Usually in software engineering, carefully thinking over your choices is worthwhile. You'll build better software that way. During incident response it can become hinderance, however: you've got to act quickly to bring the system back under control.
I'm not a soldier, but there's another activity I do where you've got to think on your feet: software engineering incident response. You don't initially know what's going on, there's time pressure, and the actions you take are gambles.
Incident response is usually not taught, at least not directly. You just learn it on the job. Post-incident investigations can be a great resource if your workplace is good at doing them. I wonder if TDG-style simulated scenarios could be used as well.
CommonCog ran a tactical decision game for their subscribers. It's a military tabletop exercise where you command a unit in a tactical scenario and your task is to give orders. The facilitator and the other participants will then poke holes in your thinking, and then it's turn for the next participant to give orders. This teaches you to make sense of the situation and to give orders - to think on your feet.
I'm starting a newsletter about my outdoors adventures https://buttondown.com/smallrapids/archive/welcome-to-small-rapids/
Expectation: I do a quick prototype with a cool open source project.
Reality: I'll quickly fix the CI of the cool open source project
4. "Alkoholi" by Mika Lietzen. Graphic novel.
It's a story about struggling with alcoholism. The homeless protagonist resorts to violence, then tries to live with the consequences.
The illustration was elegant, but the story frankly fell flat. The situation was complex; the story felt simple.
3. "Hello, Stranger" by Will Buckingham. Non-fiction.
On strangers, hospitality, and travel. Buckingham weaves together anthropology, Greek classics, and personal anecdotes to talk about the thrill and the trouble in getting to know strangers.
I really enjoy Buckingham's writing - it's so cozy. This book made me want to travel again.
2. "Ruukku rubiiniviiniä ja muita runoja" by Omar Khayyam, translated to Finnish by Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila. Poetry.
Basically quatrains about wine and debauchery. Hilarious! Reminds me of Carl Michael Belman's drinking songs.
I also tried reading the Rubaiyat (in English), but couldn't get into it. Appreciating poetry in a foreign language is difficult.
1. "Katsotaanhan puhelimiakin" by Arsi Alenius. Novel, in Finnish.
A young literary critic is angry about how literature has lost its social cachet. I suppose it’s (auto)fiction, but really it’s a pamphlet. It’s aggressive, provocative, and arrogant.
For a short book it jumps around a lot. Many times I went “wow, didn’t see that coming”. Many times I went “damn right”. It spoke to the slightly arrogant and elitist reader in me 🙂
Decided to do another another book thread! In this thread: books I've read in 2024.
Time for #introduction.
Professionally I'm a software developer and that's a topic I care about a lot. How to do it well, how to do it sustainably? I've worked on web backends for a long time and now I'm focused on databases. Used to be active in the #clojure community; now I'm using #python and #rust.
I read a lot, or at least regularly, (classics/literary fiction/sci-fi) and blog a bit. I like #hiking and paddle a #kayak. A year ago I got very into (indoors) #bouldering.