After the first session at StrangeLoop, I ran downstairs, heading for the side of the lobby with the women’s restroom. I had to pee. Halfway there I looked up; it said “Men’s Restroom.” Turned around: “Men’s Restroom.” Wait a minute. The venue converted the women’s room into a men’s to alleviate overcrowding. They did not … Read moreThis is not OK
I have enjoyed being a woman in a profession dominated by men. I love being the only woman in a roomful of men. I love when they open doors for me. When they carry heavy boxes for me. When they give me a chair in a full room. I love it even more when a … Read moreConfessions of a woman in tech
RNA was the first carrier of genetic information. It is cheaper and faster to replicate, so in a volatile environment where adaptation had to be fast, this was efficient. However, RNA’s instability limits the information it can carry: longer strands lead to too-frequent errors. DNA, with its greater infrastructure, is more stable. Reproduction is more … Read moreRNA vs DNA: tradeoffs
When I snuggle with my youngest daughter, I sing her a special song called “La La Linda.” As I hold her and stroke her hair and sing, I am charging up the song by creating associations in her brain. Each snuggle links it closer to feelings of comfort and love. When she falls on the … Read morecomfort
For all the programmers who don’t deeply grok the lambda calculus terminology — Say you are about to call a method on a container, and that container can give you something back of type Tweet. What you really want isn’t a Tweet, but some part of it, say Tweet.getId(). What if, instead of getting the Tweet … Read moreFunctors: What the funk for?
The first tenet of functional programming: code is data. Store it in variables, pass it as parameters, return it from methods. This is challenging in the JVM, where all code lives inside methods on objects. Therefore, Scala passes around code in a function object. Code lives in the apply() method. When is a function object created? … Read moreWhen is code data, and when is it code?
flatMap is a method on collections that, at a surface level, transforms each element into another collection of any type, then takes all the elements out of those collections and puts them into one. It is like a map followed by a flatten. Why do two things in one step? Conceptually, List.map is always 1:1 … Read moreWhat is flatMap?
Duplication of effort. Is it a bad thing? IT organizations put a lot of effort into reducing duplicate code and design effort. Architects are tasked with producing standards and choosing technology for the entire organization. Responsibilities are divided carefully, and watchdogs look for opportunities for reuse, increasing conformity. Data is painstakingly normalized so that the … Read morewaste not, grow not
They say ten thousand hours of practice is what is takes to master a skill. Ten thousand hours of playing violin, of hockey, of programming. No: not ten thousand hours of doing it. Ten thousand hours of conscious practice with the intent to get better. [1] When riding a motorcycle, devote 5% of your attention … Read moremastery
People, like code, do not operate indeoendently of their environment. An isolated town of shockingly healthy individuals [1] showed that our health depends not only on factors intrinsic to us (genetics) or controlled by us (diet and exercise). Health is hugely influenced by community. We can’t be understood in isolation. When a bug turns up … Read morewe do not exist in isolation