2020#63 Readings
4 minutes read | 649 words by Ruben BerenguelThis looks like a less hard technical edition than usual.
📯 Find-the-gap with SQL in AWS Redshift
I wrote this a few days ago. Finding gaps in time series is a typical problem in data engineering. Although you can solve it in your programming language of choice, it can be done in pure SQL. Here’s how to approach the problem in Redshift.
Metaprogramming for madmen
Classic crazy demo programming madness.
Playmaker: The Reality of 10x Engineer
I guess I’m wide and shallow. Don’t feel that shallow in some areas though.
Leather Balls and 3,000-Year-Old Pants Hint at an Ancient Asian Sport
When I read three leather balls I half-assumed juggling, but given the polo-related paintings that were painted later, a sport seems more likely.
This 2-Acre Vertical Farm Out-Produces 720 Acre ‘Flat Farms’
It should be clear that if we are to keep eating fruits and vegetables this is one of the few solutions that don’t imply gene editing
Comparing iPhone OS 1.0 with iOS 14 using tree maps
Colouring the visualisation would have been better, but this is great.
Fugging hell: tired of mockery, Austrian village changes name
Fugg.
SQLite as a document database
Wow, for local data exploration this is an awesome addition I wasn’t aware of.
What does a Tech Lead do?
This is an excellent post, spot on.
My Summer Car (Wikipedia)
This feels very Scandinavian.
Personal Data Warehouses: Reclaiming Your Data
This is a transcript of a talk by the author of Datasette. I have tried Datasette in the past, and is a very convenient tool. I wonder if it can be integrated with visidata.
The first Turkish software export was measured in meters […]
An amusing comment on Hacker News.
chroot shenanigans 2: Running a full desktop environment on an Amazon Kindle
I’d love to have more things I could do on my Kindle, I love this device. But I’m still not sure if it’s rootable (I suspect no, it’s the late 2020 model). Maybe next year I’ll check (when a new model appears and I’m not so scared of bricking it and needing a replacement).
How I Made a Self-Quoting Tweet
A quine tweet. I love crazy tech things, and this is one of the best this year.
🔊 Turn the Ship Around
This was a superb book on leadership and management. Now I understand why it is so highly recommended.
“I’ve had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
I have been in the technical evaluation of candidates, and I try to make it as close to the real work as possible. I don’t like requiring bullshit “implement a red-black tree on the whiteboard” type of problems. We have a very easy take home, talk about it, programming languages, and after a while you get a sense for the candidate and can ask some more probing questions. That at least are close to real work scenarios.
I wrote a spelling checker in the 1980’s In my first job I worked for Tasman in…
A comment on old-time optimisation. But these things are still useful, at scale. Old tricks are new again.
