I Learnt

Just before I recently went on holiday our CEO set me some “homework”.

I used to capture all my thoughts and things I was working on in a text file at work but this approach slowly died.

The links today include lessons from an angry meeting, Internet artifacts, the developer tooling industry, the length of media and a writing tip.

Last year I bought my mum a year subscription to My Life in a Book.

I recently did a photography course in London where one of the main learnings was how you can make photographs more interesting by using unusual angles and reflections.

This will become out of date quickly but a useful guide for which models to use for which tasks and which to avoid.

RSS is a technology I have relied on for years.

I was doing a 1:1 meeting recently and we talked about their code reviews of a recent joiner.

Chris Woodruff produced an excellent series of posts to introduce the C# developer to the language of Rust.

This is a simple way to remove all the extraneous noise from a Google search.

Software is in a massive transition phase where it is now possible for non-developers to produce software that was previously the remit of professional developers.

The links today include an old obscure bug in Windows, browsing to think, technology non-predictions, AI apps, additional data, Geoguessr expert v AI, a simple question, a false law about headlines and a usable WinDBG debugger.

The links today include indicating payment, curiosity in hiring, rebuilding Kafka, the near deletion of Toy Story 2, Internet in a box and an object in space, maybe.

The links today including bucketing work time, competing on price, n+1 people, football tactics, engineering laws, building Git, (not) delighting customers, librarians, object storage, future of work, a new colour and tech hiring.

The links today including the best programmers, improving retrospectives, a live tube map, unusual trading cards, prioritisation, complex decisions, MCP issues and conversational interfaces.

A blast from the past with the language TCL and a nice explanation why some bugs just don’t get fixed.

A place in Japan where you can shoplift, as long as you are silent, and what does it mean to have high agency?

Can we know tackle projects that were too big using AI and should we ignore getting the best name for something?

A way to run weather forecasts with orders of magnitude less computing power and picking a strategy based on what your opponent/competitor doesn’t want you to do.

In a recent article Seth Godin identifies that the sorting of information into directories had a big impact.

An illustration of how to defeat writer’s block and a new school that is getting amazing results.

A new approach to working out your location without using GPS and an online Mandelbrot set explorer.

A brilliant advert from Apple in 2013 and the need for “normal” engineers on teams.

A free handbook for startup CTOs and a game that involves you identifying a time and a place.

Could Apple miss out on AI in the same way Microsoft missed out on mobile, and could the AI bubble bring a revolution in power?

A history of Acorn (and my links to it), a repairable flatpack toaster and a regret removed with an Eagle Scout award.

My son hit an error on his Xbox that stopped him logging in.

An excellent keynote video on AI with some great hands on demos and a study backing up what makes code reviews useful.

No post yesterday as I was in the Netherlands for work but today we have the move from data records to AI agents, the history of the London Eye and an unusual approach to enterprise sales (no sales calls).

A predicted upcoming economic disruption, and it is not AI, and the battle for the thermostat that is very real in our house.

The impact two orders of magnitude can have on what is needed to accomplish a task and a new type of clock designed to be the basis of an approach that is more attack resistant than the existing GPS infrastructure.

Some funky science may have worked out that we have been wrong on why/how Mars is red, the variability difference between AI generated code and programming language code, and identifying a “strong” engineer.

Most orders online follow the same pattern - you order, you get an email to confirm it and then you might get updates on progress as it makes it’s way to your house.

Is there a chance that all programs in future will be written in English rather than a programming language?

How the Mona Lisa became the most famous painting in the world due to newspapers, forgetting people are really people and the advice from ChatGPT saving a life.

A great video from Google with a nice twist, four categories of software quality and way to annoy engineers (not just senior engineers as the title says).

Today the links cover the significant downturn in the IT job market, why people buy things that are not just for what they do and an approach to avoiding enterprise sales calls by using email instead.

Another varied selection today with links to a style of coding called “Discovery Coding”, the 2% of people that leave introverts energised and a nice introduction to the Microsoft announcement around qubit (quantum computers) developments.

Today includes a review of the book “The Goal”, how complicated a calculator app really is and an illustration using a washing machine of how the unexpected can throw a spanner in any estimates.

I have been asked numerous times to write a small application to solve a specific problem for someone.

A wide variety today covering strong opinions, idea and growth mazes and getting sofas around corners.

The links today are about developing code without thinking, interesting network projects and extensive travel tips.

Today we have the main developer productivity killer, startups and aliens, and build time.

Today’s links are about an AI job application scam, why non-fiction books are too long, whether WASM will replace containers and how line endings cause problems in Git.

A collection of links about changing a data structure, SaaS v AI Agents, chat UI for development, a developer philosophy and the Model Context Protocol.

A collection of links about blog writing, AI and the interview process and coding hats.

Despite the best efforts of the infamous demo gods, sometimes you can come out on top.

I’ve never really got into the TV series Gavin and Stacey but I decided to watch the finale and the documentary about the making of it.

When you work in technology it is tempting to bring in the new exciting technologies that claim to make your life easier, run faster and bring you rainbow unicorns every day.

You are deep in a piece of work and making great progress when a phone call or message breaks you train of thought and derails you.