Joy & Curiosity #6

Interesting & joyful things from the previous week

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.