Stuff I read: 26 September 2022

The Standards Innovation Paradox by Michael Mignano. This is a concise explanation of the pros and cons of building software on top of widely adopted standards like RSS (which powers podcasts, blogs, ...) and SMTP (which powers email). This is highly relevant to my work. Anyone interested in Protocols, Not Platforms or "decentralization" should read it.

Why did we wait so long for the threshing machine? by Jason Crawford. It's an interesting bit of history and also has a good anecdote about the value of marketing.

Some thoughts on writing by Dan Luu. Opening line:

I see a lot of essays framed as writing advice which are actually thinly veiled descriptions of how someone writes that basically say "you should write how I write"

I find it extremely refreshing to read posts like this which have the intellectual honesty to say "X is one way of doing things" instead of "X is the way to do things." I have never benefited from any tweet of the form "Successful founders do X."

Notes on Progress: Thinking like a dog by Rosalind Arden. Discusses how studying dogs could help us learn about dementia and Alzheimer's. It was fun to read.

I'm a professional dad who "leaned out" to support my wife's career. Talks about "greedy jobs" where working—for example—60 hours/week provides more than 150% of the value of working 40 hours/week, and how in these cases it makes economic sense to let one spouse do most of the working rather than both trying to have full-time careers. (Of course economics isn't the only factor in this kind of decision.) It made me think about whether or not software engineering tends to be a greedy job. I think in some cases yes, but certainly not all.