31-Jul-2025 Content of Interest

Software

I Reviewed 500 Pull Requests — Here’s What Every Java Dev Gets Wrong (Kavya’s Programming Path)
What is First Principles Thinking? (Shane Parrish) "First principles thinking is the art of breaking down complex problems into their most fundamental truths."
Workflow Engine design proposal, tell me your thoughts (Oskar Dudycz) Durable execution has "cognitive overhead" no matter who develops it.
Tokens: The New Oil (Kent Beck) "Tomorrow's crisis is tomorrow's problem. Today, you survive."
Getting decent error reports in Bash when you’re using ’set -e’ (Chris Siebenmann) Nice!
Zombie Burnout: A New Way to Think About the Restless Exhaustion of Modern Life (Brad Stulberg) "the one who burns out doesn’t find the work meaningful, whereas the one who thrives does"

Who is LLM (Martin Fowler) "Sometimes you get a fantastic result, often you get dreck,..."
F*ck Yeah, There’s Still a Human in the Loop (Maho Pacheco) "AI will augment their [humams] capabilities, not replace them."

Muse Headband Offers Affordable Brain Activity Tracking (Greg Uyeno) "its measurements of both brain activity and blood oxygenation could be useful for assessing disorders such as sleep apnea."
There’s Neuralink—and There’s the Mind-Reading Company That Might Surpass It (Emily Mullin) The Synchron vs. Neuralink approach.

What The FDA’s Guidance On AI-Enabled Devices Gets Right And Wrong - Forbes (Christian Espinosa)
The Evolution of SBOMs in Medical Device Security (Claire Wallace) "SBOMs have since become a cornerstone for compliance, security, and supply chain transparency"

Building competency is better than therapy (David Heinemeier Hansson) "Open source nails this trifecta of motivations to a T."

No Plan B (Mike Fisher) "Embrace this mindset and build in the flexibility to roll back and adapt"
The AWS Survival Guide for 2025: A Field Manual for the Brave and the Bankrupt (Corey Quinn) "navigating the real AWS experience"
you are in a box (Jynn Nelson) "your data is trapped inside the box that is your program"
Almost Fired (John Calhoun) Good read. "The First Time I Was Almost Fired From Apple"
📄 Full-breadth Developers (Justin Searls) "Get serious about learning and using these new tools."

FDA’s draft guidance on AI/ML has startups on high alert - AI News (Eric Elsen) The FDA AI guidance needs close attention from AI-driven diagnostics and early-stage medtech startups.

Context, Memory, and Voice (rands) "We’re either giddy with excitement about their potential or digging deep to find any and all reasons not to trust them."
A Brief Introduction to Agentic AI (Zashibis) "how to design agents and what tasks they are suitable for."

Thoughts on Motivation and My 40-Year Career (mipsytipsy) Great read. "It’s about living a meaningful life, and acting with integrity, and building things of enduring value"
The Cool Head in a Crisis (Mike Fisher) "While others spin faster, the great leader slows down."
[What is OpenTelemetry? a basic guide] (Elizabeth Mathew) Good overview.

A new era of Stack Overflow (Prashanth Chandrasekar, Jody Bailey) Mission: Cultivate community, power learning, and unlock growth.

Thayer Method (Mike Fisher) "the responsibility for learning lies with the student."
When Your Source of Truth is Reality (Dan Lew) "be humble enough to recognize that your database plays second fiddle to reality"
The New Skill in AI is Not Prompting, It’s Context Engineering (Philipp Schmid) AI technology is evolving very quickly!
What Does a Post-Google Internet Look Like (Mathew Duggan) "Anyone attempting to make an online store is gonna get mob-style shakedown."
Tools I love: mise(-en-place) (Michael Bang) 17K stars is good indicator that mise is a useful tool
My Lights Run on Bash (Tomasz Kramkowski) Interesting approach to home automation.
Modeling Imperfection (Mike Fisher) "being willing to admit that we don’t have all the answers is only the first step in demonstrating great leadership through being vulnerable."
Ruthless prioritization while the dog pees on the floor (Jason Cohen) "Because you’re so focused on the most important thing, other things lay fallow.