What can a Programmer learn from Rock Climbing?

Railay is a tiny little beach town in Southern Thailand famous for its rock climbing. I've been in Railay for two weeks. When the weather is good, I'm

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Posted 03/30/2011

Look for a Line

A good friend passed along some business advice to me a few months ago. "Look for a line," he said. Basically, if you see a line out the door at McDon

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Posted 03/05/2011

Backpack the World with Zero Planning

i haven't written in a long while because i'm currently on a long trip around the world. at the moment, we're in indonesia. one thing that really surp

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Posted 03/04/2011

The Economy Explained

I was an Economics major in college but in hindsight I don't like the way it was taught. I came away with an academic, unrealistic view of the economy

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Posted 09/18/2010

Ruby

Ruby is an awesome language. I've come to the conclusion that I enjoy it more than Python for the simple reason that whitespace doesn't matter.

Pyt

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Posted 08/25/2010

You Can't Predict the Future

I've been very surprised to discover how unpredictable the future is. As you try to predict farther out, your error margins grow exponentionally big

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Posted 08/25/2010

Critical Thinking

I have a feeling critical thinking gets the least amount of brain's resources. The trick is to critically think about things, come to conclusions, and

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Posted 08/25/2010

Kids are Neat

Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm starting to think the best way to "change the world" isn't to bust your ass building companies, inventing new machines,

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Posted 08/25/2010

How is Intelligence Distributed?

I've been working on a fun side project of categorizing things into Mediocristan or Extremistan(inspired by NNT's book The Black Swan).

I'm trying

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Posted 08/25/2010

Recommendations Are Far From Good

Doctors used to recommend leeches to cure a whole variety of illnesses. That seems laughable today. But I think our recommendations today will be laug

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Posted 08/25/2010

Nature Verse Nurture

Genetics, aka nature, plays the dominant role in predicting most aspects of your life, in my estimation.

Across every dimension in life your gene

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Posted 08/25/2010

Circle of Competence

Warren Buffet claims to follow an investment strategy of staying within his "circle of competence". That's why he doesn't invest in high tech--it's ou

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Posted 08/25/2010

What Percentage of the Brain Does What

Note: Sometimes I'll write a post about something I don't understand at all. I am not a neuroscientist and have only the faintess understanding of the

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Posted 08/23/2010

The Recency Effect

Your most recent experiences effect you the most. Reading this essay will effect you the most today but a week from now the effect will have largely w

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Posted 08/23/2010

The Ovarian Lottery & Other Side Projects

I've had some free time the past two weeks to work on a few random ideas I've had.

They all largely involve probability/statistics and have no pra

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Posted 08/11/2010

Happiness is in Mediocristan

Three unexpected things have happened to me during my two years of entrepreneurial pursuits in California.

First, I have not gotten rich.

Second

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Posted 08/06/2010

What I Want

Figuring out what you want in life is very hard. No one tells you exactly what you want. You have to figure it out on your own.

When you're young,

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Posted 08/06/2010

Orbits

In February I celebrated my 26th Orbit. I am 26 orbits old. How many orbits are you?

I think we should use the word "orbit" instead of year. It's l

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Posted 08/06/2010

The Do You Know Game and Why We Need Celebrities

Last night over dinner we had an interesting conversation about why we care about celebrities. Here's my thinking on the matter.

Celebrities are no

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Posted 08/03/2010

Design Matters, a lot

A year ago I wrote a post titled "The Truth about Web Design" where I briefly argued that "design doesn't matter a whole lot."

My argument was: "yo

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Posted 07/02/2010

Competition and Specialization

Competition and specialization are generally positive economics forces. What's interesting is that they are contradictory.

Competition. Company 1 a

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Posted 06/29/2010

Simple, but not easy

Doing a startup is surprisingly simple. You have to start by creating a product that people must have, then you scale it from there.

What percent o

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Posted 06/17/2010

Flip Flopping

Every Sunday night in college my fraternity would gather in the commons room for a "brother meeting". (Yes, I was in a fraternity, and yes I do regret

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Posted 06/16/2010

The Churn Rate of Data

I think it's interesting to ponder the value of information over it's lifetime.

