read_list
List of resources (any medium) that caught my attention this year (2025 edition). If curious check also:
Jan-2025
Databases in 2024: A Year in Review // Blog // Andy Pavlo - Carnegie Mellon University
- https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2025/01/2024-databases-retrospective.html Focus on Licence Changes. I’ve watched too. Great changelog interview with ELK Stack Author. Great post by Antirez about his return to Redis (https://antirez.com/news/144)
Ask HN: Programmers who don’t use autocomplete/LSP, how do you do it?
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42492508 Interesting debate on VIM vs IDE. I write Bash in Vim and Python in IDE (VSCode + iPython) and although enamoured by David Baeyzley’s mastery, the IDE’s just where I’m at with that particular language. To each his own, I think for this.
Programming as Theory Building (1985) [pdf]
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42592543 Discussions of one of my favorite papers and favorite podcast episodes (Future of Code)
Bird (2024)
- https://mubi.com/en/de/films/bird A movie I found when listening to Fountains DC’s Bug song.
Null device - Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_device Learning about black hole register and /dev/null in bash.
Say NO to Venn Diagrams When Explaining JOINs – Java, SQL and jOOQ.
- https://blog.jooq.org/say-no-to-venn-diagrams-when-explaining-joins/ Return to this post as a refresher on SQL JOINs.
Hotel California - by Benn Stancil - benn.substack
- https://benn.substack.com/p/hotel-california?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=23588&post_id=154556809&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=25tz5&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email On chaotic reality crashing into life filled with simulation.
Remembering Mike Maples, Sr.
- https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/remembering-mike-maples-sr All along, Mike created a culture of respect, collaboration, and most of all “promise and deliver”. He instilled in everyone the most basic notion of saying what you’re going to do and doing that well.
Why Greenland Is Of Growing Strategic Significance
- https://www.twz.com/news-features/why-greenland-is-of-growing-strategic-significance Reminds of a book with the title “The Revenge of Geography”
Jerry Seinfeld, Ichiro Suzuki and the Pursuit of Mastery
- https://www.readtrung.com/p/jerry-seinfeld-ichiro-suzuki-and Anyone Can Pursue Mastery Mastery is Plateaus and Brief Spurts of Progress Mastery is a Lifelong Journey The Importance of a Child’s Mindset Mastery & Muscle Memory The Zen Buddhism Connection 4 Traits Shared By Practitioners of Mastery Seinfeld and Ichiro Suzuki
AI’s Uneven Arrival – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
- https://stratechery.com/2025/ais-uneven-arrival/ An eye-opener for o3. This is a surprising and important step-function increase in AI capabilities, showing novel task adaptation ability never seen before in the GPT-family models. For context, ARC-AGI-1 took 4 years to go from 0% with GPT-3 in 2020 to 5% in 2024 with GPT-4o. All intuition about AI capabilities will need to get updated for o3, which performs at 75% for ths test.
The Origins of Wokeness
- https://paulgraham.com/woke.html We should have a conscious bias against defining new forms of heresy. Whenever anyone tries to ban saying something that we’d previously been able to say, our initial assumption should be that they’re wrong. Only our initial assumption of course. If they can prove we should stop saying it, then we should. But the burden of proof is on them. In liberal democracies, people trying to prevent something from being said will usually claim they’re not merely engaging in censorship, but trying to prevent some form of “harm”. And maybe they’re right. But once again, the burden of proof is on them. It’s not enough to claim harm; they have to prove it.
Heroku and the Twelve-Factor App with Vish Abrams - Software Engineering Daily
- https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/01/14/heroku-and-the-twelve-factor-app-with-vish-abrams/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=heroku-and-the-twelve-factor-app-with-vish-abrams the manifesto is getting a rewrite, driven by Heroku but being worked on collectivelly as an open-source project, great chat on current state of Heroku as well.
