I wrote a smallish program in Go around a year ago. Today, a colleague shared this article, and inspired by it, I went back and had a look at my now old project. The simplicity of it was surprising.

an argument for any language

One can write good or bad software on any available language. Some languages are easier to adopt and master, some more performant, some academic, others like a double clawed hammer. Though the argument is valid, having no constraints might provoke showing off, or what we’ve come to call technological masturbation. Tinkering with some arcane and awesome features of a language rarely produce much value for the customer or the users.

Simple languages like Go enforce simple usage. I admit to being frustrated for having found no library for functionally manipulating collections, or just doing some basic stuff I’d gotten accustomed to in Scala, Javascript or even in...

Genes and memes are, in their essence, a construct of information that aims to replicate. So far, though, memes are generated by organisms guided by genetics. Memes replicate much faster, only because of tools adopted by the biological organisms. Memes (or genes) alone, aren’t intelligent. But the gist of their being hints at the evolution of intelligence to come.

Genetic information and evolution is rather complex. Coding DNA, non-coding DNA and RNA. A genetic mutation rarely affects the whole organism that much, as it is formed by numerous genes. A single gene is bound to the host organism and it’s surroundings. A meme is only constrained by the interconnected minds, ranging from small groups to the entire humanity.

Memes, tend to be concise, compressed, and short. They have their history and evolution, perhaps chronicled by someone somewhere. But in essence, the easier a meme is to...

I see a lot of discussion on which technology or framework is the best. Too often, the conversation revolves around which on is the best on absolute terms. To make this less abstract, think about React vs Angular, or pretty much just any library, framework, or architecture we’ve had over the years. The idea that one thing is the best option for everything and everyone is of course plain ridiculous.

The opposite - yet still flawed - viewpoint is that of those who declare the chosen framework to be irrelevant. The only thing that matters, is the implementation and overall reasoning. Granted, the chosen technology matters little if the project fails on incompetence or mismanagement. The potential leverage provided by a technology can always end up wasted. There is a multitude of reasons why a framework fails to be the silver bullet, and why a DIY attitude might sound tempting.

But...

Watching Netflix’s Narcos produces conflicted feelings in me. I’m not that familiar with Pablo Escobar, but still quite sure he was a terrible person. Obviously, the character in the show is humanised, and constructed to induce sympathy in the viewer. But what’s actually more conflicting to me, is the underlaying war on drugs and clash of ideas.

What I can’t help seeing in the undertones, are battles against a crime that could be solved in much easier ways.

humanising evil people

Main characters are seldom portrayed as completely inhuman or evil fashion. Even the anti-hero should have some redeeming qualities, and in Narcos, Escobar seems to exhibit familial love and a some kind of an ideological stance on American imperialism.

Escobar somewhat reminds me of Walter White, though Escobar was an actual person. He is shaped by real events, instead of a writer trying to keep his main...

Neomania, or neophilia, means the love for new things. Many hardware products reach a plateau, and the focus then tends to move to software. I’m wondering how, and at what level, does the speed of change on software and software development, begin to level. I believe the speed is only accelerating, and am also hesitant to join the scouting party on this endeavour.

For some things, there comes a point when the change is too fast and they fall behind. They can’t cope with the speed and are then best abandoned. Add to this the fact that people are willing to jump ship based on little or no proof at all. Due to neomania, technology adoption is faster than common sense and actual need would suggest. I think there’s both genuine interest in everything new, and a certain compulsive need to be one step ahead.

Fast adoption of software seems more mentally, rather than financially, taxing. The...

Productivity is a hot topic. It’s only logical we would want to maximise it, as the information growth and the pace of change is accelerating. There’s increasingly more things to do and learn, while it seems there’s less and less time to do it. I believe it’s most important to separate what’s important, and every now and then to have a day off. Instead of doing more, doing less. And the right things.

getting meaningful stuff done

Tracking, routines, focus, constraints. There’s more than enough approaches and methods on how to achieve maximal productivity. It has become somewhat of an industry. And I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’d rather minimise repetitive and boring work, or avoid waste in general.

But there comes a point when squeezing all that time out of a day turns this habit detrimental.

The worst possible scenario is that one keeps going from one achievement to another...

Should I aim for specialisation, or be a generalist? Should I gather expertise on something specific, or go balls to the walls all-over-the-place? It’s something I’ve professionally contemplated for years already. Currently, I’m gravitating against the latter, as I see more positive sides to being a jack of all trades, than a master of one. Granted, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

a small identity

I try to avoid categorising or labelling myself. It leads to emotional investment on those ideas and inhibits considering new ones. Incorporating ideas into my identity makes them a part of me, and critique on them feels like a personal criticism on me. Those with strong opinions might argue this kind of approach as having no stance or backbone. But the point is to be able to give and receive critique and be reasonably malleable, resulting in self-improvement.

I view specialisation to be...

There’s this silly “action role-playing game”, which I’ve played countless of hours to date. It’s dumb-easy to get started with, but requires effort to master. Not that e-sports effort though. You don’t directly play against human players, but you can play in this ladder/leaderboard style, where your results are compared with others’. The best part of the game is, that I can play in pretty much any state of mind possible.

I can really concentrate, think, optimise and furiously abuse my mouse, and still have a challenge.
I can be near blackout drunk, mindlessly poking around my underpowered laptop keyboard and a mouse I picked up somewhere, and still have fun.

group effort

The best part of the game is the cooperative mode. Fire up Skype or something alike, start a conversation and launch the game. For the aforementioned reasons, the balance with gaming and conversation can sway. Which...

I just finished Neal Stephenson’s 900+ page book Cryptonomicon. I’ve since (and during the long read), been dwelling more on information security. Even though the book is fiction, it points out there’s been this hidden effort of espionage and information gathering, long before NSA’s recent accomplishments.

cryptonomicon

The book’s an epic story in two timelines, mixing historical events with fictitious ones. There’s fictitious interpretations of real people and unreal characters. It spans Europe, North America and East Asia, during the second World War and the end of the 90’s. There’s Alan “Türing” and Douglas MacArthur. Reagan and Yamamoto make an appearance, as do the world’s first digital computers.

The book’s main theme is cryptography, information security and wartime intelligence. There’s a bunch of characters, and some of them represent a regular dudes’s viewpoint from the...

Why is it that integrating into another system can be so tedious? Sometimes, the integration endpoints are backed by vast financial support and professional care. Too often, though, they’re a mess that’s just been pieced together in a hurry.

Larger companies like Google, Twitter, etc., have their shit together concerning this. A substandard API would be a sign of either low effort or immaturity. Also, it would cause a mess within customer service. Public APIs are generally OK, and getting better. The problem lies within those private ones where the integration is implemented ad-hoc. Many of these APIs (that I’ve seen) are more like a nightmare of arcane old techs, crackling communications channels and pompous colleagues on the other end.

estimating

Estimating the time required to implement an integration, even to a well documented system, can be difficult. There’s bound to be...