Different types of data become outdated at different rates. A stree

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Posted 06/15/2010

Culture and Complexity

Have you heard of the Emperor Penguins? It's a species of penguins that journeys 30-75 miles across the frigid Antarctic to breed. Each year these pen

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Posted 06/14/2010

The Invention of Free Will

Or..We Think we have Free Will because we only Observe One Path.

"Dad, I finished my homework. Why?"

The father thinks for a moment. He realizes

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Posted 03/24/2010

Why is it best to do one thing really, really well?

Google has a list of 10 principles that guide its actions. Number 2 on this list is:

It's best to do one thing really, really well.

This advic

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Posted 03/22/2010

The Hidden Benefits of Automation

If you automate a process which you repeat Y times, that takes X minutes, what would your payoff be?

Payoff = XY minutes saved, right?

Surprisin

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Posted 03/17/2010

Metrics for Programmers

I wrote a simple php program called phpcodestat that computes some simple statistics for any given directory.

I think brevity in source code is alm

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Posted 03/16/2010

HackerNews Data: Visits as a Function of Karma

If a post on HackerNews gets more points, it gets more visits.

But how much more? That's what Murkin wanted to know.

I've submitted over 10 arti

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Posted 03/08/2010

Don't talk about what you will do, talk about what you have done

All the time I overhear people saying things like "I will start excercising everyday" or "We will ship this software by the end of the month" or "I wi

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Posted 02/19/2010

Why it's worth it to buy the book

If a book is worth reading, it's worth buying too.

If you're reading a book primarily to gain value from it(as opposed to reading it for pleasure)

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Posted 02/17/2010

The Least You Can Do

My room was always messy. Usually because clothes were strewn everywhere On the floor, on the couch, anywhere there was a surface there was a pile of

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Posted 02/02/2010

Four Tips to Improve Communication

Good communication is overcommunication. Very few people overcommmunicate. Undercommunication is much more common. Undercommunication is also the caus

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Posted 01/29/2010

Network Effects

Network effects are to entrepreneurs what compounding effects are to investors: a key to getting rich.

Sometimes a product becomes more valuable si

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Posted 01/22/2010

If you can explain something logically, you can explain it simply

  1. Is there any subject which cannot be explained simply?

No.

  1. What about quantum mechanics, organic chemistry, or rocket science? Surely these ca
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Posted 01/18/2010

With Computers: Don't Repeat Yourself. With People: DO Repeat Yourself

In computer programming, one of the most oft-repeated mottos is DRY: "Don't Repeat Yourself."

The downside of DRY's popularity is that programmers

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Posted 01/15/2010

When forced to wait, wait!

When a problem you are working on forces you to wait, do you wait or switch tasks?

For example, if you are uploading a bunch of new web pages and i

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Posted 01/14/2010

How to Buy Low, Sell High

Whether you're an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, a casual investor or just a shopper looking for a deal, you should know how to buy low and sell

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Posted 01/12/2010

Flee the Bubble

Possibly the biggest mistake a web startup can make is to develop in a bubble. This is based on my own experience launching 13 different websites over

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Posted 01/05/2010

Checklist for New Products

At our startup, we've practiced a diversification strategy.

We've basically run an idea lab, where we've built around 7 different products. Now we're

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Posted 12/28/2009

Diversification in Startups

Over the past 6 months, our startup has taken two approaches to diversification. We initially tried no diversification and then we tried heavy diversi

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Posted 12/24/2009

Thoughts on Setting Goals

It is better to set small, meaningful goals than to set wild, audacious goals.

Here's one way to set goals:

Make them good. Make them small.

Make t

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Posted 12/23/2009

Problems Worth Solving

Programming, ultimately, is about solving problems. Often I make the mistake of judging a programmer's work by the elegance of the code. Although the

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Posted 12/20/2009

Make Something 40% of Your Customers Must Have

If you combine Paul Graham's "make something people want" advice with Sean Ellis' product-market fit advice (you have product-market fit when you surv

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Posted 12/16/2009

SEO Made Easy: LUMPS

The best Search Engine Optimization(SEO) system I've come across comes from Dennis Goedegebuure, SEO manager at eBay. Dennis' system is called LUMPS.