Principles - Nabeel S. Qureshi
- https://nabeelqu.substack.com/p/principles?publication_id=107423&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=3o9&utm_medium=email “Aim for Chartres” (Christopher Alexander) — when doing something, aim to be the best there ever was at it. This compensates for your natural bias, which is to do something mediocre. You have to really aim to be as good as the greats.
Show HN: GUI for editing Mermaid class diagrams
The quiet rebellion of a little life
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42769751 Near as I can tell there is a not-insignificant part of the American psychological context that amounts to a threat of utter destitution should you not choose to keep slaving away. By Krom, America needs homeless people to show you just how far you can fall unless you keep serving the man.
AI Slop, Suspicion, and Writing Back
- https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/2025/01/25/AI-Slop-Suspicion-and-Writing-Back/ I do AI slop as well and I own it on my blog.
From open source to acquired with Ashley Jeffs (Changelog Interviews #625)
- https://changelog.com/podcast/625 On Benthos Stream Processing, from OS to being bought by Red Panda. Very funny at times, the humor there seemed like instilled in Benthos itself.
Jinja (template engine) - Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinja_(template_engine) Using Jinja for a simpler task as it was a first thing that occured to me. I should have just used a built-in Template module though. I did not need any programming logic in the template just a simple placeholders.
Good Lord - by Benn Stancil - benn.substack
- https://benn.substack.com/p/good-lord Such a brave critique of the politics of current Silicon Valley and catching its own hypocricies. Amazing and inspiring.
Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42877709 Vatican’s take on AI and many respectful voices on Hacker News. I can still get surprised!
Feb-2025
Don’t Believe Him (by Ezra)
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-trump-column-read.html Perception cannot become reality so easily. Can it?
Introducing self-describing JSONs
- https://snowplow.io/blog/introducing-self-describing-jsons Learning about semi-structured data, this self-describing JSON approach rhymes with that.
49 Small Truths About Marriage All Couples Understand - Fatherly
- https://www.fatherly.com/love-money/truths-about-marriage Everyone thinks of leaving. That’s just part of staying.
Turso is rewriting SQLite in Rust with Glauber Costa, CEO at Turso (Changelog Interviews #626)
- https://changelog.com/podcast/626 Listened to a great episode on SQLite itself on Corecursive Podcast in the past. Happy to see the challer on the block.
Beej’s Guide to Network Programming
- https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/html/split/what-is-a-socket.html#what-is-a-socket Socket Programming featured in David Beazley’s famous live coding - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCs5OvhV9S4 - so as I am new to network programming, I’m glad to have some intro here to better enjoy the talk, really (not doing any of that myself)
Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION
- https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/02/trumpian-policy-as-cultural-policy.html Another important take for me - on cultural change there already was one about “The vibes have changed” that came out before the election. This is an implementation of cultural change by “flooding the zone” by filling media with agenda, constant, without time taking for implementation. It’s just an aggresive take on the existing discourse. Fascinating.
Fallthrough & Friends with Matthew Sanabria & Kris Brandow (Changelog & Friends #77)
- https://changelog.com/friends/77 On documentation: what’s often missing is I think my biggest gripe right now is just how few docs we have, how little documentation so many things have. But if there was a way… I think there was especially – what was it? There was one that was like the discover and learn steps. I am very frustrated often at libraries that I want to go in and understand, and there’s no “Oh, start looking here.” Or like “Here’s the basic architecture that you can then use to understand how this codebase is laid out, so you can go read the code and understand how we’ve implemented all of these things.” That documentation is almost always completely missing.
QuadrupleA/sqlite-page-explorer: Visual tool to explore SQLite databases page-by-page, the way they’re stored on disk and the way SQLite sees them.
- https://github.com/QuadrupleA/sqlite-page-explorer SQLite (and most databases) store data in disk-block-sized pages, usually 4KB, which helps make reads and writes as fast as possible.
Normally developers interact with databases on the “schema level” - tables, rows, and SQL. But taking a peek at the “page level” can give you some interesting insights:
Continuous reinvention: A brief history of block storage at AWS
Marshmallow Test and Parenting - @desunit (Sergey Bogdanov)
- https://desunit.com/blog/marshmallow-test-and-parenting/ Could be applied just as well to working environments.
