found drama

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a year of solar

by Rob Friesel

I got a little braggy about this on Twitter earlier this year… 1

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  1. It’s probably worth pointing out that, in this image, I had miscalculated the kWh values. A quirk of R appears to be that it imports values from a CSV as factors, even when they look like numbers. And then even when you remember that it does that, a simple is.numeric() casts those factors to numbers by casting them to the index of each factor! Which is why it looked like I was offsetting the emissions of 91.5 gasoline-powered cars each month. Which, maybe I would if I could afford that, but I can’t so I won’t.[↩]

building software is half strategy and half improvisation

by !undefined

Sara Simon, Learning Fluency:

I’m writing this piece because building software is half strategy and half improvisation, and I really do think there are ways to train in both.

Given that my own background has a lot of overlap with her story, this struck a chord with me. The diverse interests, the broad learning, the liberal arts background. You can focus on computer science (or software engineering 1) early and go as deep as possible, as fast as possible. But you’ll miss things.

But something else struck me here in Sara’s essay — something that should have been obvious to me because I have small children: that our important learning comes not in these big flashes (at least not most of the time), but in the repetition of small things. My kids do this. 2 A tiny thing gets repeated over and over again 3 until it’s mastered, and then it’s just… there. 4

  1. Or any field that strikes your fancy, really.[↩]
  2. Just yesterday I watched for five minutes as my youngest fumbled with a button on his shirt. He eventually got it through the buttonhole. But man, there was some outrage at the offer of assistance.[↩]
  3. ”What are you doing in there? Seriously? All day with that?” But put all that tedious stuff under the right lens and it sure sounds like they’re being productive.[↩]
  4. And again: this should have been obvious to me from my recent study of Scrum and Agile, and its alignment to shu-ha-ri.[↩]

search term haiku: July 2015

by Rob Friesel

Java app drama
can’t find spec variable
parse output chutzpah

“Search Term Haiku” is a series wherein I examine this site’s log files and construct one or more haiku poems from search terms and phrases that led visitors to the site. Where possible, I attempt to keep the search phrases intact. However, as these are haiku poems, I do need to follow the rules.

Adam Silver on “the BFED”

by !undefined

In The Boring Front-end Developer, Adam Silver waxes philosophical about being the kind of front-end developer who builds useful things and then takes care of them, rather than the kind that builds shiny things and then leaves them to decay.

But boring is a click-bait word, something provocative while still being on the shy side of incendiary. We’re not really talking about boring developers; we’re talking about people with the maturity to make thoughtful decisions, to care about and grow their products and their teams. But maybe it’s more incendiary to actually describe these people as mature. 1

  1. And that, intentionally, as opposed to “senior”, which these days really just implies a higher salary.[↩]

the critical rendering path

by !undefined

Understanding the critical rendering path, rendering pages in 1 second is essential reading from Luis Vieira about what’s happening in the browser after those bytes start to stream in. Combine this with Ilya Grigorik’s High Performance Browser Networking and you’re going to be one knowledgeable front-end developer. 1

the rendering path: wait for it...

image source

  1. I previously reviewed Grigorik’s book on this blog. The best technical book I read in 2013, hands down.[↩]

the web: aviation and eschatology

by !undefined

Maciej Cegłowski, Web Design: The First 100 Years:

We have a space station in 2014, but it’s too embarrassing to talk about. Sometimes we send Canadians up there.

"Without question there would be routine supersonic travel at unimaginable speed and comfort between any two cities in the world."

Talking about where the web came from, where people like to think it’s going, and where it’s most likely actually going.

I realize this all sounds a little grandiose. You came here to hear about media selectors, not aviation and eschatology. But you all need to pick a side.

Exponential Angst

It takes a bit to get through the whole thing, but it’s worth an uninterrupted read.

“simply take up elsewhere with no change in thinking”

by not another Rob?

Jeff VanderMeer, Redefining Utopia and Dystopia or Post-Apoc:

And, to be honest, if I could be uploaded tomorrow into some AI version of the internet or become a nascent Mars colonist, I would reject both options as morally, ethically wrong. You cannot trash an entire planet, kill billions of organisms (often for no reason at all), and then simply take up elsewhere with no change in thinking or accountability.

“Culture Fit” as an Instrument of Exclusion

by !undefined

Mathias Meyer’s discussion of “culture fit” works with too broad of a definition (e.g., ping-pong may be an instrument or reflection of your culture, but it isn’t culture itself) but manages to make a couple of important points. First (and most important) is the idea that relying on the “culture fit” question is usually an indication of an exclusive culture – and that you’re using it to keep out people who would disrupt the status quo. Which leads to the second critical point, that an over-reliance on that question suggests a toxic environment that is too busy being insular and self-congratulatory, at the expense of questioning its assumptions.

Meyer uses a lot of examples that involve drinking and bars, but I’d say that you should closer to the office first. How does the team engage with the work itself? With each other? When something fails, does it turn into a witch hunt? Or a learning opportunity? Are you using “culture fit” to find more people that are just like you? Or are you building an inclusive team with diverse opinions and talents?