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What I'm reading - April 2022
The Most Horrible Parasite, Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OPg-ksxZ4Y
Kurzgesagt’s videos are always a treat to watch. They explore different topics in science and philosophy and explain them with beautiful graphics. If you haven’t watched any of their videos, I suggest you start with Optimistic Nihilism and The Egg
Fix the machine, not the person
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/nummi
A wonderful article by Aaron Swartz about managing people in a team and how Toyota increased the efficiency of people in the manufacturing plant by treating them as a part of a bigger machine, unlike what was happening at General Motors before them.
The Evolution of reddit.com’s architecture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUcO7n4hek4
How did game programmers back in the 80s learn coding and tricks?
https://www.reddit.com/r/c64/comments/jzb48r/comment/gdb6652/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
“Every project I start now, even with a stack I'm familiar with, I find myself on Stack Overflow a lot: with such a wealth of information ready for us, we effectively delegate memory to the internet. Also, when something goes awry, we know it's probably quicker to search for a solution than to just screw around until we learn the underlying system better. Modern engineers have to be content to work with lots of black boxes, because there just isn't time to understand it all.”
I came across this old thread from reddit which I had bookmarked some time back. The top answer to the question and the replies in that thread are quite an interesting read. It goes into detail about how senior developers from the 80s are used to tinkering with low level stuff like assembly language and hardware architecture, that their entire process of debugging is different.
On a related note, if you’re interested in diving into hardware related topics, check out Ben Eater’s YouTube channel. He used to be an instructor at Khan Academy before and his videos are top notch.
How to ask good questions
https://jvns.ca/blog/good-questions/