unicolet.org

Debating whether to go no-code but worried about unclear licensing, the dreadful we-need-to-rewrite-it dram down the road or django/rails/spring boot and its relatively higher upfront cost? There's a third way: quasi-code with Apache Camel . It still amazes me how few people know about the swiss-army knife of integrations.

I was reading this interesting analysis on Nvidia competition (as usual, his blog should be on your feed) from Simon Willison and this bit caught my attention (emphasis mine): Technologies like MLX, Triton and JAX are undermining the CUDA advantage by making it easier for ML developers to target multiple backends - plus LLMs themselves are getting capable enough to help port things to alternative architectures . I found it curious that the very same thing that's been fueling Nvidia's success could also help reduce/eliminate their moat.

When you have, when your engineers know what the right answer is, but they also feel that the right answer is culturally unobtainable, you have a cultural problem. Bryan Cantrill on Intel after Gelsinger @ 33:22

Another golden nugget from The Knowledge Project podcast in episode  Dr. Jim Loehr: Change The Stories You Tell Yourself [The Knowledge Project Ep. #193] : time only has value in its intersection with energy or how I have it memorized: time has no value without energy . And how I picture it: one hour on the couch has not the same value as one hour studying or exercising. And this becomes even more important when we consider our relationship with others. Dr. Jim Loehr continues (emphasis mine): Well, I will tell you, time has no value, has no valence, has no force. Until time intersects with energy, you really have nothing.” I mean, you’re just there. You can be present with your family, but because you’re there, is that going to move the needle toward being a loving, caring mother or father? And the fact is no; you’re going to have to invest energy aligned with the mission. Time doesn’t give you anything except the opportunity to make the investment of the one thing that moves the...

John Cutler has been posting some supremely interesting content on LinkedIn recently, and I felt I had to save it somewhere for finding it more easily later. This is one is about attributes of good and bad process: Good Process Encourages mindfulness. Flexible to local concerns. Adaptable, frequently challenged/improved. Mostly "pulled" because it is valuable. Core principles understood. Encourages conversations/collaboration. Co-created/designed with "users." Value to all participants. Increases confidence in outcomes. Distilled to core "job" (lightweight). Achieves desired consistency with minimal impact on resiliency. Improves global outcomes. Delivers value to end-customers. Guide/tool/navigate/remind. Enhances trust/safety. Bad Process Encourages mindlessness. Inflexible to local concerns. Set in stone. "Just because..." Mostly "pushed" onto participants. Automatic/forced adherence. Reduces quality/quantity of conversations. Desi...

One of the things I always tell to those who come to seeking advice on a process improvement is the following: prepare for the inevitable downturn: things will get better in the short term, but then something bad will happen and things will get much worse than they are now. This is ok, and totally expected. Be prepared for it, know that the only way forward is through and then things will really get better. Then I usually draw this curve in the air with my hands: Most people stop at the first downturn, and that why most process improvements fail. Enough failures and people stop believing in any improvement at all, creating a death spiral. Another way to look at this is to think about is described in Gary Gruver's book A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development : [...] after you have chosen an approach you don't need to worry about getting the advantages of that design because it will come naturally. Where you need to provide management focus is on addressing the dis...

Besides Entropy , the Buffett/Munger duo is another rabbit hole I find myself going down into often in these last days of the Xmas break. I liked this quote in particular: We can handle bad news, but we don't like them late

Technical Debt is Entropy In Software  (via lobste.rs ) made me run dow a rabbit hole of Entropy/Second Law of Thermodynamics. Youtube is full of videos on the topic. This  by Sabine Hossenfelder is one is the most clear and practical explanations I found so far. Another one is this interview with Stephen Wolfram .