A bit of a catch-up from recent weeks today. I recommend the two Book Overflow episodes about The Pragmatic Programmer and with Uncle Bob. The long post from Charity about Slop is also worth a read.
Leadership
Managers Are Catalysts - “Your job, as a manager, is lowering that activation energy.”
Joe’s Lightweight Engineering Management Approach - nice approach, I don’t know why he calls it lightweight.
Engineering
Should you stop writing tests after 30 years? - The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas & Andrew Hunt [Podcast] - another good episode. I like when they go off-topic.
How we saved 100 terabytes of memory by optimizing 1.1.1.1’s DNS cache - nice optimization, which makes sense at that scale.
bzip3: A better and stronger spiritual successor to BZip2 - oh, is this actually being used?
Eric Graham’s 1987 Amiga Juggler raytracer (Part 2): Porting to SDL - very cool.
AI
Microsoft’s Patching - LLMs are increasing patch sizes.
I don’t like LLMs - understandably.
Confessions of an Unrepentant Slop Snob - “The more personal the interaction, the more AI-generated text can cause a loss of trust”
The Pulse: tech companies move to open AI models - that makes sense at scale.
Open-weight models: What are they and when should you use them? [Podcast] - similar from Thoughtworks.
Uncle Bob says AI is already conscious - We Programmers by Robert C. Martin [Podcast] - It’s actually better than the title. The definition of conscious might vary.
Urbanism
Reclaiming the streets: the architects clawing back Europe’s car-centric spaces - that’s what we are celebrating now: having a bath on a roundabout.
We’re the mayors of Paris, Milan and Phoenix. The heat crisis has us all facing the same question - Mayors are always at the forefront of change.
DNA Lounge: Wherein SFMTA wants to bulldoze DNA Lounge’s parklet - I agree that it’s better than parking, but it could be a bit nicer? On the other hand: The whole street is ugly.
About cycling safely in NYC - I am not a fan of going over red, but it really depends on the situation.
Fine, We’re Doing a Helmet Episode [Podcast] - Oh no!
Coffeeneuring Challenge 2026: October 10 We Ride Again - join, it’s fun.
Environment
Germany commits for first time to phasing out fossil fuels by 2045 - this is not going to happen.
‘Incredible progress’: Inside the €682bn drive to turn the Mediterranean into a renewable powerhouse - Catalonia lags behind Spain quite a bit.
More than 210 groups back protest against Barcelona Airport expansion and ‘climate denialism’ - the expansion is such a backward idea.
How greed is turning Spain into a desert [YouTube] - yes, but: strawberries!
Random Muppets
50? Moi? How The Muppets rocked the world with anarchy, nonsense and the inimitable Miss Piggy - everybody loves The Muppets.
Amazon Was Supposed to Kill the Bookstore. James Daunt Had Other Plans | Better in Person [Podcast] - I loved Waterstones when I lived in London. Nowadays I rarely go to bookstores.
Canceling Emily - sadly we all depend on this failing state.
What’s in your Go Bag / First Aid Kit - My go bag definitely sucks in comparison.
I don’t like passkeys - I don’t use them a lot and this is talking me out of them.