Notes on Soul of a New Machine, Messy Middle, Crazy at Work, Company of One.
February 2, 2019 Every year or two I spend a month or two reading some general business and management books. On average, these are not my favorite books, but they usually have a couple interesting ideas and are imminently skimmable. Recently I've read through The Soul of a New Machine, The Messy Middle, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, and Company of One.
Notes on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
December 29, 2018 Almost a decade ago, I bought a copy of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. My purchase was inspired by folks calling it a great work, and I wanted to love it. In the decade since, I've started working through the book probably a dozen times, but never got too far. The early content was too easy to hold my attention, and the later content was inscrutable because I hadn't done the earlier content to learn Scheme. I finally got around to working through SICP, and here are my notes.
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.
Notes on The Pyramid Principle.
October 1, 2018 Although it's not universally true, I've found that as folks move into more senior roles, they spend a lot more time writing. The nature of these documents vary depending on your role--strategies, presentations, memos, announcements, email, etc--but your written word often becomes your most important medium of communication. I'm fortunate to have spent a lot of time writing over the past decade, in addition to attending a liberal arts college, so this shift has generally has been something I've enjoyed.
Notes on A Philosophy of Software Design.
September 3, 2018 Jumping on the recent trend, I picked up a copy of A Philosophy of Software Design based on Cindy's recommendation. It's a fairly concise read at 160 pages, and I skimmed through it over the last few days, writing up some notes along the way.