Computers Have Gone Wrong (And It's All Software's Fault)
Computers Have Gone Wrong (And It's All Software's Fault)
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Teaching Mental Models
I was recently trying to explain the concept of mental models to my younger brother — how to build them, and how they could be useful. Ironically, I didn't really have a good idea of how they worked,...
Photography
Currently, I take photos with my iPhone 12 Pro Max (often using Halide), a Nikon D7200, and a Skydio 2.
Building A New Blog
I've moved my blog off of Wordpress — in part because of limitations with Wordpress.com's hosted offering[^0] — and onto a custom-built site[^1].
The Dream Machine: A Story of Creativity, Tinkering, and Cross-Pollination
> "Creativity is a function of freedom" – George Pake
Computers Aren't Fun Anymore
Throughout The Dream Machine, a history of the early days of computing, tinkering and having fun was a recurring theme throughout the decades. I wasn't around to experience the early days of...
No One Cares About Software Quality
No one cares about software quality anymore. I mean, yes technically that is untrue and there are demonstrably some people who do, but for the most part, quality software has become a niche...
Inadequate Equilibria: A Summarized Remix
In late 2017, Inadequate Equilibria spread like wildfire across my Twitter feed. Having worked through it, I’d now easily rank this book as one of the most impactful I’ve ever read on the way I see...
Never Waste a Good Crisis
The past few weeks, indefinitely isolated at home, has given me time to think about the civilizational optimizations and limitations that COVID-19 has revealed and the stunning interconnectedness of...
Remove the Middle Option
Recently I was talking to a friend who’s thinking about getting a car and wanted to get my thoughts on leasing for 3–5 years vs buying/financing. As it happened, I have also been thinking about...
An Eighty-Year Career
When I was a kid living at home, I remember my dad, from time to time, wistfully looking forward to retiring. I would often ask him why, since retirement sounded so boring, but I don't remember ever...
How To Do My Job
Recently, I was talking to a future coworker (who didn’t work as a software engineer), and I found myself indelibly curious about what exactly his job was like and what I would need to know if I...
Documenting Some Thoughts Around Tanagram
Tanagram is the name of a project idea I’ve been thinking about for a while. I trace the idea’s lineage back to a little prototype I built in late 2013. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but...
Introducing LeetcodeSolutions
On a Saturday afternoon last fall, I found myself in front of an expansive whiteboard covered in diagrams, tables, and somewhat legible hand-writing. I was there with a new coworker, and we had just...
Next Steps
Last week was officially my final week with Trustwork, a seed-stage startup where I joined about two years ago as the second engineer. It’s an equitable conclusion to a personal journey that began...
Learn Harder Things
When you take the time to learn something new on your own time, it’s better to learn things that are conceptually harder than, or paradigmatically different from, what you already know, rather than...
Decisions ≠ Outcomes
While reflecting on how well I make decisions, I realized that it’s possible, and in fact important, to separate the evaluation of the decision-making from its outcome. In other words, the process of...
Apple Watch: Not-a-Review
There seems to be an inverse correlation between how much I pay for an Apple product and how much I enjoy using it. My Macbook Pro (2016, Touchbar) is functional at best, and unusably glitchy...
On Frustration and Anger
When I was younger, I used to be easily frustrated when things weren’t going my way. I would feel a surge of emotion wash over me, and I would indulge in that burning warmth while it lasted. The...
Aphantasia and the Speed of Thought
A recent Twitter exchange reminded me that we all perceive the world differently. For me, one of these differences is that I’m not really able to visualize anything in my mind.