EN 79: "Studying for fun"
This will be a short one this week, followed by a longer list of links and articles.
The past two weeks I finally came back to a study routine of sorts. Not a long one, at most one hour long, but typically thirty minutes. In the past newsletter, I wrote that I wasn’t really that interested in learning about software any more, for various reasons. Salsa and guitar have been the things I’ve practiced the most.
The question lingered on my mind all week, why am I not enjoying learning about the field any more? Partially it’s because of the turbulent times, but the other part of the answer was the disappointment in the software industry, a disenchantment with it or in where things have gone after the pandemic compared to what I envisioned. Put another way, I wonder if being a software developer for the next ten or twenty years, working in the —let’s say— typical way, is for me.
With the question on my mind, I thought that if I wanted to resume studying, it should be something fun and interesting, even though it might not be related to work or might advance my career, and with low expectations. That’s why I’ve started putting some time into reading Crafting Interpreter. While I have the physical book, I’m reading it online —it’s free— so I can have it side by side with my editor.
Interesting links
Why we must defend science, social science and medicine from attacks on diversity (Christina Pagel). Independent SAGE recently released a new report about DEI and its importance and benefits. I recommend reading it or Christina’s shorter version. “Diversity, equity and inclusion in science are not ‘nice to have’ or about ‘wokeness’. They are essential for scientific excellence. Silencing minoritised voices restricts the pool of talent, leads to knowledge gaps, and exacerbates inequalities in society”.
I don’t have a model for this (expatriate / ex-patriot). Excellent post about the current times. “What’s happening does not fit into existing political theories; it will not be a shot-for-shot remake of the Third Reich or Orban’s rise to power in Hungary. It is maybe more usefully interpreted through the psychology of the individuals at the helm of this movement and knowledge of leadership ideologies in Silicon Valley tech companies.”
The modern way to write JavaScript servers (Marvin Hagemeister)
Things people get wrong about Electron (Felix Rieseberg). Insightful article about Electron that clears misconceptions about it. “[Electron] It's a free open source community effort filling a gap. If you want to defeat Electron, you will need to fill it too; and you will need to do a better job than Electron is doing today — at the things that allow us to deliver a good experience.”
The Afterlife of Big Ideas in Education Reform (Michael Hobbes). I might have shared this already, but I still have this issue in my saved links for a few reasons. The first reason is that I love the way it’s written. The second one reason is that it makes me think about systems: how top-down mandate that forces change doesn’t tend to work; how people at the top believe that success is all about copying and pasting a recipe, forgetting that there was so much more to it; how we forget that the people doing the work have already thought about improving it way longer than any of us and are full of ideas… One of the most impactful lines for me in the article is the following: “After two weeks at Nathan Hale, this is the question I’m left with: Every single teacher and administrator here has ideas for improving the school. So why do education reform efforts always ask them to implement somebody else’s?”
Live Video from the International Space Station. I recently discovered in awe that there’s a NASA live video from the ISS.
