Mud Wrestling with Greg Young

10/23/14 • -1 min

Listen to this episode to hear how wallowing around in many small balls of mud can help avoid the classic big ball of mud--and ultimately enable you too to practice "the art of destroying software".
Turns out the key to writing great software starts with planning upfront to destroy it. In this episode, Greg shares many insights, with the main insight being that we have all been overlooking one key "-ility". That is, is delete-ability of code. And while some of you might argue the ideas are not new, Greg's way of presenting them definitely is.
Listen now: (download)
References:
Greg's blog: http://goodenoughsoftware.net/
Programming Erlang: Software for a Concurrent World by Joe Armstrong
Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good!: A Beginner's Guide by Fred Hebert
The Glass Cage: Automation and Us by Nicholas Carr
Parallel Distributed Processing, Volume 1 By David E. Rumelhart, James L. McClelland and PDP Research Group

Previous Episode

The Intersection of Product Design and Big Data with Natasha Irizarry

An interesting, entertaining, and wide ranging discussion with product designer, Natasha Irizarry. Natasha has quickly compiled some very interesting experience in software product design, some of which was gained while at OkCupid where she worked alongside Christian Rudder while he was completing his book Dataclysm.
Listen as we start with Natasha's perspectives on user experience design, experiments, strategy, and make our way to a discussion of the best selling "big data book": Dataclysm.
Listen now: (download)
References:
Books we mentioned:

Next Episode

Innovators (Book Review)

Walter Isaacson follows his biography of Steve Jobs with another great book. This one does not focus on any particular individual, but rather starts with Ada Lovelace and flows through time, up to the present, spotlighting each of the innovators that played a part in laying the foundation for, and ultimately creating, the digital revolution. In this episode, we briefly review this new book.
Listen to hear how many thumbs up this book received from Bett and Russ.
Listen now: (download)
References:
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution