41–50 of 454 posts
Freedom's Forge
10/10 book.
> Less interested in people and character studies. If you don’t want examples then all you need to know is velocity . The Y Combinator people call it doing things that don’t scale. Here is how it works for absolutely anything: 1. Get the right tools in place. This is an intrinsic capability set you have to build. People tend to fail here most frequently and hope some framework or copy/paste of a library will just do…
> Less interested in people and character studies. If you don’t want examples then all you need to know is velocity . The Y Combinator people call it doing things that don’t scale. Here is how it works for absolutely anything: 1. Get the right tools in place. This is an intrinsic capability set you have to build. People tend to fail here most frequently and hope some framework or copy/paste of a library will just do…
One answer to that question might be character. Angela Ducksworth has a book called, "Grit". It is a lot like character study, which the OG explicitly expressed their disinterest for. My intuition is no matter how well you can describe the steps for success, success is not replicable. If true, that would explain why there are hundreds of self books, thousands of coaches, and only a handful of people who can consistently excel.
Having said that, I hesitate to say that there are only a few people in the world who are exceptional due to a constraint I would describe as "genuine article". How depressing a thought that would be.
Carpe diem! Floor the gas pedal, and see how fast you can go. Maybe you'll break all expectations and fly into space.
https://www.royalmint.com/shop/books/Newton-and-the-Counterf...
Excellent book about Isaac Newton's role in solving the great recoinage crisis.
“South: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition, 1914–1917” by Sir Ernest Shackleton. Here, Shackleton documents the journey of the Endurance expedition, which aimed to traverse Antarctica but instead became a legendary tale of survival after the ship was trapped and destroyed by pack ice.
I haven't verified the info in this video myself, but it's making a point about Shackleton actually being somewhat incompetent/overeager and getting himself and crew into more trouble than necessary (as compared to Amundsen): https://youtube.com/watch?v=DU06c7f9fzc (TED talk, sorry)
Every crew member was fully informed that they were more likely to die than survive the journey – before even sending in their applications.
And Shackleton is dead since long, so you can't cancel him anymore.
The Soul of a New Machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
My main takeaway from reading that book was that working in tech in the late 70s was not that different from now days Just different technology/hardware/timescale Same workplace problems, personality types, company politics, etc... Did not expect to find it so relatable in 2024
The Man Who Discovered Quality by Andrea Gabor is an interesting story of W. Edwards Deming, the American who revolutionized post-WWII Japanese manufacturing with statistical approaches to reducing variance.
Issac Newton by James Gleick conveys what it was like for Newton to essentially invent modern physical science in a pre-scientific world.
Dreaming In Code by Scott Rosenberg is a good counterpoint to inspiring tech origin stories: legendary coders coming together to build an amazing product and… basically failing.
Describes how Maurice Hilleman invented 40 vaccines, including for eight of the most common diseases in the US, over a 36 year career at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Merck & Co. His vaccines are estimated to save 8 million lives each year.
the mechanics of how things that we take for granted actually got built and what the world they were made in was like