HACKER Q&A
📣 benrutter

What papers/talks/blogs have stayed with you over time?


Like (I assume) a lot of people here I love reading/watching blogs/papers/talks- a lot of the time, I don't know which ones mean the most to me until several months/years after.

For example, I enjoyed Richard Gabriel's Worse is Better[0] when I first read it, but its only over time that I've realized just how often it applies to something I come across in the real world.

So, what papers/talks/blogs has everyone read that stuck with then over time?

[0] https://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html

  👤 orr94 Accepted Answer ✓
Joel Spolsky’s classic on why you shouldn’t rewrite software pops up in my memory on a regular basis: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

I make frequent use of the “rule of 3”. Jeff Atwood had a good post about it: https://blog.codinghorror.com/rule-of-three/

And whenever I think of my old job, I always remember Erik Dietrich’s classic on the Expert Beginner https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th...