Apologies for a shorter and uncategorised newsletter this fortnight. I’m on holidays in NZ right now showing off a fresh-ish baby to the extended family.
In keeping with the trip, this fortnight’s Nautical Fact I’ve lifted wholesale from the Maritime New Zealand website. In 1769 ship’s boy Nicholas Young receives a gallon of rum and has Young Nick’s Head named after him for being the first on board the Endeavour to spot land (in NZ).
How to Get Buy-in for Reducing Technical Debt
Helpful tips to reframe discussions with non-technical stakeholders to prioritise technical remediation work.
Master the Art of Influence — Persuasion as a Skill and Habit
Good general companion piece to the building buy-in about the core skills in influencing people.
You’re Insufficiently Persuasive by Sandi Metz
Keynote from Rubyconf 2017, once again, on how to persuade others on technical topics.
Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design
An old favourite of mine that I’d lost the link to. Thankfully it popped up on hackernews again. “Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.” is my favourite of the laws.
A reading list for new engineering managers
A good reading list for new tech leaders to work their way through. I’ve read most on the list and recommend them, so I trust the rest of the list is good too.
Change how you perceive time
Interesting time management tactics for fans of the pomodoro technique.
Jaron Lanier Interview on What Went Wrong With the Internet
This week’s bog standard “quit facebook” post.
The Great Theorem Prover Showdown
Great read - a novel approach to tackling the “obviously true” axiom of FP being easy to reason about and some interesting insight into the FP community.
$ $ $ Business $ $ $
Save yourself some time and effort next time you need a project dashboard and throw this up on the office TV.
tuwukee/jwt_sessions: XSS/CSRF safe JWT auth designed for SPA
Nice library/reference implementation for using JWT auth tokens in a SPA calling a rails app.
It’s Time to Retire “RTFM”
Really Tired Fucking Method. If you see an RTFM at your work, call it out.
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