Open source

I made my first open source contribution! I have the perfect gif to celebrate.

I used to think that you become a better developer primarily through work experience. I've since recognized a number of similarities with open source - reading through an existing (and potentially large) codebase, a collaborative review process, making the code production-grade (via suite of build, test and style checks). I imagine iteration cycles are broadly faster in a work setting, though this also varies greatly between companies.

While a professional role provides steady income, open source offers interesting compensation models. Andrey focuses on work where the client would agree to publishing the code as open source. He recently completed a project for Keybase, and the code can be found here.

Is open source accessible? There might be a gap going from generating Fibonacci numbers to contributing to a production codebase, but perhaps the point here is that the gap is smaller than what most people imagine. It's certainly smaller than what I initially imagined.

Content: The cordon bleu kid

Now for the weekend content. I very much enjoyed this FT Weekend article about a 6-year old culinary connoisseur (enclosed below).

Content: Ever Or Not

I love how you can stroll in to your neighborhood bar/cafe in Berlin and there would be a DJ playing chill techno. A different model to getting bottle service at a Vegas EDM club with star DJs. This is for the former.

Content: Dr. Prajak Arunthong

Thais make the best ads. Try not to cry.

Content: Shoe Dog

I started listening to audiobooks on Audible at 2.5x speed, thanks to Ali Abdaal, and timely given the lockdown. Try it! You'd be surprised how you're still able to pick up (and even enjoy) the content.

It's changed my life. I'm a much more open-minded reader now, since the bar to reading is much lower. These days I particularly enjoy listening to biographies, and for this genre I highly recommend Shoe Dog by Phil Knight on the early days of Nike. The startup struggle is real, and how he stays true to his principles despite that is admirable.

But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I'd fail quickly, so I'd have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn't much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.