Viewing profile — mattikl

I've lived all my life in Finland, even though all through my early adulthood I was planning to move to some place much warmer. But later (especially now with children for whom the…

Don't be afraid to go deep in simple sounding topics. The modern world is so full of learning material that there's the temptation to ingest as much of it as possible, but true lea…

That's certainly a more positive way to look at this. Working software has always relied on having people who grok the code, and this happens by spending a lot of time thinking abo…

When social media emerged, I remember how excited I was how it could connect like-minded people around the world. Now in 2025, the leader of the biggest platforms is talking about …

I've noticed for a long time that if I have participated in writing the code under review, I'm able to provide much more insight. I think what you're suggesting starts from thinkin…

On average, music is big for people during the teenage years, then other things in life take over and that same music continues the biggest music for them. This is very different i…

That's interesting. I think it's usually pretty siloed so that people in sports, music or academia/tech are so focused mastering their own field and hang out with likeminded people…

I was just wondering the other day, are any of the top college athletes majoring in something demanding (in a way that it requires one to spend countless of hours learning new ment…

An interesting read. I was secretly hoping it would have delved more into the psychology of how we perceive that chance, what kind of biases we have. I feel we have a tendency of s…

Thanks for wording this so well. I notice it when a coworker asks for help, I usually have little idea how to help them when looking at the problem together, unless it's something …

It's so easy to lose focus when reading code just for learning. Writing about that code is a good way to keep the focus and dig deeper.

Direct reading effectively makes the data store an API, i.e. the API you provide is SQL SELECT over multiple tables instead of HTTP GET resource. This pretty much freezes the datab…

I've also lost interest many times during my 25 years of coding, but now I feel excited as ever again. One of key realizations has been that I'm more interested in people than mach…

That's a good point of turning your native language into an asset. The goal of communication is to be well-understood. That's so easy to forget that and strive for something more. …

Rewinding a bit from computers doing all the writing, are you using any tools that help you write considerably better (not just spelling/punctuation checking)? As a non-native Engl…

I used to feel like that when I was younger. Now many years later I haven't accomplished the goals I set years back, but I feel happy. I spend my days working on interesting proble…

One thing is to not publish it -- a learning journal is probably much more important for you to write than for anyone to read. Then give yourself a couple of years or decades of le…

A couple of years back I was working on a solution to track these kinds of things, and what you said is pretty much what I realized while at it. Tracking my sleep actually made me …

Perl is a great tool for scripting, but calling it "unmatched" is hard to justify. Knowing Python or Ruby well, you can be efficient scripting with them, and that's what scripting …

I used to play lots of chess, then stopped when I thought the game was taking too much of my time and couldn't give me much more. Still I think I learned a lot by going to chess to…

Yes, creating positive experiences for yourself is a good way to increase your self-confidence and get more inspired. Nobody wants to get rejected, but you may eventually turn gett…

It's always inspiring to see such examples of people going from novice to pro, and I'm sure the role of a great teacher can't be underestimated. But I'd say the biggest difference …

Being a golf pro requires a lot from the mental side as well. First you need the skills, which you can only acquire through countless ours of practice. But there are so many people…