2019#34 Readings of the Week
5 minutes read | 1042 words by Ruben BerenguelThis week is somewhat more eclectic than usual. There is nothing about any particular programming language. There is a bit on Kubernetes, functional programming and containers, project management, aviation history, interviews/bios… I have started reading a few more papers, and I’ll share the interesting ones as well. This week they are centered in data engineering.
NOTE: The themes are varied, and some links below are affiliate links. Kubernetes, functional programming and containers, project management, aviation history, interviews/bios… Expect a similar wide range in the future as well. You can check all my weekly readings by checking the tag here. You can also get these as a weekly newsletter by subscribing here.
I’ve been in London this week
Planet Satellite: British super-plane or magnesium flop?
I have a strange attraction to stories about weird engineering projects. This one is about a plane that was supposed to democratise flight, bringing an airplane to every home.
Death Star II: A Project Management Case Study
This feels almost like the story of the Vasa, but in a fictional, planet-destroyer level.
After WeWork, SoftBank’s Startup Bookkeeping Draws Scrutiny
This feels like financial engineering at its finest. Reminds me of this 37Signals joke post from some years ago.
TLA+ model checking made symbolic
A quick overview of this paper, which essentially introduces a type checker for a subset of TLA+ and then converts it into SMT-acceptable rules. This enables checking certain properties in reasonable time (i.e. finite).
The Sociologist and Space Engineers Behind Orba, Artiphon’s New Instrument for Everyone
I’m a sucker for musical instruments, and this looked so fun I couldn’t help but back it in Kickstarter.
My Life as a Child Chef
Following your passion sometimes leads somewhere else.
Kleisli Category — From theory to Cats
It won’t be super enlightening, but can help clarify what Kleisli stands for.
Barbara Liskov Is the Architect of Modern Algorithms
An excellent interview with Dr. Liskov (the L from SOLID). It’s hard reading how bad women/underrepresented groups have had it (and have) it in the field. We need to do our best together to fix this.
Remember Clusterman? Now It’s Open-Source, and Supports Kubernetes Too!
Back when I was investigating moving all our systems to Kubernetes, autoscaling (especially if I wanted to run Spark on the same cluster) was what looked thornier. From the looks of it, Clusterman by Yelp might be the answer.
Why Is There No Docker in OpenShift 4 and RHEL 8?
I’m not superhappy with the names chosen for the smaller tools, but breaking up the monster is a good reason.
Mind of a Mathematician
A short bio of Terence Tao, one of the best mathematicians alive.
“You Don’t Bring Bad News to the Cult Leader”: Inside the Fall of WeWork
Another WeWork themed article, and an interesting one. Seen from the outside you can’t help wonder how nobody realized?
A list of Haskell articles on good design, good testing
Not the first time a post by William Yao makes it t this list. It’s likely some of the articles recommended here will appear in future issues of my weekly readings.
📝 How to Architect a Query Compiler, Revisited
A paper involving Tiark Rompf, whom you may know as involved in Flare, an optimizer for Spark that can reach 10x speed ups. The details in this article should feel as part of the reason (technically I’m horribly wrong since Flare uses only LMS, but… I have a hunch there is a lot of overlap). In short, explains how you can specialize (query) interpreters to form the basis for efficient compiled code (similar, but nope, different, than what Catalyst does). This is achieved via a Futamura projection which I may explain later (since I’d like to read the Futamura paper as well)
📝 Performance and Scalability of Broadcast in Spark
A quite old article about improving the efficiency of Spark’s broadcast. Since currently the implementation of Spark’s broadcast does not follow the results here, the value is limited (except as historical piece).
Notes I took on The effect of Work Environments on Productivity and Satisfaction of Software Engineers
I took some notes on this article, you can read them here. Follow/add me to LinkedIn in case you want to see these (rarely) posts I write there.
🍿 Thinking Functionally (by John de Goes)
An excellent talk on ZIO, and I think the “debug by understanding your code” piece around 30 minutes in is brilliant. This is how I debug hard problems.
🔊 The Effective Executive
I’ve had what feels like a business-like week, right? TEE is a classic by Peter Drucker, and everything said in it is as valid now as it was some years ago. It applies not only to “managers”, but any knowledge worker, and yes that includes you. I’m also pretty confident I’ll re-read (well, re-listen) to it next year, as I do regularly with Getting Things Done.
🔊 The Phoenix Project
So fun, it’s an IT version of The Goal, but even better as a book. It explains theory of constraints, agile methodologies and DevOps in an applied fictional setting, as a novel. By the way, the Audible edition (of the 5 year anniversary edition) is excellently narrated, I listened to it (14 hours) in day and a half.
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