I made a list of the books I most often recommend, re-read and reminisce on.
Making the list was fun. I want to put down all the books I’m reading now and dig back in to a few of these.
Seeing it all laid out is also itchy and uncomfortable, in that I feel like it’s reflecting something about me that’s a bit left of how I see myself…
I’ll think more on that. In the meantime, I think you’re liable to find something really enjoyable in here. Take a look.
If you wanted to be a great race car driver, you could look at the best race car drivers in the country and their winning races and decide, “The best drivers are always turning left. They hardly ever turn right and if they do it’s only a tiny bit. If I want to be a great driver I should make sure I put my effort first into mastering the left turn.”
It sounds silly, but when we look at great software teams, we can do the same thing. We can hone in on one of the processes that we can see from the outside, and attribute all of their success, and our future success, to that.
When you’re looking to emulate Best Practices in The Industry ask yourself whether the parts you’re taking are relevant to your team.
I heard a story once about a group of scientists who went down to Hill Country in Texas. In that part of Texas they have caves with huge amounts of bats. In one of these deep caves hundreds of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats roost together. Each evening at dusk they come flowing out of the cave mouth, looking for bugs to eat for the night.
The scientists had asked themselves, how do all these bats pour out of the cave without bashing into each other? How do they figure out how not to run in to the other bats leaving at the same time without injuring themselves or each other?
The scientists set up super high-speed cameras to film the bats as they left the cave over a few nights, then they took the footage and analyzed it with 3D software to model each bat as it moved through space.
You know what they found? The bats run into each other quite a bit.
Bats haven’t found some...
These are the books I liked best I read in 2017. They’re not all published in 2017, because who is so caught up on reading they can only read current books?
Peter Wohlleben, 2016
I wouldn’t’ve guessed I’d get in to trees. Nature-wise, I’m more interested in bugs, birds, pollinators, active stuff that moves and has a social life. An algorithmic recommendation led me to a sample of this book and I gave it a shot.
Trees are so social, and Wohlleben writes like he’s one of them. The ways he describes how trees talk and how they live their lives made me feel for these things. Every page Wohlleben casually drops another amazing fact about trees.
This is the best book I read this year. It has me looking at the world differently.
A few highlights from my read through:
Assuming it grows to be...
There’s a vibrant industry around user experience (UX) thought today, but as UX moves beyond flat screens we’re finding that a lot of the best practices and known methods are too specific. What applies to call-to-action styling and page navigation on desktop web and mobile is often totally inapplicable when interacting with Alexa or Siri, or diving into virtual reality headgear.
Early UX and interface research dealt with the same problem. When Jakob Nielsen, now head of Nielsen Norman Group, was at Bellcore in 1994, he published a report called Enhancing the Explanatory Power of Usability Heuristics (pdf).
The report explores usability and user experience heuristics. Heuristics in this case are generalized methods to solve groups of problems – not specific solutions but ideas and processes you can fall back on as rules of thumb.
Importantly, Nielsen and team assessed heuristics for...
I think we’ve been putting this off for too long.“
"Look Steve, we agreed that we wouldn’t choose a name for our baby until we thought of a really good one.”
“But The Cubs is a good name! Think: ‘The Cubs Snyder’. It’s a nice, strong name.”
“Yeah, maybe last year when the Cubs won the pennant. Have you seen them this season? That new pitcher, Kibbie, he can’t throw for shit.”
“Hey! Give him a chance! It’s a development year, you know that.”
“Yeah, whatever. Either way, I’m not naming our son after some fluke-ass baseball–”
“Last season wasn’t a fluke Christina!… How could you say that?”
“…”
“…”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. But my point stands.”
“Okay. Well do you have any better ideas?”
“Well, we had been talking about ‘Lipstick’.”
“Oh please.”
“What?”
“We’re not naming my son after your grandmother.”
“Why not? My grandmother was a wonderful person. And ‘Lipstick Snyder’...
