Three weeks ago I wrote the following draft of a blog post entitled “Is It Better to Fail Spectacularly?”. I am having a lot of doubts. I’ve been training for the Chicago Marathon in earnest since June, but in reality the preparations began a year ago when I was accepted based on my qualifying time from the 2023…
Before the widespread existence of software repositories like CPAN, NPM, and PyPI, developers seeking to reuse an existing algorithm or library of routines would either check books or journals for code, or, they just might post a classified ad:
This spring, I taught an undergraduate class on chess engines. I probably learned more than any of my students.
8 months post-ice, it's time for something new!
Remote work expert David Tate wrote that when fearful CEOs talk about workplace culture, they’re really talking about workplace control. Their insecurities demand that the way work is done by emplo…
A look at the “serious” courses in college today. By Professor Doom I’ve seen plenty of articles bemoaning ridiculous col...
If you've ever said "soft skills" and felt weird about it, this essay is for you
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…
Accelerate HR outcomes with Gartner. Access AI-driven operating models, HR budget benchmarks, culture frameworks, and guidance for CHROs & HR leaders.
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.
The "Ask HN: Who is hiring" monthly post on Hacker News, available on the first day of each month, provides a platform for users to share tech job listings for free. Analyzing 10 years of these posts with a Python script reveals significant shifts in hiring trends. This insight into the evolving tech job market can…
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…
The PlayStation community means everything to us, so I felt it was important to update you on a difficult day at our company. We have made the extremely hard decision to announce our plan to commence a reduction of our overall headcount globally by about 8% or about 900 people, subject to local law and […]
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
