Published
Weekend Reading — Sparkling Statistics
How to speak Silicon Valley: 53 essential tech-bro terms explained 🔥🔥🔥
Design Objective
laura olin She's not wrong:
Every forthcoming article about Jonny Ive’s design genius and legacy should be required by law to include this photo
Engineering decisions are UX decisions, exhibit 127: if there is not enough hot water, nobody cares if the shower controls are well-designed.
Ha Phan It's never as simple as "do prototype -> deploy to production":
The trajectory of a product is dependent on the team’s ability to ask the right questions about feasibility and possibility, and the product manager’s ability to make bets in scaling value, capability, system, and impact.
"Fun" fact: the logo of @GoogleChrome Developers YouTube channel is 1px² off from the center, revealing white background in dark theme
Enjoy the rest of your weekend 😬
Tools of the Trade
Software below the poverty line TL;DR open source projects are not making enough money to support their developers:
This is not the first time hard-working honest people are giving their all, for unfair compensation.
The Rise and Fall of Visual Basic I started my career in C/C++, and only later some projects with Visual Basic. Never thought about it as "lesser language", in spite of its limitations. If you look at tools that gained wide adoption in the real world, Visual Basic is there are the top.
Data Bear, PhD Correct:
It’s only Data Science if it’s from the Data region of France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling statistics.
Austin Johnsen Timezones are hard …
TIL that if you go North of the Arctic Circle in the summer and bring a MacBook with Night Shift set to be triggered by sunrise/sunset, the process will go into an infinite loop because the sun never sets...
Raspberry Pi 4 How far have computers come! This tiny card has up to 16GB of RAM, gigabit ethernet, can drive two 4K displays, and the starting price is $35.
Rory Preddy "Using the wrong tool for the job."
Web-end
State of CSS 2019 Interesting info about trends and adoption of various Web technologies (caveat, survey responders skew towards “back of the front-end” developers).
Building the most inaccessible site possible with a perfect Lighthouse score The point is, tools like Lighthouse give an arbitrary score, which doesn't tell you how many people can use your website successfully.
cjss-group/CJSS Paradigm shifting: with CSJSS you can write your JavaScript inside the CSS!!!
component {
--html:(
<h2>${yield}</h2>
<p>This is a component</p>
);
}
Lines of Code
Lanette Creamer Yet we can agree on code that would definitely be a nightmare to maintain:
I don’t think “write good code” is a clear and objective measure. You don’t even agree with your own code from years ago, let alone someone else’s. I do my best. I am sure that fails to meet the bar of good enough for some people.
magical 🅱irl Mesmerizing.
i wrote a cross-stitching cellular automata to find a path that uses the minimum amount of thread possible
Rebecca Franks "User Interface vs The Underlying Code #programming"
Architectural
Cindy Sridharan 👇Absolutely (and check the rest of the thread):
The very first thing you need to do to solve any problem is impose constraints.
Also, asking the question “is it simple to implement” makes you look at research through a whole different lens.
Peopleware
Zoe Hong 💯
People always talk about dismissing critics. Don’t. Figure out the root of their criticism. Listen. Change what really isn’t working. (Remember my long intros? I barely have intros anymore.) And then dismiss the rest, the stuff that would change the core of you.
Matthew Kobach Great take on all these "successful people" listicles:
Actual habits of successful people:
• Wake up when their body tells them to
• Read stuff that interests them
• Exercise when it best fits into their schedule
• Drink coffee if they like coffee
• Sometimes eat unhealthy food
• Tell the people they love that they love them
Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus TL;DR Concentrating for too long is counter productive. Let your brain wander a bit throughout the day.
The Science of Stir Crazy Why spending time alone drives people nuts.
Teamwork
Joshua McKenty Those are so rare to come by:
Unpopular take: A well-run meeting is one of the most productive and important activities of any team.
Pam Krengel Always be improving:
#Retro helps a team determine what’s working, what’s not. Where they need to improve, what they need to stop or double-down on. It’s a critical step to measure the teams’ velocity and progress. It can also help uncover a root cause preventing a team to get to high performing.
Devoops
Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers No one could have predicted what would happen when Boeing decided to fire their top developers:
Rabin, the former software engineer, recalled one manager saying at an all-hands meeting that Boeing didn’t need senior engineers because its products were mature.
And replace them with a firm that would work for free:
HCL, once known as Hindustan Computers, was founded in 1976 by billionaire Shiv Nadar and now has more than $8.6 billion in annual sales. With 18,000 employees in the U.S. and 15,000 in Europe, HCL is a global company and has deep expertise in computing, said Sukamal Banerjee, a vice president. It has won business from Boeing on that basis, not on price, he said: “We came from a strong R&D background.”
Still, for the 787, HCL gave Boeing a remarkable price – free, according to Sam Swaro, an associate vice president who pitched HCL’s services at a San Diego conference sponsored by Avionics International magazine in June.
None of the Above
Assaf "You're never too big to fail at mail merge"
Alexa 😭
Reasons @Spiderman should found a tech startup:
🕸 Skilled at web design
🏢 Ability to scale businesses
🗞 Media calls him disruptive
46lbs window unit air conditioner from Amazon: free shipping
2 digital-delivery tickets from ticketmaster: $18 fee
How to Shop for Quality Clothes For designers and shoppers who want to make smart choices with their money!
Sonja Drimmer 👇 Love this meme:
Elizabeth Warren doesn’t make everyone attend a meeting for business that can get done over email.
The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers From Top Institutions If you are in the academic/research world, learn to spot the early signs of political purges, and call them out.
Scott Burke 👇 CEO choose your own adventure thread:
Being Startup CEO for a day:
DON'T LET YOUR COMPANY DIE THREAD
Time to pick a co-founder! Do you pick a) Your Stanford classmate who is heir to a mayonnaise fortune or b) The cypherpunk you met at a Brooklyn hackathon
