A Pattern Language is a beautiful tome on architecture and urban design that I found in my company's physical library. It had a pale yellow minimalist cover, a small form, and some blotchy typography accompanied by evocative photographs and lively doodles explaining the essence of its ideas. I always judge a book by its cover. How was I not going to borrow this book.
These days I derive little joy from my possessions of necessity. Knowledge workers, over the last couple of decades, have traded the engagement of our senses for an upgrade in flexibility. I shall elaborate.
There's a pattern of things I predictably like—which I shall now call “just the right amount of unpleasant”. Some examples to follow.
Is art paintings, sculpture, architecture, theatre, dance, film, poetry, literature, craft and criticism? It's hard to describe it in concretions. Sometimes concretions aren't enough. Let me try something more abstract—to me, good art is powerful compression.
The human condition is vast and complex, the only way to not be overwhelmed is to compress and compress more.
This is lifted from my old blog that's not around anymore (with some light edits). My default mental state is no longer weirdly existential. Although it's been a while since I've played some games in my head.
It's the weekend. I sit back on my revolving chair and make my way down each layer of mortal, material thoughts to my default state of being weirdly existential. At this point, a thought appears.
Remember what it was like when you were a child?
This is lifted and reposted from my old blog that's not up anymore. I don't use twitter/X/whatever anymore. Now for the post.
Friends know me for having a broad and discerning palate. In recent years, I have realised that this quality of mine has been an endless stream of joy and that has enriched my day-to-day. I have also felt that many people don't draw from this stream enough.
I am a strange loop is perhaps the best book I’ve ever read; a masterpiece and a flagship example of what the written word is capable of achieving.
What contributes to a stable, high-quality software product? I shall categorise it this way:
Software discourse tends to be disproportionately focused on the latter. I find myself contributing to this skew as well. Perhaps it's because tools and technologies are more concrete and easy to talk about. It's also easy to get people worked up about it.
Yet tools and technologies only exist in service of the first category, which fundamentally capture the highest-value bits of a developer's job—concept mapping. Or making analogies. Pick whichever phrase that makes the most sense to you. I shall present a short motivating example for what I mean by concept-mapping.
Two archetypes of people capture my imagination. They could be placed on two ends of a spectrum. The first is the polymath—a person who has done a whole bunch of things to remarkable effect. By the standards of modernity, they have lived many lives.
To throw out a bunch of examples: