2023 August. Vacation. Craft. Fasting.
Mountains, family time.
Books I'm reading #
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I'm listening to an audiobook in Polish and I'm 16 hours in of 65 hours.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
Books I've read #
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford. I like the first part of the book. Reading philosophical take about craft and its value in our lives. It was great to read a criticism of corporate scientific management and its love/hate relationship with crafts. It's the first half of the book and that's what I can recommend.
Learn Responsive Design by Google. Pretty good course that I can recommend if you want to learn the basics of Responsive Web Design.
Elsewhere on the Web #
I can recommend this 2 part series of responses regarding the measurement of developer productivity:
- Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey
- Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey, Part 2
Goodhart’s Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
The hardest part of building software is not coding, it’s requirements by Jared Toporek.
AI can’t create software, only code.
It's hard to say how long it will stay true, but I can agree with the argument. At least until ChatGPT will allow a context of the whole codebase. It's hard to say what will happen then.
Software engineers hate code. by Dan Cowell. I like how he puts the opinion of senior engineers about writing code. Strongly recommended. TLDR; There is much more to code than just writing it.
Fresh Work 80/15/5 by Kent Beck
- 80% of your time goes to low-risk/reasonable-reward work
- 15% of your time goes to related high-risk/high-reward work. (~6 hours a week)
- 5% of your time goes to satisfying your own curiosity with no thought of reward. Geek Joy. (~2 hours a week)
Modern Software Development Summarized by Benji Smith.
Originally titled Why I Hate Frameworks
How to Learn Better in the Digital Age by Gian Segato. A reminder that learning should be effortful and that most of our "learning" is just entertainment. If you want to learn something make it effortful e.g.: make a note in a physical notebook.
Educational Sensational Inspirational Foundational by Zach LeathermanA historical record of foundational web development blog posts (ordered chronologically).
The Data Don't Really Support the Most Popular Happiness Strategies by Alice Park.
In a study published July 20 in Nature Human Behavior, happiness researchers at the University of British Columbia report that for the most popular happiness strategies there is at best little solid, scientifically sound evidence—and in some cases, there is none.
By coding media articles on happiness, we first identified the five most commonly recommended strategies:
expressing gratitude,
enhancing sociability,
exercising,
practising mindfulness/meditation and
increasing nature exposure.
Our review suggests that a strong scientific foundation is lacking for some of the most commonly recommended happiness strategies. As the effectiveness of these strategies remains an open question, there is an urgent need for well-powered, pre-registered studies investigating strategies for promoting happiness.
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Personal Thoughts #
It was my last month of vacation and will be looking for a more stable source of income starting in September. If you want to hire me then contact me at offers@kula.blog.
I'm thinking mostly about JS (TS is fine as well) like Senior Engineer (Frontend/React) or Full-stack engineer. But, I'm also strongly thinking about a Managerial path. I have some great memories from being a Manager of a 6 person team and wouldn't mind doing it again. With hindsight, I like both programming and management so a hybrid position would be best. Something like Tech Lead, Staff, or Principal so let me know if you would like to work with me.
Losing weight #
I've lost about 8 kg (17 pounds) recently thanks to fasting:
- Monday-Wednesday. I'm doing a version of water fast where I drink a lot of coffee to keep energy.
- Thursday-Sunday. I'm doing Intermittent Fasting where I'm skipping breakfasts.
I often have a problem with limiting how much I eat when I'm eating, but on fasting days, it's pretty easy to keep myself from eating. It's a big yo-yo, but I've managed to consistently lower my weight by about 1 or 2 kg (let's say 3 pounds) every week.
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