Published in HackerNoon.com·Dec 22, 2017No Zero Days: My Path from Javascript Newbie to Full Stack Developer at Age 302019 Edit: I am very gratified that this writeup continues to help people over a year after publishing! I have updated my thoughts in a new essay called Learn in Public. In the last year (and a bit), I went from Hello World in Javascript, to deploying fullstack webapps, to…Programming7 min read
Jul 21, 2017Humans of Hacker NewsIn honor of the death of DevBootCamp I put up a HN post offering to do a free phone call to exchange knowledge. I was pleasantly surprised by the responses. I got a total of 8 bookings. Here is a list of the types of people that responded: A Canadian…Startup2 min read
Jun 3, 2017Tutorial: How to Host an Alexa Flash Briefing feed on AWS Lambda and get a Free Amazon Echo Dotnote: this tutorial uses Python for convenience but could be adapted for Node/other languages with minor effort. Amazon has always been shameless about getting developers onboard the Alexa Skills platform, prioritizing quantity over quality. …AWS6 min read
May 24, 2017Collection // Curation // Censorship // Communication // CommemorationIn the beginning, there is a hot mess of undifferentiated stuff. As time passes, random results and conditions interact to create structure, and structure builds on structure, as much defined by what it is than what it is not. …Collection3 min read
May 19, 2017Ben Thompson on Ben ThompsonApplying PageRank’s ideas to identify the top 10 Stratechery Articles, Daily Updates, and Exponent podcasts — Ben Thompson writes a lot. Across articles on Stratechery, Daily Updates, and his Exponent podcast with James Allworth, he has made 931 distinct pieces of content to date, not including frequent guest appearances on The Talk Show and This Week In Tech. And…Stratechery5 min read
May 14, 2017Feedback // IntelligenceIt is often hard to comprehend both the scale and speed of human economic disasters. The Hungarian pengő suffered an inflation rate of 41,900,000,000,000,000% in 1946 (prices doubled every 15 hours). The Republic of Nauru, once the world’s richest country by GDP per capita and a pioneer of sovereign wealth…China4 min read
May 7, 2017Meta-competence // Meta-cognitionsubscribe at https://slashslashblog.wordpress.com or find me on Twitter @swyx I have previously explained my thoughts on meta-competence and its importance, but I have rarely dedicated time toward -improving- my own admittedly extremely poor meta-competence. how do i know i have poor meta-competence? I fell in love with finance in 2004–6…Competence3 min read
Dec 12, 2016Notes: Onboarding EmployeesCollating some resources on setting onboarding practices in rough chron order Hiring Manager Work: Plan first two weeks’ calendar — Learn the tools Work: Decide on a short term project working together Work: Describe a longer term independent project HR Visibility: Announce hire to company Formalities: Have a list of…Hiring1 min read
Dec 1, 2016The Age of Global ArbitrageI have been butting heads in forums on my usage of the Amazon Mechanical Turk program to get jobs done at half the US minimum wage. One side cries unethical, my side points to freedom of choice. This is a perennial debate with international trade, and while protectionist sentiments are…Crowdsourcing2 min read
Nov 25, 2016On Meta-CompetenceThe smartest people I know don’t merely play the game. They play to where the game is going, if you will pardon the mixed metaphor. It is the existential imperative of social constructs to impose structure and compliance on human progress, but the irony is that progress too often involves…Psychology3 min read
