Originally posted on 2019-10-13 as an email:

#articles


Hey cool kids!

ā€œSomething something shoulders of giants, somethingā€

  • Someone famous

In tech, we have our own giants.Ā Sometimes they openly endorse pedophiles, sometimes they donā€™t! Sadly, weā€™ve lost a fewĀ incredible soulsĀ (yes, he created markdown too) already. But the world keeps going and Iā€™d like to introduce you to 2 people who you may or may not know already, but the industry definitely does.

(Hint: The links lead to interesting articles and you can click other places in the page and read more! Itā€™s called the internet)

(2023 Alex editing): Yeah, the link to Bob Martin has been removed

Martin Fowler

These people are not without their faults either (just try following Bob on twitter, ugh), but they have shaped in the industry in ways few others have. They were both in the originalĀ agile 17, they helped found concepts such as TDD, microservices and much much more, and both their blogs are incredible treasure troves of information for some of the most highly regarded concepts of our field. I cannot possibly stress how much more beneficial it would be to read Fowler for 2 hours, rather than attend a university lecture on software design for the same duration. Try it. Feel free to reach out for follow-up discussions!

Oh look, the US is about to sing us a song!

What is privacy?

Baby donā€™t hurt me

Donā€™t hurt meĀ (postponed to NovemberĀ thankfully)

No more

What is that EU? What did you say? Come again please? G - D - P - what?

Yeah, dunno about you, but I feel Iā€™ve picked the right continent to live in.

In otherĀ news,Ā Markā€™s ā€˜sky highā€™ AWS billĀ surely concernsĀ all of us (I could barely sleep last night), but Mark himself is probably concerned about something else -Ā everybody left his party

Why is that relevant to us?Ā 

Well,Ā Libra signifies the ā€œbig bizā€ version of cryptos, just like FB gave rise to the ā€œbig bizā€ version of social media. If that, in all its investor-backed majesty, cannot succeed, it means that crypto technologies will remain both more open and free (without corporations), but also way less funded. The field is interesting for PoC (Proof of Concept) stuff andĀ self-governed hacker spacesĀ but definitely not looking like a hugely promising dev work right now. But if you feel like changing the world then hot damn is this something to keep an eye on!

Letā€™s not get technical this week. There should be enough theory in those two blogs to talk through allĀ Star Trek films. But please donā€™t - nobody likes people who talk during a movie

except the people who talk during a movie themselves

Thatā€™s all for now and hoping your tomorrow is as sunny as I feel right now!

Cheers, Alexander P.