Papers & Books

Blogs and hot takes are fun but the good stuff hides in primary sources. I like to read computer science papers and books cover to cover and write about what holds up in production and what doesn't.

You get the insights without wading through 40 pages of LaTeX. And when a famous book doesn't survive contact with real code, I'll tell you that too.

Papers and books

8 articles from 2024 show all

December 2024

Your next mountain, pt2

3+1 quick book recommendations to help you think about next year

September 2024

The Laws of Software Evolution

Manny Lehman was one of the first to notice that software is never done. It just continues to evolve forever.

Why software projects fail

5 common themes

July 2024

Why SQL is Forever

Never underestimate the power of good marketing for bad products. NoSQL was fun but SQL is here to stay.

June 2024

6 books engineers should read

Here are 6 books I'd buy every engineer who joins my team, if I ran a team. You might like 'em too.

April 2024

43 years of the actor model

The actor model is now part of everyday tooling and ensures concurrency safety. Understanding the principles behind it helps you write less buggy code.

The best engineering books get good 5 years into your career

The best engineering books aren't those you read at the start of your career. It's the ones you appreciate 5 years in.

February 2024

Onboarding to a new team

People are starting to cheat in interviews using ChatGPT. It's obvious, doesn't work, and wouldn't even be cheating if you did it right!