Book Overflow

A podcast made for software engineers, by software engineers. @cartermorgan and Nathan Toups read and discuss a new software engineering book each week!

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

I went on @bookoverflowpod to talk about The Software Engineer's Guidebook (@EngGuidebook).

We covered:
- Writing a newsletter vs writing a book
- Taking initiative as a dev
- Pacing yourself (and your career)
- AI tools impacting interviews
and more!

https://t.co/Da23qMSFJO

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

@GergelyOrosz @EngGuidebook Thanks so much for coming on! It was a pleasure!

[htmx.org / CEO of Bad Flags (same thing) @htmx_org]

banger quote from the @bookoverflowpod review of hypermedia systems:

"htmx is the studio studio ghibli of frontend frameworks"

htmx is a library, btw

https://t.co/iZnS2BGsSv

[htmx.org / CEO of Bad Flags (same thing) @htmx_org]

the guys over at @bookoverflowpod are reading https://t.co/KWTfVdQtvD:

https://t.co/iZnS2BGsSv

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

Don’t miss our discussion on The Software Engineer’s Guidebook by @GergelyOrosz !

https://t.co/VDv4rcLLNK

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"I want to prove to you, in other words, that accomplishment without burnout not only is possible, but should be the new standard."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/IyQnK7aC3B

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"The active position of the list, by contrast, should be limited to three projects at most. When scheduling your time, you should focus your attention only on the projects on your active list. When you complete one of these projects, you can remove it from your list. This leaves open a free slot that you can fill by pulling in a new project from the holding tank."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"Humans in more or less our current modern form have walked the earth for roughly three hundred thousand years. For all but the last ten thousand or so of these many years, we lived as seminomadic hunters and gatherers. These timescales are sufficiently vast for the insistent logics of natural selection to adapt our bodies and brains toward an existence in which our experience of “work” was centered on foraging. When seeking to understand the friction points in contemporary office life, therefore, a good place to start might be to identify where our current work routines most differ from what our prehistoric ancestors evolved to expect."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"Shifting to a pull-based operation made backlogs impossible: the pace of the pipeline would adapt to whatever stage was running slowest. This transparency, in turn, helped the workers identify places where the system was out of balance. “A perpetually full pull box means either the downstream task is moving too slowly or the upstream one is moving too quickly,” write the authors. “An empty pull box at the end of the day means that something is wrong with the operation that feeds it.” The improvements yielded by this approach were quantifiable. The usage rate of the institute’s expensive sequencing machines more than doubled, while the average time to process each sample fell by more than 85 percent."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"In a push-based process, each stage pushes work onward to the next as soon as it’s done. In a pull-based process, by contrast, each stage pulls in new work only when it’s ready for it."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"PRINCIPLE #2: WORK AT A NATURAL PACE Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"The second principle of slow productivity argues that these famous scientists were onto something. Our exhausting tendency to grind without relief, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, is more arbitrary than we recognize. It’s true that many of us have bosses or clients making demands, but they don’t always dictate the details of our daily schedules—it’s often our own anxieties that play the role of the fiercest taskmaster. We suffer from overly ambitious timelines and poorly managed workloads due to a fundamental uneasiness with ever stepping back from the numbing exhaustion of jittery busyness."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"The great scientists of past eras would have found our urgency to be self-defeating and frantic. They were interested in what they produced over the course of their lifetimes, not in any particular short-term stretch. Without a manager looking over their shoulder, or clients pestering them about responding to emails, they didn’t feel pressure to be maximally busy every day. They were instead comfortable taking longer on projects and adopting a more forgiving and variable rhythm to their work."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"Focusing intensely on a small number of tasks, waiting to finish each before bringing on something new, is objectively a much better way to use our brains to produce valuable output."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"Inspired in part by this article, I’ve become convinced in recent years that pull workflows are a powerful tool to avoid overload in the knowledge work setting. If you’re in a position to change the way your company or team organizes its work, moving to a pull strategy, similar to that deployed by the technology development group at the Broad Institute, can yield spectacular returns. Not only will your organization complete projects at a faster rate, your team members will revel in their newfound liberation from the scourge of having too much to do."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"If you’re exhausted, you tell yourself, you can’t be accused of laziness. I want to push back on this reaction. Not only is it unsustainable, but it won’t, in the long run, get you any closer to producing work that matters."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"Every effective entrepreneur I know shares a similar commitment to paying people who know what they’re doing so they don’t have to do the work, at a lower level of quality, all by themselves."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"If you fall behind on a project, update your estimate and inform the person who originally sent you the work about the delay. The key here is transparency. Be clear about what’s going on, and deliver on your promises, even if these promises have to change. Never let a project just drop through the cracks and hope it will be forgotten."

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl

[Book Overflow @bookoverflowpod]

"The first step in simulating a pull-based workflow is tracking all projects to which you’re currently committed on a list divided into two sections: “holding tank” and “active.”"

Check out part 2 of our discussion of Slow Productivity by @ProfCalNewport!

https://t.co/6Uus9Qqvwl