Last updated: 2022-07-15T15:03:31+02:00

My collection of things I find on my journeys through the internet. Check in periodically for updates or click Subscribe above.

Programming

  • 🎥 Light Years Ahead | The 1969 Apollo Guidance Computer - Added: 22/10/21
    • Interesting talk about how the Apollo 11 computer worked. You would think this would be a very dry talk, but he does a great job of keeping it interesting if your into software engineering. Makes me feel like a brainlet though. They straight up sewed in the program into storage. Absolute madness.
    • It’s long but relaxing so watch while doing dishes or something.
  • 🎥 How to crash an airplane – Nickolas Means | The Lead Developer UK 2016 - Added: 22/10/21
    • Visceral and compelling take on the fatal 1989 United Airlines crash. There’s not enough content like this. Content that discusses the in-depth engineering of an incident but also hits you with the emotional, human parts of the story. It’s interesting and valuable content you can learn from.
    • Since I’ve watched this first, I’ve grown hugely interested in the lead up to catastrophes. Whether its engineering failures (sometimes), systemic org errors (usually this, i.e lack of training), or cost cutting, there’s always an underlying story about how a bunch of smart people can make a mistake together. Especially whenever there’s a shift change on a plant floor. 💀
    • It’s long but relaxing so watch while doing dishes or something
  • 🎥 The Future of Programming | Bret Victor - Added: 10/04/22
    • I’ve thought it crazy how through the centuries, how scientists laughed out fellow scientists for bold new ideas. (i.e the Copernican Revolution). This tongue-in-cheek con talk from 2013 is timeless and has opened my eyes to the same behavior we have in computer science.
    • I came upon this while reading a blog from Stack Overflow and the dudes from Papers We Love. I think it’s worth reading this first, it’s really sparked my interest in reading techincal CS papers while giving me a actionable direction to start.

Startups

Starting Out

  • 📜 From idea to paying customer - 5 min - Added: 15/07/22
    • This is how everyone should start a startup. Talk to people and build actual (read: embarrassingly shit) MVPs. Bit of a developer spin on the article, but the principles work for all.
  • 📜 How we built a $1M ARR open source SaaS - 8 min - Added: 01/07/22
    • A decently transparent bootstrapping success story. You don’t always need investors, and its motivating the step by step process to $1M ARR.

Fundraising

  • 🎥 YC Founders Made These Fundraising Mistakes - 7 min - Added: 03/11/21
    • This is a great little lunch watch. It’s easy to get wrapped up in your local peer group and think you need funding right away. Don’t do that. Model yourself after the already successful companies. They (Google, Facebook, etc.) likely started with traction and that made their lives easier before, during, and way down the road after fundraising.
    • Some from comments on HN. One particularly sarcastic one I found enjoyable:

      Having a company that isn’t growing? You should have tried to make a company that would grow. Common rookie mistake to make a shitty company that sucks.

Hiring

  • 🎥 How does salary work? | Kevin Goldsmith | #LeadDevBerlin - 33 min - Added: 03/11/21
    • If you work in a company, this is likely the tutorial you never received on how your salary was derived. Amazingly eye opening 👀 Kevin explains all the concepts in an extremely intuitive fashion and defines behaviors that I’ve witnessed before (“Everybody exceeded expectations this quarter”) but never was able to diagnose why they were happening as a team member.

General

Life Advice

  • 📜 Ten Lessons I wish I had been Taught - 6 min - Added: 15/07/22
    • An MIT commencement from mathematician, Gian-Carlo Rota. I find it interesting to see what people on the forefront of academic fields think. Especially when they talk about general truths.
    • My favorite piece from this is:

      Start writing on the top left hand corner. What we write on the blackboard should correspond to what we want an attentive listener to take down in his notebook.

      • I wish all my professors did this. I always found my notes unreliable, and this would have helped me trust myself.

Academia

  • 📜 My students cheated… A lot - 30 min - Added: 15/07/22
    • I had to go to archive.org to find this, as the author removed the post.
    • This is an amazing detective story about a lecturer who found out most of his class was cheating during covid. It’s intensely eye opening about how lecturing generally, as well as academic integrity.
  • 📜 Life Is Not Short - 4 min - Added: 15/07/22
    • A realistic and modern interview with Seneca.

    • Seneca: Everyone complains about how short life is, but that perspective is broken. Life is not short. The real issue is that we waste so much of it.

Wikipedia

  • 📜 Boredom - Added: 26/10/21

    • Interestingly, in some Nguni languages such as Zulu, boredom and loneliness are represented by the same word (isizungu). This adds a new dimension to the oft-quoted definition of ubuntu: “A person is a person through other people”.*

    • Boredom is inversely related to learning in a classroom, but some recent studies have suggested that a low-stimulus environment may lead to increased creativity and may set the stage for a “eureka moment”. Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali have used this technique. Edison would sit in an arm chair and hold ball bearings in his hands. As he would begin to fall asleep, the bearings would fall to the floor, waking him up and often inspiring him with new thought.