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 I was listening to a podcast episode:  Command Your Focus and Attention on What Really Matters with Chris Bailey  and noticed a really good analogy. " What allows traffic to move forward at a solid space is how much space exists between the cars on the highway" What struck me about it is that I can use it to explain team productivity in different organizations I was a part of. Some of them tried to pack the sprint with tasks to the full, but in some, it was ok for the team to pick a 'safe' amount of tasks so that they could be sure to accomplish them. Before I was thinking about the benefits of slack time that allows the team to work on important things (not only urgent) and to have space for urgent things if they show up. The great feeling of accomplishment when you finish last scheduled task day before the end of the sprint and can tackle additional bug or two or the confidence to spend additional hour making code more maintainable before fin...

This tweet made me remember my own pondering of the exact same question and how hard it is to guess what is going to be relevant in the future. A lot of people answer that by saying that you have to always learn but the question is not "Should I learn?" but "What I should learn?". Unfortunately, no one can predict the future. I would even say that the question itself is flawed. I'm reading Farnam Street blog for some time already and one of the last posts goes deeper into this problem: What’s Staying the Same ? If you start looking for things that are likely to stay the same you will find a lot of things that are worth learning and they should be relevant a lot longer than the newest fad. More to read: Lindy effect Algorithms to Live By

I liked the idea of the book form the first time I've seen the title and fortunately, it lives up to my expectations. It's not perfect, but it rekindled my curiosity towards math and algorithms. Bringing them to everyday problems makes them much more interesting. The only thing that I'm missing in the book is the application of algorithms in business settings. For example, when I mentioned this book Mateusz K he has sent me a  blog post of  Pieter Hintjens: Amdahl to Zipf: Ten Laws of the Physics of People . For example,  Amdahl's Law  mathematically proves the argument from  The Mythical Man-Month  that you can't just add new people to the project to deliver it faster because of the cost of synchronization. I want this post to be a reminder for myself of the most interesting ideas in the book so if you want to savor it yourself just remember that it's worth buying. Rating: 9/10 Contents: 1. Optimal Stopping Probably the most ...

I haven't really think this through but I have read really interesting articles recently and I just wanted to write for myself later. Life is Short by Paul Graham It's just that, learn from people older that you what is most important, and that life actually is short... Instead of Goals or Resolutions, Try Creating Rules by Leo Babuta In the time of New Year Resolutions, it's good to read something that is proposing different way of achieving things. Still I see much more value in habits than setting goals. But... The Easy Way To Learn Hard Stuff by Per Harald Borgen It's something that I read from time to time and I know it works sometimes for me. The things I learn then are really learned and something Jakub Wasilewski   has told me many times to do. Still it's uncomfortable and for some reason, I have failed to use this method more than once or twice. Writing it here so maybe I can think about it more and figure out how to do that more often. Towa...

I wasn't sure who this book is for after reading the description so this post should help you decide if this book is for you. If you never used Node.js or any kind of servers side Node.js then you can learn a lot, but you have to know basics of programming. Most of the technologies will be useful in Web Development as well so I can recommend it to Front-End developer who want to learn more about the Back-Ends. Unfortunately, I expected the book to be harder and more focused on game programming. It was really good to see hard ideas like corrections implemented in simple examples. It was encouraging to see how easy it can be to be implemented regardless of how hard it sounds. If you are interested in more implementation techniques of the game servers and how those ideas you already know might be implemented there then your best companion is the accompanying code. Unlike many programming books, the applications actually work and the code is easy to read. Personally I found the cod...

This is second big iOS learning project. For first one read  iOS Programming  book review. As I only have two of them done I have to compare them somehow. I am mindful that it took me a really long time to finish it (since last autumn). For a couple of months this year I didn't even have the internet to learn it, so it could not be helped. But last half of the June I've spent watching the videos every day and managed to finish it before any new internet problems. So how was it? In my opinion, it's great if you're starting out. There are a lot of basics, and seeing how to do things in XCode just makes your learning much easier than looking at the photos in the book. On the other hand, learning is more shallow and it is much easier to just follow the videos and learn only the basics without bigger picture about iOS SDK. I somehow missed more challenging exercises (even though I don't like to do them ;) Length: Course it pretty long but many videos are quite...

After reading 4-hour work week I think more about myth of Entrepreneur and Status of all those stories I have read in the book. I don't have anything specific yet on my mind but I have a nice list of articles that I am thinking about right now. Status Malfunction Idea here is that we spend most of our time thinking about Status and comparing ourselves to others. Unfortunately we all do it all the time and there is no easy way out of it. I am not sure if I agree with Josh Kaufman about your own business being a good way out... I start to think that it's just the same thing but giving you status among other people. How to use it? Ask yourself: If no one would appreciate it, would I still do it? Is it fun in itself? Working for the man ain’t so bad. For some reason I notice those kinds of articles a lot, maybe I am just afraid of starting my own business and looking for excuses but if you consider how many startups fail I think it's just more logical. For example it...

