What I Learned This Year - 2019
I though this post would just interesting articles I read this year, but as I started working on it I blurred the line, going farther back and the post got bloated. So instead, this post covers from when I started my undergrad, up to the end of last year.
Articles
[Advice] Were you one of the “smart kids”?: It’s not that you’re not living up to your full potential, but it’s that others falsely lead you to believe that your potential was limitless.
Are Your Programmers Working Hard, Or Are They Lazy?: It’s hard to measure the output of brainwork, and shouldn’t be compared with other types.
Ask HN: I’ve been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?: A current ‘Google-er’ has been skating by at work, and is worried that he doesn’t have the skills to land a job when he leaves.
Help - I think I may have screwed my career and possibly my life.: An IT tech spent most of his work time deflecting responsibilities, playing games, and let his skills stagnate. Now that his wife want another kid and to move, he’s worried he won’t be able to get another job in the area.
I am absolutely mortified and embarrassed beyond belief and I have zero idea what to do: They stepped on a puppy dog during a technical interview and killed it.
I got fired over a variable name….: A non-Native English Dev made a variable called cumShot.
Operation Luigi: How I hacked my friend without her noticing: Le epic humorous write-up of a directed cyber attack.
Project managers, ducks, and dogs marking territory: Managers like to make sure they contribute, so have a sacrifice ready that can be easily removed.
The Bike Shed Effect: The less technical a decision is, the more opinionated input can be. To avoid this, just make a decision and move on, because the color of the bike shed probably doesn’t matter.
The free coffee test, or Lefkowitz’s Law of Corporate Financial Health: When an organization faces hardship, the take away little things that affect the average employee (free coffee, snacks, etc), instead addressing larger issues (budget, ) to handle financial hardship.
TIFU by getting Google to ban our entire company while on the toilet: Since the poster’s personal Google account was connected to his work account, when they violated their ToS with a joke app, it ended up banning their entire office.
Vim Creep: A humorous article about one’s decent into learning about the misunderstood text editor.
Waving a dead chicken (over it): A phrase used to describe a known (or suspected) useless procedure to remedy any software and/or hardware issue.
Topics
Learning
- Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them: By telling others about your goals, you get the same satisfaction, but without actually doing them.
- Flow: also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed. Its characterized by the complete absorption in the activity, and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time.
- Pomodoro Technique: A time managment technique that has you work for 25 minutes, then break for 5, for a total of 30 minutes. After 2 hours, take a long break of 15 to 30 minutes.
- The Simple Genius of Checklists:
“Why do I love checklists? Because rather than letting my imagination run amok to my detriment, effective use of checklists allows me to direct my imagination to more productive purposes.”
— David Oberhettinger, the Chief Knowledge Officer at JPL NASA
- The Step-by-Step Guide to Go From Novice to Expert in Any Skill
- Novice: A reliance on recipes
- Advanced Beginner: Recognizing parts of a situation. When there’s a problems, they know to look for another recipe.
- Competent: Developed rules about what recipes to apply when
- Proficient: An intuitive sense of what the goal is for a situation
- Expert: Operates by intuition, and knows what their goal should be, what to do about it, and what should happen as a result.
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Shoshin: A word from Zen Buddhism meaning “beginner’s mind.” It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner would.
- Spaced Repetition: An evidence-based learning technique that is usually performed with flashcards, like Anki. Newly introduced and more difficult flashcards are shown more frequently while older and less difficult flashcards are shown less frequently in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect.
How to Become a Better Software Developer: A Handbook on Personal Performance
- Engineering Mindset
- Measure Performance (and set goals)
- Master Fundamentals
- Exercise for Improvement
- Active vs Diffused Thinking
- Side Projects
- Read others code
- Solidify Knowledge
- Learn multiple things at once
- Spaced repetition learning
- Teach others what you’ve learned
- Teamwork
- Understand your strengths and weaknesses
- Know your role
- Know the Context
Videos
Google I/O 2010 - The joys of engineering leadership
Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips
Julie Pagano: It’s Dangerous to Go Alone: Battling the Invisible Monsters in Tech
Looping Surveillance Cameras through Live Editing
More adventures in replying to spam | James Veitch
Pwned By The Owner: What Happens When You Steal A Hacker’s Computer
Secrets Of Successful Teamwork: Insights From Google
Startup Funding Explained: Everything You Need to Know
STOP WASTING YOUR TIME AND LEARN MORE HACKING!