Notes on The Timeless Way of Building
November 24, 2018 Some months ago, a friend recommend Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. I hadn't heard of it before, and as I started poking around I realized that this was the second of a series of three books, and recommendations generally pointed me to start instead with The Timeless Way of Building.
Quick tutorial on using GraphQL with Python.
November 18, 2018 Having spent some time earlier this year experimenting with gRPC for defining and integrating server/client pairs, this weekend I wanted to spend a bit of time doing a similar experiment with GraphQL. I couldn't find any particularly complete tutorials for doing this in Python, so I've written up what I hope is a useful collection of notes for someone looking to try out GraphQL in Python.
Headcount dilemmas.
November 15, 2018 When I was four, I won a cake walk. For thoes who haven't partaken, a cake walk is when a group of folks walk around a path on the floor, and then stop when they are told to stop. Whether you win or lose a cake is entirely out of your hands, it's a matter of timing and position, both of which are out of your control. I've been reflecting lately on the forces which make headcount planning--really just a specialized form of resource allocation--difficult, and perhaps sthe cake walk has something to teach us.
Speaking at QCon SF 2018 about migrations.
November 5, 2018 Quite excited that I'll be speaking at QCon SF 2018 tomorrow about migrations, and hope to see some of y'all there.
Talent distributions.
November 4, 2018 When I was applying to college some years ago, one of my teachers asked me if I thought I would regret not applying to more prestigious schools, making the observation that it's not whether the professors will be good--professors are good everywhere--but the quality of the student body. Would I learn from my peers? I hadn't thought of that conversation in a decade, but it floated up through the layers of memory recently when someone asked why I originally joined Stripe.