This is part 4 of a 5-part series detailing what I wish I had known as an American programmer moving to Berlin. This page details cultural differences and things I wasn’t aware of until I stumbled on them. Politics One thing about Germany, and Europe in general, is that it’s relatively left-wing when compared to the…
How to maximize 10x work and avoid thoughtless daily 1x work routines
And a hateful ode to Object-Relational Mappers
Intuition works from the shadows. Look at it directly and you get rationalization, not explanation—the verbal brain fills the gaps with a plausible story.
First we discussed the fact that technical issues cause remote meetings to suck. Then, we discussed how even when there are no technical issues, remote meetings still suck. They suck because they e…
If you've ever seen a discussion of functional programming languages on the Internet, you'll have probably noticed one talking point in particular that comes up frequently. For the sake of generalization, let's make up a hypothetical functional programming language called Gooby. In these discussions, often someone…
I've followed through on my commitment to interview in the tech industry without relying entirely on in-network referrals as I normally do (for a good reason - my network consists largely of the most competent people at mediocre companies!). It is dystopian out there. These are some anecdotes on my interviewing…
Why I don't do Domain Driven Design
🍀 The science and the comedy of luck
I've created a set of install scripts for Windows that helps people install many different programming languages using standard tools.
How I became the focus of a mass ritual against generative AI, and what I did about it.
"I'm a VP Engineering at a 40-person startup. My CEO (former engineer) won't let me hire engineering managers. He says we can't afford such luxuries, all hands should write code. How do I make the case for managers?"
And how to combat it. The story of an EM who created a ChatGPT for the internal docs in a few hours
Update, November 2023: here are the full term rewrite and language macros which formed the seed of this story. These files include OO notation as well as the basic Algol syntax shown here. There is also a sketch of an object-oriented language with classes and inheritance, implemented as a Clojure macro. I do not…
An Air Traffic Control nightmare
