Today I Learned

Lecture Friday: Oh, The Methods You'll Compose

Just some Dr. Seuss style poetry about programming. Love it! The content's meh, but the form is wonderful.

Lecture Friday: Computers are a Sadness, I am the Cure

https://vimeo.com/video/95066828

First of all, more people need talks like this. James Mickens has a style of beautiful satire blended with insightful critique. A format in significant lack among conference talks and one I can really suggest more people try and emulate. This was actually one of the first talks I saw from him. Well worth the watch.

As for the technical insights, essentially a great introduction to, "Don't do microservices if you can help it." Glad we all learned our lesson in 2014 and didn't… Oh… Oh no…

Lecture Friday: Best Practices for Software Development

Just give the talk a little bit. It's fantastic but the opening is a bit slow.

Lecture Friday: Growing a Language

An excellent talk. In the intervening time I think we've got some more nuance with languages like Python, Go, and JavaScript. How it's not the size of the language but the size of the standard and third party libraries. The ecosystem of code you can call into instead of having to write yourself. Lots of well tested code that just works out of the box. That's the thing that makes languages attractive. Essentially how little engineering you have to do relative to the business venture (or just project scope) you can pursue.