Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2021-39.

Why Science Can’t Settle Political Disputes | The MIT Press Reader

Tags: science, politics

A good reminder on how science and politics are more intertwined than we’d like to believe. It also shows why trying to have politics determined only by science brings its own set of biases in itself and can only lead to killing any form of debate or compromises.

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/why-science-cant-fix-politics/

This Is All Exactly What It Looks Like | Defector

Tags: tech, cryptocurrencies

There’s something rotten in the cryptocurrency craze. This opinion piece lays it out really well I think.

https://defector.com/cryptocurrency-bad-and-weird/

Something Weird Is Happening on Facebook – Political Orphans

Tags: tech, facebook, social-media

Clearly the next Cambridge Analytica-like campaigns are getting prepared today… Those systems really have a toxic architecture. It’s by construct, I don’t think there’s anything good to be gained from engaging with those ecosystems.

https://www.politicalorphans.com/something-weird-is-happening-on-facebook/

Designing Low Upkeep Software

Tags: tech, programming, low-tech, durability, craftsmanship

This sounds like a good approach for optimizing on software durability. Obviously this means you loose other things. This is a trade-off.

https://www.jefftk.com/p/designing-low-upkeep-software

Doing Software Estimation within constraints of Hofstadter’s law and Parkinson’s law – Shekhar Gulati

Tags: tech, estimates

Potentially interesting tricks for estimating. Some of it I did, some not… I guess I’ll try some more of what’s proposed here at some point.

https://shekhargulati.com/2021/09/23/doing-software-estimation-within-constraints-of-hofstadters-law-and-parkinsons-law/

How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum - by Gergely Orosz - The Pragmatic Engineer

Tags: tech, project-management, scrum, agile, kanban

Interesting musing on how different types of companies manage their projects. I’m glad to see there’s less cargo-cult Scrum than I expected. I also find funny that Scrum is perceived as “heavy weight”. :-D

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/project-management-in-tech

Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?

Tags: tech, programming, craftsmanship

I still think there are indeed options that work better than others. They are then best practices… BUT they are very much contextual. Due to that complexity, the “personal preference” labelled as “best practice” is indeed pervasive in our industry.

https://floverfelt.org/posts/software-best-practices.html

The difference between Go and Rust – dominikbraun.io

Tags: tech, programming, go, rust

This is a good highlight of the differences. It’s not “one is best”, it is really “pick what is best in your context”.

https://dominikbraun.io/blog/the-difference-between-go-and-rust/

The code worked differently when the moon was full

Tags: tech, bug, programming

Now that is indeed an interesting bug. Time can be a fickle friend… arithmetic as well.

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/the-code-worked-differently-when-the-moon-was-full

Briefing a Delegate - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: management, delegation

As usual, very good advices on how to delegate. This time about the briefing and feedback parts.

https://jacobian.org/2021/sep/27/briefing-a-delegate/

Moiré no more | Revue

Tags: tech, fft, photography

Excellent use of inverse-FFT to remove halftone dots in a picture. No need for fancy ML, pure simple math does the job.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-happens/issues/moire-no-more-688319

Bye for now!