John D. Cook:

The rule of three gives a quick and dirty way to estimate these kinds of probabilities. It says that if you’ve tested N cases and haven’t found what you’re looking for, a reasonable estimate is that the probability is less than 3/N. So in our proofreading example, if you haven’t found any typos in 20 pages, you could estimate that the probability of a page having a typo is less than 15%.

Hashing syntax trees and storing them directly in a database is very interesting. I’ve long wondered what will come after the grab bag of text files approach we’ve been using to date.

Embrace the power of compounding.

Now you can learn them too.

I ❤️ every time Sam goes on The Watch.

Alex Blumberg interviews Ira Glass.

Come for the Feynman anecdote, stay for the exploration of technology and culture.

A look behind the curtain with Nick Cave.

An improvisational approach.

Ryan Singer on the Product Love podcast talking about strategy, design, and outcomes.

A nice summary of the various parts in a typical web application.

Julie Zhuo:

Having all the answers is not the goal. Motivating the team to find the answers is the goal.

…

To evaluate the strength of a manager, look at the strength of their team.

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The first time any of the above happens on your watch, it’s always new and hard, no matter how many books you’ve read on the topic. But the fifth or tenth time or 20th time it happens, you’re no longer freaked out. You realize that you’ll be fine.

Lots more interesting points in this and part 2.

A look at conflict in online communities and a suggestion on how to handle it.

Camille Fournier:

So what are the management skills that are needed to achieve [Engineering productivity]? At the first level of management, they look like:

1. Breaking down the scope of projects to help your team ship frequently. An eye for the MVP, for sequencing work and for predicting likely risks and bottlenecks for project completion are the skills here. This is why I think project management is such an important part of engineering leadership development, and why I hate to hand it off to professional project managers for work that doesn’t cross teams or organizations.

Bingo.

Phil Calçado:

In product development, the closer to the customer a piece of software is, the more often it changes.