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The software industry handles failure poorly.
The startup world venerates failure. Well, sort of. It venerates business failure, so long as it happens in a way that the investors approved of. The VCs will manage the careers of the founders, and no...
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What I Fought For
Before reading this, please read Jeff Vogel’s excellent essay, “How I Deal With Harassment, Abuse, and Crazies In General“. His experiences, as one who has encountered both the positive and negative...
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Small announcement
I’ve come up with an idea for a company that will actually work. It’s in the logistics space and will require some data science muscle. It tackles an ugly, ugly problem– one that most people in the...
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Why “Agile” and especially Scrum are terrible
Agility is a good thing, no doubt, and the Agile Manifesto isn’t unreasonable. Compared to a straw-man practice called “Waterfall”, Agile is notably superior. Yet, so much of Agile as-practiced is...
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SetBang 1: Toward a more unreadable esolang
SetBang (or S∈tBang) is a language based on the foundation of all mathematics: set theory. It’s esoteric by design, so I wouldn’t use it for anything where performance, readability, or programmer...
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SetBang 2: SetBang programming
In Part 1, I introduced SetBang, an esoteric language based on set theory. Here, I’ll write some SetBang programs, and show that it’s Turing Complete. First, let’s talk about the “mystery operator”...
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SetBang 3: Fast(er) math in SetBang
SetBang, even when limited to the finite world, is inherently “inefficient”. We might like to live in a world where straightforward set operations can be performed quickly. Unfortunately, that’s not...
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A call for secession from Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley has ceased to be an outlier in terms of technological innovation. Innovation itself has decentralized, all across the globe, but Silicon Valley remains a hub of… something. Of what? If...
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Card counters
In the world of casino gambling, card counters are legendary. Most “systems” promising to make it possible to beat casinos are ludicrous. However, blackjack, if played very well, can be winnable by the...
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The Disruption Algorithm
I’ve observed that business processes tend to follow three phases. innovation: an opportunity is found or a problem is solved. refinement: improvements are made. The process becomes cheaper, more...
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The moment where I scared myself
I’ve written at length about the nasty tactics that the current generation of Silicon Valley power players use to defend and expand their own reputations. It’s painful to discuss the topic, especially...
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Moral mysophobia
I’ve written a lot on the Internet, and one of the side effects of having a vociferous web presence is that people speculate about one’s mental health. It’s really none of anyone’s business but… in...
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Insights into why a contravariant type can’t be a Haskell Functor
In learning Haskell’s core types, type classes, and concepts, one often finds counterexamples useful in learning what certain abstract concepts “really are”. One of the more commmon type class...
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It’s time to stop hating and start learning
There’s a strong resentment that software engineers and technologists have toward “non-technical” people or “business people”. We compare our situations, and our impulse is to find the arrangement...
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Pyramid vs. obelisk
I may not be able to save the world, but I think I’ve come up with the fundamental idea that will be necessary in order to restore (and, afterward, preserve) the integrity of, at the very least, the...
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End of blog
“When we reach the top,” Farisa said, “it’ll be worth it.” Raqel was out of breath. Both girls had been trudging through snow since noon and it was only getting deeper as they climbed. “You’ve never...
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Crossing the Equator 1: From Tech Blogging To Fiction
I had originally intended to quit blogging. In fact, I started shutting down social media accounts. For example, I went from 2,500 Twitter followers to zero. I don’t miss it. That addiction to internet...
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Farisa’s Courage Table of Contents As Of May 1, 2017.
Of course, chapter titles may change, and the page numbers are unlikely to match those of the printed book. I’m just sharing the current TOC because I think it’s interesting data about the book....
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Crossing the Equator 2: On Why “Highbrow” and “Lowbrow” Are Too...
I’ll let Farisa speak on it (slightly edited for de-spoilerization). She says it better than I can. “Let me pose this,” Farisa started, awake and ready for intellectual combat. Her eyebrows would start...
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Farisa’s Courage Public Query
When you submit to an agent, you use what’s called a query letter. They get a bad rap, but I actually found it fun to write. There’s a chicken-and-egg problem with agents. You need an agent to get...
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