121
A good measurement culture where numbers don’t replace common sense
A practical guide to a good measurement culture where numbers don’t replace common sense
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 395 posts.
122
When I have a slower publishing cadence my blog grows faster
When I started writing online, the advice I got was to publish frequently and not overthink any single piece. The logic was this: the outcome for blog posts is a heavy-tailed statistical distribution—most pieces will be read by barely anyone, but a small subset of outliers will do hundreds if not thousands of times…
123
Be careful of the examples you use. They stick
Introduction We spend huge amounts of time sweating the details of our products. We want to remove all the friction we can from using them and want to make sure we never leave our users confused. To get this right, we do a bunch of things: we use simple language, we make extensive use of context-sensitive…
124
Conferences are inadvertently excluding many attendees from foreign countries
This is not an easy post for me to write, being a bit of a criticism / “you can do better” note for organisers of conferences that cater to a global community.
125
Kris Nóva has died
An announcement from Nivenly about Kris Nóva
126
When to invest in marketing
"Don't invest in paid marketing" might be one of the most common startup recommendations - but when should you? In this article we'll explore when to invest in marketing and how to avoid losing millions of dollars by setting sequential marketing objectives.
127
Kernighan and Pike were right: Do one thing, and do it well
Extensible programs like Obsidian have achieved a Holy Grail of software architecture, after decades of failed attempts.
128
Career advice for young system programmers
For some of us, the backend vs frontend discussion just doesn’t cut it. What do do, then?
129
130
How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
This is based on an internal quip doc I wrote up about careful communication in the context of rebuilding trust.
131
YOLO-Driven Development Manifesto
YOLO-driven development - not for the faint of heart
132
Managing difficult software engineers
Effectively managing difficult employees in a software engineering context hinges on three core principles: fostering trust by empowering autonomy, promoting growth through challenges and constructive feedback, and ensuring a comfortable work environment with streamlined processes and minimal disruptions.
133
134
135
Be sceptical of your own work (2009)
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field. (Niels Bohr) If you unexpectedly find a problem solving itself almost effortlessly, and you can’t quite …
136
New responsibilities
As part of the same process outlined in Matthias Clasen's "LibreOffice packages" email , my management chain has made the decision to stop a...
137
Stefan Tilkov has died
INNOQ Deutschland mourns the loss of its co-founder and CEO, Stefan Tilkov
138
How to run a miserable code review
Code reviews are a performance nobody paid for
139
Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better
Write about what you learn. It pushes you to understand topics better. Sometimes the gaps in our knowledge only become clear when explaining things to others.
140
Nobody ever paid me for code
Because mauve databases have the most RAM
141
142
Edsger Dijkstra’s One-Day Workweek
Within my particular subfield of theoretical computer science there’s perhaps no individual more celebrated than Edsger Dijkstra. His career spanned half-a-century, beginning with a young ... Read more
143
Remote work requires communicating more, but less frequently
Async communication is like gzip compression for humans: more processing up front, but greater throughput with fewer packets.
144
Do something, so we can change it
A habit for addressing two-way decisions.
145
Man spends entire career mastering crappy codebase
Westbrook spent 35 years in a codebase that allegedly powers some sort of medical software somewhere. During his tenure, he contributed hundreds of lines of code to his projects.
146
Excuse me, is there a problem?
Many startups fail despite identifying a real problem and building a product that solves that problem. This explains why, so you can avoid their fate.
147
Stopping at 90%
A common pattern is to stop short of the real finish line for your project. A little evangelism, documentation, and polish can go a long way.
148
Reasons Not to Be a Manager (2019)
Yesterday we had a super fun meetup here at Intercom in Dublin. We split up into small discussion groups and talked about things related to managing teams and being a senior individual contributor (IC), and going back and forth throughout your career.
149
Repeating yourself thrice doesn’t turn you into a 3x developer
Three is a magic number. This is the number of things we can keep in our minds without losing focus. So, logically, a three-tier software…
150
One week of empathy training (2019)
I've spent a week cosplaying as a disabled user. And I hate it. A couple of months ago, I attended a private talk given by a disabled colleague of mine. "Everyone should believe disabled people's stories about accessibility problems," she said. "But, given that people don't, here's what I want you to do. Spend one…