Consumed

Another year, another 17 books, 6 shows and 3 movies consumed. Here’s this year’s highlights. Books The Zen and Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance The author is a tormented soul on a quest to define quality. You’re his passenger, driving shot gun on a CB77 Super Hawk, in for an exhausting intellectual journey through the high mountains of reasoning. You will often fear getting lost and feel slightly anxious that the driver might drive of a cliff any moment, but he won’t. Once you see the top of the mountain for the first time, you’ll be happy he doesn’t make it too easy on you, and you’ll be more appreciative of the road that took you there. ...

I’m keeping the tradition alive, sharing how much I’ve consumed over the last year highlighting the things that stood out. 18 books, 8 movies and 9 shows. Looks like I consumed more than other years, which probably also explains why I produced less after-hours. Books I finished the Dark Tower series after 3 years. Following Roland Deschain and his ka-tet throughout the 8 books has been an epic adventure. Finishing Harry Potter by the time I was 18, I had little hopes to be ever dragged into such a long and captivating tale ever again. The Stand, another epic by Stephen King is also high up on my list. I’ve seem to have taken a liking to stories that are set in a post-apocalyptic world, in which the antagonist is not necessarily a horde of zombies. ...

I started in 2014 to keep lists of everything I consume. I’ve continued this effort throughout 2015 and can now share the items I particularly enjoyed. In 2015, I read 16 books and 3 papers, watched 3 movies and 4 shows, listened to 1 audio book and no podcasts. A lot less TV compared to 2014, but most of that time went to playing video games with some of my friends. Also a lot less time spent in the car listening to audiobooks or podcasts, since I’m now dropping off my girlfriend every day. ...

Starting 2014, I wanted to look more closely at everything I consume. So I started keeping a list of everything I read, watch and listen to. I started off with a markdown file on Github that quikcly evolved into a good excuse to dabble with an alternative stack. I ended up writing an event sourced node.js application on top of postgres, hosted on Heroku. I could write a post on that particular experience, but it’s safe to say this blog post captures it better than I ever could. ...

The .NET framework mainly provides two models for asynchronous programming: (1) the Asynchronous Programming Model (APM), that uses callbacks, and (2) the Task Asynchronous Pattern (TAP), that uses Tasks, which are similar to the concept of futures. The Task represents the operation in progress, and its future result. The Task can be (1) queried for the status of the operation, (2) synchronized upon to wait for the result of the operation, or (3) set up with a continuation that resumes in the background when the task completes. ...

We are surrounded by systems day in, day out. As software developers, we even get to spend a big portion of our day actively building and changing systems - be it software, teams, communities or businesses. Seeing the whole, but more importantly understanding how systems exist of inter-related parts that affect each other in all kinds of interesting ways, is crucial to growing sustainable systems. Thinking in Systems is a primer on the subject of system thinking written by Donella H. Meadows. The book is divided into three parts. The first part explains the basic concepts of system thinking using everyday systems. The second part covers why systems work so well, why they still surprise us, how to avoid common system traps and how to take advantage of some of the opportunities they present. The last part, and for me the most interesting part, shows where to intervene in a system and how to live in a world of systems. ...

Somewhere in the beginning of last century, two shoes salesmen were sent to Africa hoping to expand their employer’s market. Both salesmen reported home within days of their arrival. The first salesman wrote: “This trip turned out to be a waste of time; the locals are not wearing any shoes.” The second salesman wrote something similar, yet very different: “This is looking very promising; people aren’t wearing any shoes yet!” ...

I learned all about logical design of relational databases back in school; tables, columns, data types, views, normalization, constraints, primary keys, foreign keys… At the same time, I learned how to use SQL to put data in, and how to get it out again; INSERT INTO, SELECT, FROM, WHERE, JOIN, GROUP... In the first project I worked on just out of school, we weren’t doing anything interesting with databases; we didn’t have that many users, or that much data. A database veteran on the team took it on him to maintain the schema and to provide stored procedures we could do work with. ...

When things are fragile, they break easily. We often see fragility as a bad thing and design things to be robust. But this isn’t what we’re really after either; things that are robust might be hard to break, but they’re also hard to change, making them fail to adapt to new stressors over time. The model that we’re really after is antifragility; when something is antifragile it will benefit from stressors and get better over time. ...

Hanging around in the pub after DDDX, I ended up talking to Alberto Brandolini. For those who have never met him; he’s very much into visualization. You will always see him carrying a drawing pad, with a dash of permanent marker on his cheek, and a few lost sticky notes on his back. I don’t know if it was the Italian accent and the strong gestures, or my mildly intoxicated condition, but the idea of visualization as an important tool grew on me even more that evening. ...