May the fourth be with you. And if you are wondering, yes, I waited until today to make that joke. If you don’t like Star Wars, that’s ok! None of the following links will contain any more references.
1. Done, and Gets Things Smart (20 minutes)
This is one of my favorites from Steve. It’s not a quick read, but I think it’s a good one for engineers looking to make an impact. He critiques the hiring mantra “Smart and Gets Things Done” and instead pushes for “Done, and Gets Things Smart”. The idea is that you want engineers who can get things done and then evolve the system. He then talks about how crucial these engineers are to the success of a company.
I’ve realized that one of the Google seed engineers (exactly one) is almost singlehandedly responsible for the amazing quality of Google’s engineering culture
What a compliment.
2. How to Do Great Work (60 minutes)
I will admit that this one is a bit of a slog. It took me a couple of sessions to get through the whole thing. Paul Graham is the co-founder of Y Combinator and knows a thing or too about great work. The TIL is:
- Find a field that aligns with your abilities
- Get enough knowledge to understand the boundaries of the field
- Recognize unanswered questions or unexplored areas in the field
- Investigate promising gaps
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
3. Senior Developer Skills in the AI Age: Leveraging Experience for Better Results (10 minutes)
This was one of the most enjoyable AI-coding-related articles I’ve come across lately. Manuel does a great job of showing just how much information you need to give cursor to get the results you are looking for. That’s the great part about being Senior/Staff, you already have the context nailed down. I’ve also experimented with the greenfield in another language he mentions, with similar success. If you still haven’t done much with Cursor, definitely read and try it out.
4. Video: Hammock Driven Development - Rich Hickey (40 minutes)
I love Rich Hickey videos and I know I got at least a few Rich Hickey lovers subscribed. It’s been a while since I last watched this one, but it still remains valuable today. We require a mix of both deep focus as well as relaxed thinking. I also love his push for solving problems and asking bigger questions rather than just blindly building features. If you enjoy this kind of material, Barbara Oakley’s Learning how to learn talk will also be right up your alley.
5. Github Repo: norvig/pytudes
Peter Norvig is currently a Distinguished Education Fellow at Stanford’s Human-Centered AI Institute and was formerly the Director of Research at Google, where he helped shape the company’s AI strategy. If you have a Chromecast, you may also notice a number of the screensaver photos are his own. Pytudes his Github repo of solutions to all kinds of different problems. His solutions to previous years Advent of Code problems are a masterclass in programming. If you are looking to learn by example, this is one of the best sources I’ve found.
6. Big Data is Dead (19 minutes)
This is an article I share quite often at work given it’s relevance. Jordan Tigani, CEO of MotherDuck and a founding engineer of Google BigQuery. His article argues that “Big Data” is over and argues that the problems with extracting insights are less about volume and more about how the data is utilized. He notes that many BigQuery users store less than a terabyte of data, and even those with larger datasets often query only a small fraction of their data. Lot’s of big data tooling is clunky anyways, it’s no wonder tools like DuckDB are gaining in popularity.