ryanbigg

I turn 39 this year and am just finding more and more ways to become irrelevant. I can’t be the only one so these stats make sense to me. Fortunately, Australia has a good start on what mental health care should look like and its subsidised (or at least a few sessions are).

I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.

My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.

The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead. I was writing a new book about how developers can train up others, but have put that on hold (due to losing my job which was that thing, and because of AI)

I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.

I wrote 90% of the code that processed multiple billions of dollars worth of payments just last year. By myself to start with, then with the robot once the patterns were established and I could be sure it wouldn’t break anything.

The company charged for each of these payments, netting them something around 0.5-1% per payment. You do the math.

Great advice here! I especially like the idea of 50 minute meetings.

I’ve been lightly enforcing a rule of my own too: “no agenda, no attenda”

Ironically the article is barely readable on an iPhone…

I wonder if Fitzgibbon fits this pattern? Fitz being “the bastard son of…” and Gibbon, like ape? Or perhaps Gibbon has another meaning?

The "Writing" section here has huge "draw the rest of the owl" vibes. (I say this as an accomplished author of 10 tech books.)

Yes, it's worth optimising for your productivity. It's not the be all and end all. I've written at my desk with the comfiest chair (A Mirra) I have, and the most ergonomic keyboard for my needs (Ergodox EZ). I write at cafes with just the laptop. I write on the couch at odd but comfortable angles. I write on public transport squished against strangers.

I love using AsciiDoc as the tooling (asciidoctor + friends) give me output that looks decent, and the way I _input_ into that is not mind-breaking like Docbook is. Asciidoctor gives me a PDF which I then style how I like with CSS and then can put on leanpub.com and sell for real dollars.

The way I would put the writing section for tech books is this:

Start with the _topics_ you want to cover. Make these the chapters. Then dive into each topic and figure out what you want to say about the topic. Usually 3-4 main points per chapter. These come out to be your subheadings. Order the chapters from beginner-to-advanced concepts or in a way that makes sense for the book you're writing. For the books I've written it's usually start with a simple base app and then incrementally build things on top of that.

This is weasel wording but with actions. I’d expect better from Apple