Today I learned that I have been using duck typing since pretty much forever. Used to always think that it was something special and particularly freaky that only lives inside Lisp. Today, for some reason or another, I went to read about it in a bit more depth ... perhaps because I'm allowed on wikipedia and not much else and it was an article on wikipedia.
Turns out whenever you don't give a flying fuck about the type of an object but only care that it behaves like you expect, you're magically doing duck typing.
Another thing I figured out is that an hour of internet a day isn't all that bad. Turns out when you're not online 24/7 things become much less interesting ... or your interestingness threshold goes up ... "the internet" used to take me all day to get through, now I'm done in half an hour. It might not be enough to read all the articles that look interesting in depth, but it's enough to scan over the HackerNews titles to get a feel for what's going on.
But the fact I can't click on random links, or check what all those red alert numbers on my phone are ... is killing me. That impulse you get to go spend some time on the interwebs ... grargh.
Continue reading about I learned two things today 18.8.
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- The end of my internet diet experiment
- What you do while waiting
- I learned two things today 17.8.
- I learned two things today 2.8.
- Why an internet diet and not cold turkey
Learned something new?
Read more Software Engineering Lessons from Production
I write articles with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them. Fueled by lessons learned over 20 years of building production code for side-projects, small businesses, and hyper growth startups. Both successful and not.
Subscribe below 👇
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️