highlights reel of the best-regarded business books out there, and I intend to post occasional reviews. First... Like most business books, it's got a lot
Technical A Tale of Three Linters Even I will admit that Javascript an ugly duckling, and I love Javascript. Just about every other language out there has coalesced around a set of stylistic conventions for how code is supposed
Technical The Monster that Eats Software Companies There's a tired genre of books called the "Business Fable". Best known by way of the classic "Who Moved my Cheese?", its a story of a bizarre fictional society
Non-Technical How to make remote work........work! I love remote work. If you've been following this blog, you probably know this. Around 2 years ago, I decided to bend all my professional ambition into landing a job which would allow
The Doors of Stone shall never open Patrick Rothfuss's "The Name of the Wind" was a remarkable work of fantasy when it came out in 2007. It's the story of Kvothe, whose exploits have made him the subject
Technical Developer Alignment NOTE: Credit where credit is due. Renowned software blogger Steve Yegge made a very similar point several years ago I've observed that there are two kinds of developers in the world. One kind
Why Remote Workers are Superior The idea of working remote has always appealed to me. But those times I've actually tried it, not only did I enjoy it, but I was genuinely surprised how much more productive it
Know thyself: How I fell in and out of love with personality typing systems Personality-type systems carry a golden promise of increased understanding, both of myself and of the people around me. They are a staple of pop psychology which I find myself fascinated with. The typical
Non-Technical A Hierarchy of Process Programmers hate corporate process. We are constantly fighting to simplify it. But in the course of fighting it, we are tempted to lose sight of how excessive process is not fundamentally a technical
Quitting Google There's this article on quitting Google that was going around the web a few weeks ago. My first thought reading it was, "Wow! It sounds like the promotion process at Google is
Non-Technical America and class We understand that American society today is divided into four broad social classes. But while we acknowledge the existence of different classes on an intellectual level, it isn't something we notice on a
Technical When the Stack is Stacked Against You I generally market myself as a "Full-Stack" Developer. It's an overused term, to the point that it risks falling into meaninglessness, like "Synergy". But I think there is an
A Law in Name Only My current employer has a very strange policy: They actually abide by most of their own rules. Most large organizations I've been a part of have two sets of rules: There's the written
Non-Technical The Fable of Booles Programmers use the word "Boolean" on a daily basis. It's a term both for variables which can only have the values "True" or "False", as well as
Non-Technical Breaking the Career Glass Ceiling I've mentioned this before, but I'm a big fan of Eric Dietrich's blog. He focuses in particular on the topic of how developers can transition to becoming consultants. This post, in particular, struck
Technical The First Language In the last few years, I have had the privilege of helping a few different people get started in the world of programming It brings some questions into sharp focus. One of the
Non-Technical Would a Programmer by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet? Its no secret that High-Tech is glorious field to be a part of right now. I confess, I tend to click on those click-baity listicles you see around with names like, "25
Non-Technical The Wandering Guru Phase It seems to me that when there's a new field of practice, it evolves through a few steps. By field of practice, I mean something very broad: Everything from Medicine to Astronomy to
Non-Technical 8 ways Anime is like Opera "Whaaaaaaaaaat?" you say. How are those two anything alike? Anime (aka, Japanese animation) is a bunch of weirdo cartoons for basement-dwelling nerds, and opera is a highbrow hoighty-toighty zooty-snooty aristocratic art!
Technical The Final Language Why are there so many programming languages? I've had the privilege of working with a few people getting started in the world of programming, and that's one thing they consistently ask. It's a
Technical Tesla Languages and Cart Langauges I notice there are two kinds programming languages One kind is built to be perfect. It's informed by what came before it, but built from the ground up to correct the mistakes and
Non-Technical Bug-Free Software for the Non-Programmer Discussing a well written article from the Atlantic, about the problems in the software world and how better tooling could solve them
Non-Technical How Dilbert Changed Our Office Spaces Dilbert is responsible for changing the face of corporate offices. He created a generation of children who spent years reading the Sunday funnies, all the while wondering if Dad's career could possibly be
