2019#35 Readings of the Week

December 15, 2019 6 minutes read | 1100 words by Ruben Berenguel

A flight last Sunday meant I was so sleepy I skipped sending last week’s newsletter… so this week is super-sized. A lot of content about distributed teams I think.

NOTE: Scala, distributed teams and a bit of a random selection. 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.

A Recession Hasn’t Arrived (Yet). Here’s Where You’ll See It First

The title sounds more exciting than the content, and it’s from The New York Times, so beware the paywall. I think it’s worth remembering the economy has been acting weirdly for a while

The wonders of the suffix tree through the lens of Ukkonen’s Algorithm

Suffix trees are excellent for certain search problems (many documents or large document for a limited amount of patterns or variable patterns). Its dual (many documents or large documents for many patterns) would he Aho-Corasick’s algorithm (or some of its improvements)

The World Has Gone Mad and the System Is Broken

Building on the first article of the week, and also what seems to be clear: the system is flush with stupid money.

Homology

If you can get past some of the typos, this is an excellent explanation of homology.

Star Trek: The Next Generation In 40 Hours - Maxistentialism Blog - Medium

I recently re-watched the whole TNG (I think it may have been the 3rd time for me) with my partner. And indeed, watching everything is a bit of a chore: the selection here is what I would have also picked, and I think builds up correctly up to Inner Light.

Monads aren’t as hard as you think

Monads… in Python. And also, well explained. I prefer to think as monads as “containers offering a way to be merged together” (as in… functor… monoid) but the explanation here (and the Python class magic) are good.

Beginners Guide to Columnar File Formats in Spark and Hadoop

In case you don’t know what columnar is (and haven’t watched any of my presentations with animated drawings), read this.

How to Setup AWS Lambda in Scala without any external Library

This seems promising. Lambda everything.

What nobody tells you about documentation

I saw this recently in Twitter (not sure who shared, it was a “Scala person”), and I remembered reading it when it was posted. Since it was before Readings of the Week started, I think it never got shared, so enjoy.

What are Wardley Maps? Using Miro for Wardley Mapping

I’ve been exploring possible solutions to “remote whiteboard” and Miro seems an excellent proposition. It’s like a better version of LucidCharts, but with real time editing capabilities. Also, Wardley maps, yes. Obviously it’s written by Ben, who is everywhere maps appear 🤣

Three ways to reduce the costs of your HTTP(S) API on AWS

Reducing the size of certificate chain is something we have investigated to speed up SSL interchanges, not for size. But it’s good to read what options are for really high volume systems.

🎬 Grow your own tech leads

Slides of a presentation. Good tips

“My Car does not start when I buy Vanilla Ice Cream”, said a Man to General Motors

Weird bugs are weird.

The Dogs Ate SoftBank’s Money - Bloomberg

Another SoftBank related article. It’s getting even more mad.

Netflix tweet

An humorous tweet by Netflix CM… Best of the Internet this year. Check the answers.

scala - What’s the difference between => , ()=>, and Unit=>

Good to know if you use Scala.

How a Bottle of Wine Can Help Your Public Speaking

Does not imply drinking it.

How to Make Remote a Success

Remote is hard, any help is welcome

Run for the balls: West Ham team up with Iron Maiden for new kit

I found the headline (and the ukulele bearing) hilarious.

Yes! and…

Classic improv technique, but don’t use it with your product owner.

The Product-Minded Software Engineer

Speaking of product owners?

Force Field Analysis

Yet another “change generation” approach to identify leverage points.

The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code

This was a fascinating read.

Monopoly Was Invented to Demonstrate the Evils of Capitalism

Go figure: Monopoly is not what you thought of it.

Progressive Summarization: A Practical Technique for Designing Discoverable Notes

I had read this before, and it can be a bit confusing. TL;DR: get plenty of notes, highlight them later, bold the highlighted material, and if they are still large, summarise the bold.

Performant Python

Tips and tricks for fast Python.

Recording meetup talks on a low budget

This is what we do at PyBCN… because Isra is one of the members of the recording team. We are actually investing in better systems for next year, but as a starter this was excellent.

How “randomizers” are breathing new life into old games

I read about randomisers in a Hillel Wayne article (PROVING GAMES ARE WINNABLE WITH ALLOY, probably the best intro to Alloy ever). This is a more detailed view of what they are than that one though.

How busyness leads to bad decisions

Basically, not having margin (or slack) in your system is a bad idea.

A Distributed Meeting Primer

More remote working things. Sorry, distributed working.

Behind the screens at The Guardian

Details on The Guardian’s tech stack. They are strong in Scala!

“Harbinger households”: neighbourhoods that consistently buy products that get discontinued, buy real-estate that underperforms, and donate to losing political candidates

The paper mentioned in this article is now on my reading list.

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