Comments - Tech’s Dumbest Mistake: Why Firing Programmers for AI Will Destroy Everything
Let Brandon Cook - Cal Newport
Firing programmers for AI is a mistake
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43010814 Another long thread on HN about what AI is going to do to programmers. My thoughts are on Walter Benjamin§s essay on Art and Mechanical Reproduction.
Why Blog If Nobody Reads It?
Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation (2019)
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29083367 On Programmed Documentation - maybe Warp has Workflows that actually fits this.
What is the difference between len() and sys.getsizeof() methods in python? - Stack Overflow
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17574076/what-is-the-difference-between-len-and-sys-getsizeof-methods-in-python Finding a pleasure in reading great answers for programming 100% authored by people in Stack Overflow.
Filtered Decks - Anki Manual
- https://docs.ankiweb.net/filtered-decks.html#:~:text=The%20easiest%20way%20to%20create,you%20click%20on%20a%20deck. Pre-warming my studies with memorization session.
htop Explained Visually
PBS - JOHN GARDNER - EDUCATION AND EXCELLENCE
- https://www.pbs.org/johngardner/sections/writings_speech_1.html The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You leant not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions, if you have any, which you do. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent, but pays off on character.
You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.
Intro To ‘comm’ Command In Linux
- https://blog.robertelder.org/intro-to-comm-command/ Venn Diagrams for Comm - as they are usually used for JOIN
Pravidla Magic: The Gathering ( ▷ Videonávod)
The Republican Party’s NPC Problem — and Ours
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lckYPwQj_NM&ab_channel=TheEzraKleinShow See https://stratechery.com/2022/the-current-thing/ for the analysis of the “current thing” meme.
Discovering discovery coding with Jimmy Miller (Changelog & Friends #80)
- https://changelog.com/friends/80 Future of Code host on my favorite show. A must.
Future of AI: what happens after DeepSeek? (No One knows - but I have a guess) - YouTube
Achievement, here and there - by Benn Stancil
- https://benn.substack.com/p/achievement-here-and-there?publication_id=23588&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=25tz5&utm_medium=email A variation of “The Current Thing” meme? Making pivoting the point, and the status of start-ups being greatly overestimated and being about marketing and attention grab then a more authentic value.
Discovering discovery coding with Jimmy Miller (Changelog & Friends #80)
Vim After Bram: A Core Maintainer on How They’ve Kept It Going - The New Stack
- https://thenewstack.io/vim-after-bram-a-core-maintainer-on-how-theyve-kept-it-going/ I am still on Vim. Tempted to go to Neo-Vim, but to not see outputs being worth it. at the moment. But it may be a question of time if I get to writing Python and Bash in much higher velocity in Vim.
SED1260 - Robert Hodges
Understanding Golang’s lightweight concurrency model
Understanding Golang’s lightweight concurrency model
yq
Discovering discovery coding with Jimmy Miller (Changelog & Friends #80)
- https://changelog.com/friends/80#transcript But I think the key to get into discovery coding is to be willing to not have a solution in mind. I do think that that is easier said than done. I think it’s very, very tempting anytime you’re approaching programming problems to come with solutions. And I don’t know, it sounds almost silly when I say it, but I’ve found that to be the number one thing that stops me from finding the good solutions, is that I already have a solution in mind, even if it’s just in the back of my head, and as I’m going and doing this, I will just automatically go towards that solution.
So step one, clear your mind, meditate… No solutions. Step two I really think is ask questions. Ask questions about the codebase, about the problem, about whatever it is that is this situation you’re in, and try to find the answers for those. And if the answers are frustrating to find, if it just takes too long to find them, build a tool that makes it really easy. And if you start there, the process of discovery coding will start becoming the easy default, because every time you want to have an answer, you already have tools available to you to help find that answer, and that ends up being like your inspiration for how to continue.
