01-Oct-2025 Content of Interest

Software

Care and Swear (Mike Fisher) Good cop, bad cop, all rolled into one.
The Software Essays that Shaped Me (Michael Lynch) Good book summaries.
Getting AI to Work in Complex Codebases (Dexter Horthy) "I am now fully convinced that AI for coding is not just for toys and prototypes, but rather a deeply technical engineering craft."
Leading Through Ambiguity (Mike Fisher) "Ambiguity isn’t the enemy; pretending it isn’t there is."

Development gets better with Age (Dr. Werner Vogels) "As an older developer, you’ve also seen patterns repeat themselves… constantly."
Greenland is a beautiful nightmare (Mathew Duggan) Good read. "It is the closest I have ever felt to living a sci-fi type experience."
GenAI Predictions (Tim Bray) Pragmatic point of view.

Say Hello to the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize Winners (Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica) TIL about the "physics of pasta sause".

Fifty Years of Open Source Software Supply-Chain Security (Russ Cox) "We all have more work to do."
Java Language Architect Brian Goetz on How Java Could Evolve (David Cassel) "The Philosophy of a ‘Growable’ Language"
The Purpose of Prototypes (Marty Cagan) Deep dive.
self-reliant programmer manifesto (Vitaly Kurin) "Being self-reliant makes you more responsible for your own destiny"

It’s still censorship (even if it doesn’t violate the First Amendment) (Cory Doctorow) "Communications monopolies create single points of failure."
One Compliment (rands) Great job Rands! 😀
What Counts as an Iteration? (Curiositry) TL;DR, but an intereting read nevertheless.

Becoming the person who does the thing (Fred Rivett) "Your actions follow your self-beliefs."

The Death of Product Management. (Joe Smiley) "Product Management isn’t dying, it’s evolving."
How Culture Scales (or Doesn’t) (Mike Fisher) "Culture doesn’t scale by accident."
The evolution of platform engineering: Lessons from the trenches (Rickey Zachary) "the goal remains the same: help teams build and deliver value faster, safer and with confidence."

China’s Brain Implant Startups Take On Musk’s Neuralink in New Tech Race (Amber Tong, Saritha Rai) "America's leadership in brain technology is being challenged by Chinese startups with the support of a full-throttle policy drive."

Solve Customer Problems (Mike Fisher) "What problem is this solving?"
Meet the new boss (Eric Brechner) Good advice.
The Secret to Building a High-Performing Team (JP Pawliw, HBR) Unlocking the last 8%.
Why rational humans make irrational decisions (Bart Wullems) "sunk cost fallacy – our tendency to continue investing in failing ventures simply because we've already invested so much."
If I hear “design pattern” one more time, I’ll go mad (Alisa Sireneva) "Patterns are useful, but it doesn’t make sense to focus on them"

30 minutes with a stranger (Alvin Chang) Addictive! Lot's of other interesting topics to explore.

Frameworks (Mike Fisher) "frameworks can broadly be described as handrails for thinking"
Lisp Still Matters (Joe Marshall) "Lisp's enduring appeal to expert programmers lies in its powerful, foundational design."
Legacy tech is hard to kill (Ron Miller) "66% of enterprise hardware decision-makers reported mainframe usage."!
Java’s not dead, but it’s definitely been zombified () "surviving isn’t the same as thriving"

Neuralink’s Bid to Trademark ‘Telepathy’ and ‘Telekinesis’ Faces Legal Issues (Emily Mullin) Neuralink's Telepathy product is "designed to allow paralyzed people the ability to operate their phones and computers with just their thoughts."
Under-the-Skin Electrode Allows for Real-World Epilepsy Tracking (Michael Barbella) Subcutaneous Electroencephalography (sqEEG)
Seluna launches large-scale medical tech study for kids sleep apnea (Rowan Dunne)