I’m going to try something new again. This Register Spill consists of only the Joy & Curiosity section. Why? I want some writing time back for other side-projects, but I also think the writing might get better of it’s not on a weekly schedule. I’ve also really enjoyed compiling a list of links, so let’s focus on that for a while.
Somehow I ended up reading about Apple’s Presto machines: machines that can update iPhones while they’re still in the box. This again is an easy-to-miss sentence that only makes you pause when you really think about it. How do you update iPhones in boxes, while they’re not even turned on? I found some more information here — fascinating stuff.
This post by Tim O’Reilly (of animals-on-the-covers O’Reilly books) made the rounds this week and I re-read it — again. It’s one of the realest things I’ve ever read on building a company, a business. O’Reilly: “One of my big mistakes was to let people build products, or do marketing, without forcing them to understand the financial impact of their decisions. This is flying blind — like turning them loose in an automobile without a speedometer or a fuel gauge.” While reading, keep in mind that this is from 2013! Pre-ZIRP, if you will. And yet.
I’m going to reference this tweet in the future when someone asks whether it’s worth learning or understanding something that one might not use in their day-to-day: “knowing about architecture means buildings are legible in a different way; knowing about plants and birds makes hikes more stimulating, playing music makes listening to it richer, etc”
Thanks to this Pragmatic Engineer post I re-read Joel Spolky’s Things You Should Never Do - Part 1, the classic post in which he argues that one should never do a big rewrite. It’s been a while since I last read it. This time, the following section jumped out at me: “Programmers are, in their hearts, architects, and the first thing they want to do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place flat and build something grand. We’re not excited by incremental renovation: tinkering, improving, planting flower beds.” My immediate reaction was: but I love incremental renovation and tinkering and improving and tweaking and fiddling and listening to the engine!
Paul Graham published a new essay. It’s called Founder Mode and I enjoyed it. What I found interesting: it seems to be yet another sign that the tide is shifting, that the previous 10 years are coming to a close. And every time I think about that tide, I wonder whether it will also take away the idea that it’s worthwhile to emulate Google, even if you don’t have a money fountain in your company.
Kent Beck published something in response to the Graham essay and that too is an interesting read. What stuck with me was something orthogonal to his main point, a small side-observation really. Beck writes about decisions by CEOs: “Each decision has 2 outputs. (1) The consequences of the decision itself. (2) A new organization more or less prepared to make the next decision.” — how interesting is that (2) point? What a lens to look through!
I was talking to a younger colleague this week about stock options and forwarded him the all-time classic about stock options by Julia Evans. I also realized that (1) I know quite a lot about stock options compared to, say, 5 years ago and (2) I bet that the single most-helpful thing I ever read on business and stock options was Phil Knight’s memoir Shoe Dog.
Last week I was talking to Dave and I got lucky because we both realized Dave didn’t know about the Qlobe: a quine (a program that prints itself) that prints itself as a globe and each time you run it (and thus print it) it rotates the globe. My recommendation to you: clone it from here, run it in the terminal, smile.
