South Software Content Suggestion #7
What I read and watch this week (Friday, August 23, 2024)
We’re back this week with new content to enjoy! Here I review content I consumed in the last week, so you can decide whether to go for it or not.
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Books
An insightful and thought-provoking book that explains in depth how immutable generic data structures and functions that operate on such structures can lead to simpler information systems. Less complexity = faster development and fewer bugs. I started to try to apply its teachings but so far only on small code where the difference cannot really be assessed. Recommended.
Articles
This week, all articles are more “philosophical” about the current trends in the industry, AI applications, and business.
This article discusses how the run for general models resulted in a deep money sink, and now companies are building actual products to make profits. Such a trend can have put some hardcore researchers off, but it should be an overall positive trend.
10 Reasons Why Technological Progress Is Now Reversing
A pessimistic article about the trends in tech. It argues that big companies are more focused in mass surveillance and extracting data from us than to build tech that can actually improve our lives. It also argues it is not a trend specific of the tech industry. Rather, the aftermath of the postmodernist philosophy created leaders that look at the world as a huge resource pool to exploit.
Another article that argues against the generality of LLMs. They are capable of anything but specialized in nothing. This makes their adoption harder for the general public and easier for bad actors that are accustomed to using complex tools for their aims. Also, it makes a parallel with Excel, another good generalist tool, which in production is usually better replaced by specific software built with a general-purpose programming language.
A totally different topic. This article is about Employees-owned companies (EOC), which are spreading in the UK. They are a possible solution to companies that are acquired by foreign investors and private equity firms, which are interested in making money from them by dismantling them. At the same time, they are a solution for the big wave of retirements of “baby boomers” business owners that is happening in these years. EOCs performs in average better than other companies and can prevent a big economic destruction. Interesting read.
Podcasts
Last book I mentioned that I read “Grokking Simplicity”. This is an interview made to its author in 2020, while the book was not yet complete.
Are you interested in Bayesian statistics but cannot find the right learning method for it? Tomi Capretto talks about practical uses and how he teaches the topic at the University. Also, the host Alex Andorra is simply a great podcast host.
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