Books I'm reading #

• Learning Go: An Idiomatic Approach to Real-World Go Programming by Jon Bodner
• Tales of a Software Engineering Manager by Michael Lopp
• (in polish) TypeScript na poważnie by Michał Miszczyszyn

Books I've read #

• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. I stumbled upon a list of Sci-fi classics, and this was one of them. I found much more fantasy than expected, but it's a decent read.

Elsewhere on the Web #

Tech #

• 10 Web Development Trends in 2023
• Why DRY is the most over-rated programming principle. Agree and am guilty of it myself.

Layoffs #

• Why are there so many tech layoffs, and why should we be worried? Stanford scholar explains. That is a reasonable contrarian opinion on what's going on.
• 8 Hard Truths I learned when I got laid off from my SWE job. It's so hard for me to understand why hiring experienced engineers is so complicated.

Work | Culture #

• The End of Writing
• On Email and Horses. Email is like early automobiles. We may need stoplights, lanes, and traffic enforcement for email the same way we needed them for cars.
• Steve Jobs' Former Assistant Reveals Lessons About Burnout and Wellbeing. Turns out Steve had a great work-life balance.

Other #

• Twilight of the Aesir. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
• These 5 Things Will Make You Smarter. It may seem obvious, but common sense is not a common practice.
• The Making of a Corporate Athlete. That's a classic article now. Worth reading.

Investing #

• Sea Change. Interesting view of the impact of interest rates on all popular investing advice. Worth reading.

Personal Thoughts #

I had a lot of admin work in January. From taxes to furniture and some drilling in walls. Even this post is late. I had to cancel most of my fitness plans because of an injury.
I'm continuing a practice of taking physical notes. For convenience, I take them after I read the whole book and treat it as an opportunity to solidify what I learned. The downside is that it can take a couple of hours for a good book, and if I don't have that time, then I'm tempted to start something new without doing it. Still, I like how it feels to take those notes, and I do learn more.

Learning Go and TypeScript at the same time might have been a mistake. I found it really confusing and hard to switch from one context/book to the other, and I feel like it hindered me a lot in January. I'll try to focus more on Golang at least until I finish the whole Learning Go book.

I started having weird connection issues with my Microsoft Scult keyboard. It's a great keyboard with only two flaws: it needs a wireless dongle (that started malfunctioning) and doesn't have mechanical switches. So I started looking for a keyboard without the numerical keypad, with mechanical switches and an ergonomic layout. Unfortunately, it's tough to find keyboards that match those criteria. After a long search, I settled for Keychron Q10. It has mechanical switches, Alice (or Arisu?) layout for better ergonomics, and I can even remap keys or change switches without soldering. Switching to a mechanical keyboard feels great, but I'm missing high palm supports. Please note that palm supports are different from wrist rests which are not healthy for you. The only small keyboard I could find with good palm supports is Kinesis 360, but its missing traditional arrows keys and its price and availability in Poland disqualify it as a possible option. I'm already feeling my wrists, but I may need some time to get used to a new position of my hands. If you have something you can recommend, then please let me know.

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