So the goal is to try to make it easy to discovery-code, because if it’s not, you’re never gonna do it. So you kind of have to do the hard work up front.
Jr Devs - I Can’t Code Anymore
Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice
- https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ Attach to profit centers - where are those in the age of AI?
Europe faces its fate as an American colony - New Statesman
- https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2025/02/jd-vance-munich-europe-russia-ukraine-trump Is what EU faces an attempt to turn it into US colony?
DOC • Beautiful, boring, and without soul
Discovering discovery coding with Jimmy Miller (Changelog & Friends #80)
- https://changelog.com/friends/80 the key to get into discovery coding is to be willing to not have a solution in mind. I do think that that is easier said than done. I think it’s very, very tempting anytime you’re approaching programming problems to come with solutions. And I don’t know, it sounds almost silly when I say it, but I’ve found that to be the number one thing that stops me from finding the good solutions, is that I already have a solution in mind, even if it’s just in the back of my head, and as I’m going and doing this, I will just automatically go towards that solution.
So step one, clear your mind, meditate… No solutions. Step two I really think is ask questions. Ask questions about the codebase, about the problem, about whatever it is that is this situation you’re in, and try to find the answers for those. And if the answers are frustrating to find, if it just takes too long to find them, build a tool that makes it really easy. And if you start there, the process of discovery coding will start becoming the easy default, because every time you want to have an answer, you already have tools available to you to help find that answer, and that ends up being like your inspiration for how to continue.
So the goal is to try to make it easy to discovery-code, because if it’s not, you’re never gonna do it. So you kind of have to do the hard work up front.
The Digital Antiquarian
- https://www.filfre.net/ Something that makes me highly nostalgic and that gives soul to the gaming as I remember it.
Programming with LLMs featuring David Crawshaw (Changelog Interviews #629)
- https://changelog.com/podcast/629 A different take on AI assisted coding than one you have from Primagean, who is much more skeptical. This is more specific, building Go-specific tooling and being passionate about what LLMs can do for us. Also appreciating how code-completion is a completely different paradigm than a chat-bot for AI and how cool that is, pionereed by GitHub Copilot. I am not turning it back on, I don’t depend on the amount of code I write for my paycheck so I rather write by myself, working through the problems alone. Or with occational oblique strategy. Still, it is fascinating what is happening, utterly mezmerizing to watch that.
New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code
- https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-and-learning Clickbait and Moral Panic or it is really different? I am surely cautious. But the great plus is you CAN build things that until now needed code. If your focus is on craft - no. If your focus is on value - absolutely.
Change my mind (Changelog & Friends #81)
- https://changelog.com/friends/81 Primagean is covering the same piece in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnpUK-f87zo&t=58s&ab_channel=ThePrimeTime.
GenAI hot takes and bad use cases (Practical AI #304)
- https://changelog.com/practicalai/304 What’s LLM are currently not good for: high throughput/low latency usecases, complete autonomy, high-stakes forecasting, not top languages (both of human and computer world), … there is more and great!
The return of the modern data stack - by Benn Stancil
- https://benn.substack.com/p/the-return-of-the-modern-data-stack?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=23588&post_id=157625068&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=25tz5&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email So much fun! Which, sure, this is how databases work now. About ten years ago, they got split in half, into a bucket of data on one side, and a compute engine that runs calculations on the other. So long as the buckets are formatted correctly, you can mix and match different buckets with different calculators.
But this SAP product, if it works the way I think it does, extends that idea in a couple of new ways. First, it suggests that applications, like CRMs and ERPs to CPQs and ATSs, could be one of the buckets that databases connect their calculators to. Rather than exporting data out of SAP—which is how people have done this for a while, and it clearly hasn’t gone well—SAP can simply reformat it. Then, people can bring their database—or, since it’s 2025, bring their aGeNtS—directly to the applications themselves.
