28-May-2025 Content of Interest

Software

The two types of open source (Filip Hráček) "high-expectation versus low-expectation open source"
Reinvent the Wheel (Matthias Endler) "Reinvent for insight. Reuse for impact."
Vibing at Home (Mike Loukides) Like it or not, this is the future!
Pros and Cons of Going from Individual Contributor Back to Manager (Daniel Doubrovkine – aka dB.) Good read. "The cons of being a manager are obvious. It’s a lot more stressful."
Aim Small, Miss Small (Mike Fisher) "Ultimately, great organizations don't just care about details, they care about the right details."
Enlightenmentware (Roman Kashitsyn) "I praise the software that contributed the most to my enlightenment." Yay Emacs!
Why Are There So Many Databases? (Cai Parry-Jones) An opinionated pocket guide to modern DB architectures

Hold What You’ve Got (Mike Fisher) "At the heart of both flying and business is the ability to navigate uncertainty without being thrown off course by every shift in the winds."
Critical Architecture/Software Theory (Tomas Petricek) TL;DR, but some interesting analogies.
Zero to One: Learning Agentic Patterns (Philipp Schmid) AI is eating the world. So much to learn!
Why We Should Learn Multiple Programming Languages (Oskar Dudycz) "Because ultimately, programming languages are tools, not identities."
The enshittification of tech jobs (Cory Doctorow) "Tech workers’ scarcity-derived power has been vaporized."
Algorithms we develop software by (Grant Slatton) "Write everything twice"!

Two publishers and three authors fail to understand what “vibe coding” means (Simon Willison) Vibe coding does not mean “using AI tools to help write code”.
What’s the Future of Middle Management? (Gretchen Gavett, Vasundhara Sawhney, HBR) Another AI victim.
Avoiding Skill Atrophy in the Age of AI (Addy Osmani) "Use AI it to amplify your abilities, not replace them."
How to Use AI to Reduce Technical Debt (Federico Trotta) "The major difficulty of managing technical debt is that it is created daily with every line of code"
There are 47 Million Developers in the World (Antonija Bilic Arar) Interesting stats.

Senators call for investigation into BCI privacy (Elise Reuter) "protections are less clear when BCI devices are used for a nonmedical purpose, such as playing video games"

What is Architecture? (James Heward) "Architecture can be broadly defined as the practice of making the right choices at the right time and ensuring those choices are implemented correctly and remain fit for purpose."
Business Won’t Let Me and other lies we tell to ourselves (Oskar Dudycz) Making Trade-offs, Not Excuses
Event-Hidden Architectures (Charles Zedlewski) "Burying events doesn’t just simplify engineering, it grants engineers with new powers in the process."
On Bloat (Rob Pike) Bloat is inevitable, but can be costly, even dangerous

Ceribell wins FDA nod for algorithm to detect pediatric seizures (Nick Paul Taylor) "Combining a disposable, flexible headband and pocket-sized, battery-operated recorder, the system captures and wirelessly transmits EEG signals."

The Impact of AI on Software Development (Mike Fisher) "the future of software development will prioritize architectural expertise and the orchestration of AI agents over traditional coding"
The 800-pound gorilla (Johnny Rodgers) The Teams vs. Slack story.
Let GitHub Copilot interact with your local PowerPoint and Word documents (Bart Wullems) MCP: "USB-C port for AI applications"
Monolith-First - are you sure? (Oskar Dudycz) "if you can’t deal with modularity, then neither monoliths nor microservices will work for you."
Vibe Coding: Revolution or Reckless Abandon? (Addy Osmani) "it dangerously lowers the bar for introducing subtle bugs, security flaws, and unmaintainable complexity."

Innovative EEG Brain Sensor Fits Between Hair Strands (Greg Uyeno) "The small electrode, attached by microneedles, improves data quality"