Dev Diary 2024-07-30

The first Cookstyle community hackfest is in the books, and I’m hoping to see more folks using it to make their Chef code sparkle.

The past few days have been watching the Olympics and cleaning up my book list. The list is in org mode with agenda searches these days (I’ve long since retired booklist), where I’ve been tagging and prioritizing what I want to be reading next, as my back-of-the-envelope on my bookshelf is that I’ve got easily 20 years worth of reading material, not even counting my ebook collection. When your shelves bow under the weight of books packed in 2 deep with a layer on top, it’s hard to recall what gems are hiding away under the ’looked interesting and bought cheap’ books.

Cool Links

Only 90s Web Developers Remember This [Zach Holman]​

A bit of a nostalgia trip for older devs

Why Programmers Suck [Max Kanat-Alexander]​

A hot take, but the key takeaway is that both practice and studying are necessary to becoming an excellent programmer. I’ll plug Max’s book Code Simplicity here because it is an excellent (and quick) read.

Challenging Projects Every Programmer Should Try [Austin Henley]​

Not just a listicle, but has resources and links to further reading. There’s a few on there that would be interesting to try if I get the free time for it