The End of Programming as We Know It – O’Reilly
- https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-end-of-programming-as-we-know-it/ as read and commented on by primagean - (4) The End Of Programming As We Know It - YouTube and I currently agree that one should invest into not be made stupid and one should be defending ones skills - if you’ve already aqcuired them. Is it good for lifetime?
aposd-vs-clean-code/README.md at main · johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code
- https://github.com/johnousterhout/aposd-vs-clean-code/blob/main/README.md After discussion on Performance with (don’t remember who), Uncle Bob is discussing with John Ousterhout, who strongly disagrees with his points, but proves again hat Uncle Bob is the real deal.
The end of YC - by Benn Stancil - benn.substack
- https://benn.substack.com/p/the-end-of-yc?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=23588&post_id=158116384&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=25tz5&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email Prediction that AI is getting engineers-as-product-builders really out of work as the entry bar has decreased and speed increased many times over.
(7) Real Time Traffic Analytics powered by ClickHouse at FlockSafety - YouTube
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN4yrzn8Td4 Real-Time Analytics for security - monitoring car plates. On moving from Redshift to Clickhouse, going from 24 hour staleness to minutes. Amazing.
Opinion
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ben-buchanan.html unoriginal, but I needed to hear this - it is happening…
(7) Clickhouse: Faster Queries, Faster Answers (with Alasdair Brown) - YouTube
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ldDYxjyLQ Interesting takes on limitations of Clickhouse as a datawarehousing solution.
Demystifying the Parquet File Format
- https://medium.com/towards-data-science/demystifying-the-parquet-file-format-13adb0206705#:~:text=On%20top%20of%20strong%20compression,scans%20and%20encoding%20repeat%20variables. Data Storage Problem well explained. Thanks!
LeetCode is dead? Privacy is done?
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFlOnlLCsk On tech interview, lying and some fiction references that are actually amazing.
Opinion
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-trump-speech.html On Lying as Loyalty test. Hannah Arendt was writing about this, I remember. Orwellian topic there. Also Vaclav Havel’s the power of powerless is resounding there and whole (romantic?) subject of the life-in-truth.
Docker Compose vs Kubernetes - Differences Explained
- https://spacelift.io/blog/docker-compose-vs-kubernetes Learning about docker compose VS kubernetes vs further orchestration options.
You might not need Redis - viblo.se
- https://www.viblo.se/posts/no-need-redis/ Why Redis can be an overkill just because it has a great reputation amongs developers (duckDB has great name as well)
You might not need Redis
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43301432 A discussion on overdeploying Redis which is good for their business I’d say.
(1) Bjarne Says C++ Is Under Attack - YouTube
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfx9iV7GuNk Are we good with C++ in Clickhouse? Bjarne is worried about the future of the ecosystem. Prime getting a funny comment of a one-man language.
Ep. 343: A Minimal Protocol for Taking Control of Your Life - The Deep Life by Cal Newport
- https://www.thedeeplife.com/podcasts/episodes/ep-343-a-minimal-protocol-for-taking-control-of-your-life/ A wonderful motivation speech on why discipline of getting things done matters. Thinking about bare bonesbut also - give intent to your day, do not be dragged by reactive mode.
Can Ukraine—and America—Survive Donald Trump?
- https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/can-ukraine-and-america-survive-donald-trump Kotkin is always great. This was recommendation by Marg Revolution.
(1) 1.01 - Basics of Operating Systems - YouTube
(1) MIT 6.828: Operating System Engineering - YouTube
(1) MIT 6.004 Computation Structures, Spring 2017 - YouTube
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP62WVs95MNq3dQBqY2vGOtQ2 Mainly Chapters 14 and 16
How we built a Scalable Data Platform · JC
- https://jchandra.com/posts/data-infra/#our-new-data-platform Highly Interesting, but for me essentially highlighting a quite typical - when successful - customer journey that necessitates a creation of OLAP specific platform optimized for cost and performance. The fact you’re stepping away from managed solutions seems alto to be a direction into which market is headed atm.
DBeaver - Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBeaver DuckDB has a new UI, Dbeaver has a competitor