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Posted 12/15/2009

Don't Flip the Bozo Bit

Do you "flip the bozo bit" on people?

If you don't know what that means, you probably do it unknowingly!

What it means

When you "flip the bo

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Posted 12/14/2009

(un)features

Jason Fried from 37signals gave a great talk at startup school last month. At one point he said "software has no edges." He took a normal, everyday bo

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Posted 12/11/2009

Get Stuff Done By Setting Arbitrary Constraints

Employees and students receive deadlines, due dates, goals, guidelines, instructions and milestones from their bosses and teachers. I call these "arbi

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Posted 12/10/2009

Why You Shouldn't Save Blogging for Old Age

A lot of people have the idea that maybe one day they'll become rich and famous and then write a book about it. That's probably because it seems like

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Posted 12/09/2009

6 Specific Ways to Find Programming Mentors

Finding experienced mentors and peers might be the most important thing you can do if you want to become a great programmer. They will tell you what b

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Posted 12/08/2009

Orders of Magnitude

Do you think in Orders of Magnitude? You should.

If you think in orders of magnitude you can quickly visualize how big a number is and how much eff

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Posted 12/07/2009

The Many Worlds Law

Imagine you are eating dinner with 9 friends and you all agree to play Credit Card Roulette. Credit Card Roulette is a game where everyone puts their

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Posted 12/06/2009

Twelve Tips to Master Programming Faster

Do you want to become a great coder? Do you have a passion for computers but not a thorough understanding of them? If so, this post is for you.

Sa

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Posted 12/04/2009

What's Linear Algebra?

What would happen if instead of writing about subjects you understood, you wrote about subjects you didn't understand? Let's find out!

Today's topic

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Posted 12/03/2009

Fiction or Nonfiction?

What books have changed your life? Seriously, pause for a few minutes and think about the question. I'll share my list in a moment, but first come up

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Posted 12/02/2009

Experience is What You Get

...when you don't get what you want.

How many times have you struggled towards a goal only to come up short? How many times have bad things happened

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Posted 12/02/2009

I'm Back

Decided to blog again. I missed it. Writing publicly, even when you only get 3 readers, two of which are bots and the other is your relative, is to th

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Posted 12/02/2009
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brecksblog Posts: What can a Programmer learn from Rock Climbing? Look for a Line Backpack the World with Zero Planning The Economy Explained Ruby You Can't Predict the Future Critical Thinking Kids are Neat How is Intelligence Distributed? Recommendations Are Far From Good Nature Verse Nurture Circle of Competence What Percentage of the Brain Does What The Recency Effect The Ovarian Lottery & Other Side Projects Happiness is in Mediocristan What I Want Orbits The Do You Know Game and Why We Need Celebrities Design Matters, a lot Competition and Specialization Simple, but not easy Flip Flopping The Churn Rate of Data Culture and Complexity The Invention of Free Will Why is it best to do one thing really, really well? The Hidden Benefits of Automation Metrics for Programmers HackerNews Data: Visits as a Function of Karma Don't talk about what you will do, talk about what you have done Why it's worth it to buy the book The Least You Can Do Four Tips to Improve Communication Network Effects If you can explain something logically, you can explain it simply With Computers: Don't Repeat Yourself. With People: DO Repeat Yourself When forced to wait, wait! How to Buy Low, Sell High Flee the Bubble Checklist for New Products Diversification in Startups Thoughts on Setting Goals Problems Worth Solving Make Something 40% of Your Customers Must Have SEO Made Easy: LUMPS Don't Flip the Bozo Bit (un)features Get Stuff Done By Setting Arbitrary Constraints Why You Shouldn't Save Blogging for Old Age 6 Specific Ways to Find Programming Mentors Orders of Magnitude The Many Worlds Law Twelve Tips to Master Programming Faster What's Linear Algebra? Fiction or Nonfiction? Experience is What You Get I'm Back Check out my roommates' companies:
Jellyfish Art makes great Jellyfish tanks
30 Words makes great language guides