It’s been a while — over six months! — since my last link-a-thon. But the time has come, and I have some more interesting links to dump upon you all to read at the end of the year.

Software Engineering

• The software we create is ephemeral, and the jobs we work to create that software are also ephemeral. This isn’t bad — nothing is really forever — but one has to strike the balance. This article goes deeper, and talks about quiet-quitting, and burnout — very personal things that vary from person to person. But high level message here about software is worth reflecting on. (None of this matters, Justing Williams). As an aside: I don’t think any software I’ve written has lasted more than 5 years — something has always nixed it in the end.
• Along with many others, I have maligned Waterfall™ as a methodology. I took the criticisms — the vibe of them really — at face value. Recently I came across a link to the original document from Winston Royce where waterfall was really captured as something more structured. It’s not the process laden treatise one expects. Worth a read put the challenges of modern software development into perspective. (Managing the development of large software systems)
• Big O leads us astray — often by focusing on it, we miss the real world performance. On a personal level, the fetishization of Big O / algorithmic complexity grates on me a lot. I thought this article was short, but sweet, revisit of what it might mean in the real world. (Big O-no Notation)
• In large projects that have been running more than one annual cycle, theres always the challenge of how to handle small items that keep being punted out of sprints/sub cycles due to larger initiatives, and company-impacting value-add projects. Engineers get frustrated. Management gets frustrated — paradoxically ‘cause the small thing they want doesn’t get done, because they beat the desk demanding the Big Thing™ must get done. Everyone is annoyed. I thought this framework was a good starting point to create something more holistic. (The practical application of “Rock, Pebbles, Sand”)
• “Doing a consult” is a term I’ve used, and heard used. This is a great thread from a medical professional on how to make them better, and it’s not about the requestor needing to be better — theres arguably more onus on the entity being consulted to make it successful. (Twitter Thread)
• Making animated transitions between visual states in UI is difficult. Managing the two states, the mechanics of animation, and making sure it looks right is very hard — leading to spaghetti code that no-one will touch. AirBnB invested heavily in creating the infrastructure to make this repeatable, and remove that spaghetti. (Motion Engineering at Scale)

Leadership / Management / Career

• People write poorly. I find peoples long-form writing is probably fine, but their short-form (tweet-length) writing is terrible. They err too short, and the assumption that everyone has context, which is rarely correct. Even if people do, there are others that will participate in the conversation at a later time, and they won’t. This leads the incorrect conclusions, or just sending someone off in the wrong direction. We can do better . This article is written from the perspective of developers (where this feedback is 100% applicable), but I think it’s wider than that. (How to communicate effectively as a developer, although I think it would have been better titled “Writing with Context”)
• Platforms are often tackled in a field-of-dreams (I prefer Waynes World 2, but people never get that reference) way — build it, and they will come. But thats not it. You’ll never get it right. You have to have people along for the ride, and you have to have skin in their success, not yours. This is a great article from a Stitch Fix engineer talking about a real-actual platform they built, not just some framework to make building some UI better. (What I learned building platforms at Stitch Fix)
• We find ourselves falling back up on the things we know we can do well. Sometimes this is OK — lets nibble a little to release some good vibes. Often it’s bad because you retreat to a place of comfort, and ignore the things you really need to be working on. This isn’t to say the things you’re falling back to aren’t valuable or important — but they’re probably not valuable or important for you to be working on (Reminiscing)

Technology

• The past, present, and future of NTP (Network Time Protocol) is weird, and interesting, and tied up with someones own personal journey through life. Worth a read (The thorny problem of keeping the internet’s time)
• This is a great read from super smart people doing work to reverse engineer & implement linux drivers for the Apple Silicon stack. This one brought to you by a very-different-and-unconventional-in-a-good-way GPU driver architecture, and using python to allow rapid discovery of the right pattern for the driver. (Tales of the M1 GPU)
• DNS is weird. Sometimes we pay the price of a well-intentioned decision for decades. Whoops. (Why you can’t dig Switzerland, specifically .ch domains)

Random

• No general comment on The Bird Site™ situation, but this was a great reflection of the community many people built on that site. I feel the same about some of the communities built on USENET, Internet Forums, and even mailing lists. Eventually they dissipate, and we mourn our loss. (The friends we made along the way)
• The music industry has, in someways, been taken over by the Finance™ peeps. You can see it in this dive into the securitization of music. The video (movie, tv) industry has avoided many of the early mistakes Music made, and hasn’t lost control of their content yet. But with the reliance on streaming, and the reality that past-hits will drive a lot of minutes for a long time (ads or no ads), I can already see this happening in the video world. (How Wall St. stormed the music business)
• Thinking about the future — the real future; the one where you will, without question be dead, and the people that come after you will also no-longer be on this planet… how often do you really think about it? This is a very non-specific article reflecting on the Clock of the Long Now, but it ties to the fact that there is an infinity ahead of us that we won’t see. (The Future Will Have to wait)
• This one touched me on a number of levels, as someone who is guilty — and I tell myself, content with — of making some of the choices described in the article (On aging alone)