When 2018 started I set out to read 10 books this year. Much to my surprise I ended up reading 25 books in 2018. The most important reason I was able to get through 15 more books than I'd expected was that when the year started I set a goal for myself to read at least 15 minutes every day. I ended up accomplishing that 328 times over 2018, meaning 9 out of every 10 days I made significant progress on a book. I was able to find time by replacing a couple of podcasts I'd listened to with time for reading, a strategy that netted me about 1-2 hours every week.

Without further ado, the books I read this year are below in reverse chronological order, newest at the top.  Continue Reading →

As a mentor, I give a lot of advice. I give a lot of advice that comes from a breadth of experience. But my experience is rooted in the present, to remember how I felt earlier is an exercise in empathizing with a past version of myself. And memories are a fickle thing. In fact, there are many biases that affect how you remember an event, so it’s possible that my memories aren’t even an accurate reflection of the reality that I lived.

One piece of advice I give often to newer (and more experienced) developers is to ask questions. Ask a lot of questions. Ask questions until you’re sick of asking questions, and you suspect the other person is sick of hearing them. It’s going to take a while until you feel smart, or you feel good about your knowledge, but keep pushing through and putting yourself out there until you start to feel it. Continue Reading →

The people will not revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what’s happening.

George Orwell, 1984 Continue Reading →

I recorded an episode of @learnswift_fm with Steven Sherry a couple weeks back. We had a great chat about contracting, computing history, philosophy, Smalltalk, and even a little bit about Swift. I think you’ll really like it, and recommend giving it a listen. Continue Reading →

How many times have you been called into a meeting only to realize five minutes into it that you’re likely going to speak for sixty seconds… if you’re lucky? You potentially hold one piece of valuable information, and the rest of the discussion doesn’t concern you much. There are probably four other people like that in the room as well. Continue Reading →

I was asked

Is the code quality at an early stage startup higher or lower than the code quality at a bigger company?

This is a really good question to ask if you're a developer looking to join an early stage company. To answer this question though, I'd like to take a step back. Continue Reading →

It has become quite common for companies interviewing engineers to give candidates take home tests. These consist of an interview problem (or problems) which they can work on in their free time. This gives the candidate the benefit of not being under pressure in a high leverage interview setting. This gives a company the benefit of seeing how a candidate works in a normal work environment.

I had one of these recently, and to say it could have gone better would be an understatement.  Continue Reading →

Cryptography is becoming more important in our every day lives and there’s no way around it. Whether it’s the calls from governments to ban encryption, come up with “responsible encryption”, or to violate norms and laws, cryptography is playing a role in shaping our society. I’d like to approach the role of cryptography from the other perspective though, from the side of helping us prove facts about the world around us.

We are entering an era where technology empowers people to create artificial evidence for stories and narratives. While we can’t yet create facts, we’re approaching a point where artificial evidence looks very believable. Continue Reading →

Cryptocurrency is all the rage these days. From Bitcoin to Ethereum to Ripple, to some silly sounding thing someone will come up with tomorrow, it's something people want to know about.

At the risk of sounding like a super noob, what's a good introduction to crypto? From the basics through understanding current landscape

— Benny Wong (@bdotdub) January 5, 2018

So you're looking to learn a little something about how these new technologies work? Well Benny (and anyone not named Benny), I don't have all the answers, but I do have two resources that people who are interested in the technical aspects should check out. Continue Reading →

As I was on hour six of debugging how to read an object from the database, my brain suddenly noticed the slight difference in two lines of code. The compiler error had been off, too vague to help me realize that I was never hinting the correct type to the function. Generics had struck again. I cursed in the general direction of my cat (unintentionally), and moved on. There was nothing I could do but accept that we've all been there, and move on. Continue Reading →