Interesting Things #32 — Sociotechnical Lenses

Hi,

This is Beng Tan and welcome to Interesting Things, a curation of interesting stories and links from tech, work, biz, science, life and random stuff.

Happy reading!

#tech

Sociotechnical Lenses into Software Systems (Oct 2021) — People are constantly changing software, and those people almost certainly have different short and long-term goals, contexts, and pressures. (hn)

How Many Titles Does It Take to Run a Software Engineering Team? — A semi-scientific analysis of senior SWE job titles, and an unscientific set of opinions about them. (hn)

Why is an Enterprise Sale So Complex? — An enterprise sale is a significant source of opportunity for startups. (hn)

How Quantum Computers Will Correct Their Errors — Quantum bits are fussy and fragile. Useful quantum computers will need error-correction. (hn)

A statement about my Scala open source work — This document describes my decision to stop doing open source work in the Scala community. (hn)

ConstitutionDAO — a $20 million stupid Ethereum trick — Either this is an elaborately preplanned rugpull — or it’s actually the dumb stunt it appears to be. (hn)

What technologies should I learn? — Recommendations for early career web developers. (hn)

Why mobile releases are a silent killer, and what your team can do about it (Oct 2021) — Here are some things we wished our old selves and teams had insight into back then. (hn)

Coding Interviews – Why you shouldn’t give homework — Homework signals to candidates that their time is worthless. (hn)

Introducing Svelte, and Comparing Svelte with React and Vue — Let’s dive into what makes Svelte different, why it’s so enjoyable, and how it’s able to ship such tiny, fast apps. (hn)

Reframing tech debt — If we bake addressing tech debt into our plans, could it become an opportunity to build abundance into our systems? (hn)

Logging at Twitter: Updated (Aug 2021) — Twitter encountered challenges moving away from a home grown logging platform to the commercially available Splunk. (hn)

#work

Why so many people undercharge for their work — Setting a rate can be a minefield for folks navigating an industry alone. (hn)

What Every Engineer and Computer Scientist Should Know: The Biggest Contributor to Happiness — Seeking the fundamental factors instrumental to happiness. (hn)

#business

The Modest Moderna Cofounder And Multibillionaire Robert Langer Shares His Secrets To Success — Work and life advice garnered from decades of experience. (hn)

Another Humorous Substack Panic — The notion that Substack is a threat to traditional media itself speaks to their comical inability to understand cause and effect. (hn)

#science

The ingenious living bridges of India — For centuries, indigenous groups in north-east India have crafted intricate bridges from living fig trees. (hn)

Rare case of woman’s body ridding itself of HIV — A woman from Argentina appears to have rid herself of HIV without drugs or treatment — the second documented case of its kind in the world. (hn)

Alzheimer’s vaccine step closer after new treatment reverses memory loss — Scientists hail successful trial on mice in which vaccine trains immune system to fight sticky amyloid protein that accumulates in the brain. (hn)

Mosquitoes have a mutual symbiotic relationship with malaria-causing pathogen — Infection with the parasite provides the mosquito an advantage that promotes reproduction and disease transmission. (hn)

#life

Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law following LSE report findings — An LSE report demonstrates they have capacity to experience pain or distress. (hn)

No One Cares! — Our fears about what other people think of us are overblown and rarely worth fretting over. (hn)

Revealed: the software that studies your Facebook friends to predict who may commit a crime — Dozens of US companies have popped up in recent years to harness social media to help solve and predict crime. (hn)

The Urgent Case for Sabbaticals for All — Research shows that extended time off isn’t just a break—it can be a life-changing period that helps us reset our understanding of who we are. (hn)

Talk with the Hand! — The expressive art of chirology: I observed that the most effective communicators delivered the most histrionic performances. (hn)

#end

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Enjoy your reading and have a good day, Beng