Watch the inspiring news segment on the RoboLancers at NBC10. Go RoboLancers!
Monthly Archives: April 2015
Watch: Jacob Kaplan-Moss Keynote at Pycon 2015
35 minutes that are absolutely worth it. Watch Jacob Kaplan-Moss at PyCon 2015 explain why he is a ‘mediocre programmer’ and why we need to take a hard look at our industry, how we define our careers, and the myths we tell, because they are flawed, and we are all the lesser as long as it remains so:
Reading “The Practice of Cloud System Administration”
In distributed systems, failure is normal. Hardware failures that are rare, when multiplied by thousands of machines, become common. Therefore failures are assumed, designs work around them, and software anticipates them. Failure is an expected part of the landscape.
— Thomas A. Limoncelli, Strata R. Chalup, Christina J. Hogan, “The Practice of Cloud System Administration”
Reading “The Practice of Cloud System Administration”
It is human nature to look for patterns and to assign them meaning when we find them. Kahneman and Tversky analyzed many of the shortcuts we employ in assessing patterns in data and in making judgments in the face of uncertainty. They dubbed those shortcuts heuristics. In general, heuristics are useful, but just as our manner of processing optical information sometimes leads to optical illusions, so heuristics sometimes lead to systematic error. Kahneman and Tversky called such errors biases. We all use heuristics, and we all suffer from biases. But although optical illusions seldom have much relevance in our everyday world, cognitive biases play an important role in human decision making. And so in the late twentieth century a movement sprang up to study how randomness is perceived by the human mind. Researchers concluded that “people have a very poor conception of randomness; they do not recognize it when they see it and they cannot produce it when they try,” and what’s worse, we routinely misjudge the role of chance in our lives and make decisions that are demonstrably misaligned with our own best interests.
— Thomas A. Limoncelli, Strata R. Chalup, Christina J. Hogan, “The Practice of Cloud System Administration”
Reading “The Practice of Cloud System Administration”
To manage a large distributed system, one must have visibility into the system. The ability to examine internal state—called introspection—is required to operate, debug, tune, and repair large systems.
— Thomas A. Limoncelli, Strata R. Chalup, Christina J. Hogan, “The Practice of Cloud System Administration”
Reading “The Practice of Cloud System Administration”
A typical response to a risky process is to do it as rarely as possible. Thus there is a temptation to do as few releases as possible. The result is “mega-releases” launched only a few times a year. However, by batching up so many changes at once, we actually create more risk. How can we be sure thousands of changes, released simultaneously, will all work on the first try? We can’t. Therefore we become even more recalcitrant toward and fearful of making changes. Soon change becomes nearly impossible and innovation comes to a halt.
— Thomas A. Limoncelli, Strata R. Chalup, Christina J. Hogan, “The Practice of Cloud System Administration”
Seven Habits Reread
Correct maps will infinitely impact our personal and interpersonal effectiveness far more than any amount of effort expended on changing our attitudes and behaviors.
— Steven Covey, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”