Short but pretty nice book about Go language. It was recommended to me and I am really glad that I read it. It is much easier to follow than GoTour and in my opinion sets up much friendlier learning curve. Book is available for free online  and on Amazon. I have learned most in part 9 about Structs and Interfaces. Really interesting is chapter 13 about the Core Packages so I can recommend those two if you already know the basics of the language but want to see more practical usage. Rating 8/10 (just keep in mind that it is an introductory book)

Installation Easy tutorial:  https://golang.org/doc/install Official How to:  Tutorial:  https://golang.org/doc/code.html Available also as a video: Github I have noticed that  TJ Holowaychuk  is creating a lot of projects with "go-" prefix. I thought it might be a good idea as well. The thing is you can't use such packages out of the box. Default import looks like: import "github.com/tj/go-debug" But you can't do: go- debug.debug ( "sending mail" ) In Go, last folder name and package are the same things so you cannot even write: package go- debug If it is so hard, why to do it? For me, most important thing is to easily see which projects are written in Go. You cannot use this project in the folder with the same name as the repository name. So how are others dealing with it? How to use projects on Github with "go" prefix? 1. Create a directory in the repository to be used as the namespace nam...

At the end of last year I realized that there is no way I can read all those articles I have "saved for later". At that time I have about 2300 articles, some of them were really old, some about 'news' that weren't new anymore. Most form twitter but mailings like  JavaScript Weekly , Web Design Weekly  have a huge list too. Hardest category was WebGL, so many new ideas, math, matrix, lightning... "News" I can remember why I put most of those articles there, I really wanted to read them. The thing is hundreds of them were outdated. It was at least 1000 articles that were 'news'. Things like some early info about iOS5 or GoogleGlass. This kind of articles is fun to read but they have minor value. I have realized that removing them. There is really not much you can get from those but it's hard to realize that when they are new. Some time ago I've stumbled upon idea to put all things you want to read into a queue and read them after a...

From time to time I stumble upon one of roules in this manifesto. I strongly recommend to get to know them and just try use use them. http://minifesto.org/ Right now for me the first one is the hardest :( Fight for Pareto - dropping features. This is many times connected with Synthesis and working in company/team when there is someone else that designes and plans what to do next in product. Points in manifesto aren't new, and they can be found in many other manifesto's but I think that it's worth a couple of minutes to read them again from time to time.

As in the blog post:  http://enja.org/2012/05/07/floating-down-a-tributary/ Tributary  is a web interface for live and responsive visual coding. It includes a code editor and provides some popular javascript libraries for visual programming. The core concept of tributary comes from the inspirational  Bret Victor video  and the implementation is derived from Gabriel Florit’s  water project . See video for yourself:   Project is new but worth a try :) http://enjalot.com/ To start playing with it just visit one of examples eg.  http://enjalot.com/tributary/2271952/squarecircle.js  click on value in source code and see how canvas is changing :) Github repo:  https://github.com/enjalot/tributary

Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle from CUSEC on Vimeo . This Talk will change You. It is really inspiring and makes you think about your life. I'm really speechless.  Just watch it.

This is just only way to become programmer! http://programming-motherfucker.com/become.html Just pick one book and learn!

http://na.isobar.com/standards/ Coding standards from isobar. How to write HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. All in one place.

Ducks and Cars aren't good for teaching Object Oriented Programming. Read whole discussion at: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/000937.html

http://www.doolwind.com/blog/programmer-personality-test/ What type of Programmer are You? My result is : DHSB Doer. High level. Solo situation. liBeral programmer. But I can agree with author that most of people will be somewhere in the middle of the opposite options, just closer to one of them. If You want post in comment Your result :) Test Key: http://www.doolwind.com/blog/programmer-personality-test-key/ There are no wrong answers so look at this at the end.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/04/the-eight-levels-of-programmers.html where do you see yourself in five years? Post about life long opportunities for programmers who want to be programmers: Dead Programmer, Successful Programmer, or Famous Programmer? I think that these thee are the best goals to think about future.

Introduction to functional programming by  Slava Akhmechet http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html

This is how all we are: Lazy. Accept it. Great post about laziness of users: http://www.whatmakesthemclick.net/2010/06/28/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-36-people-are-inherently-lazy/ I think that most programmers forget about it.