My wife read lots of books. I read a few. With a few exceptions, the books have been a waste of time and money. So many of the books in this genre have the feel of the Learn Blub in 21 Days line of programming books. Accept from the get-go that parenting is hard, there are no silver bullets, and you are going to spend a lot of time and energy if you want to do a good job, and filter anything you read from that perspective.
Nevertheless, we did find some helpful books. The most useful books we have are a reference book given to us by our pediatrician and a book about baby sign language (The following link is to the revised edition, which is not the one we have, but it's cheaper on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Signs-Revised-Linda-Acredolo/dp/B...).
We went through a lot of "the book says" conversations early on, especially related to getting her to sleep. The thing to realize here is that it is up to you how to do it. There's a book out there that will support your position, and many of the books are contradictory. So, in the end, you'll end up having to decide what you think is right. The book many parents find useful is merely the one that reinforces their opinion, and they will use that book to appeal to authority in the passive-aggressive conversations that all new parents seem wont to have.
I had trouble finding what I felt like were unbiased opinions on sleep in particular. This book: http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/03... was helpful, mostly because it more or less laid out three approaches and passed few, if any, value judgements on going to the baby vs. letting her cry herself to sleep.
In the end, I decided I couldn't stand to let her cry, so we settled on developing a very predictable routine at bedtime, and it has worked well. We have had our bumpy patches, particularly during illnesses, teething, and major milestones, but in general my child looks forward to bedtime and naps.
The sign language seems somewhat controversial among our peers, but we are in the less progressive southeastern US. The common fear is that it will retard speech. I just wanted to be able to communicate with my child, and it has made for a pleasant experience so far. She seems to be developing vocbulary at an above normal rate. I don't necessarily attribute that to signs, but it is at least one counterexample to the fear of significant speech retardation.
I don't think getting stuck in a local optimum is as important as the speed with which you get there.
Techniques for finding a global optimum of a numerical function are expensive, time-consuming, and often find worse solutions before they find the best one. Do this in a startup, and your local-optimum-seeking competition will crush you.
Seems to me that thinking there is a better solution that your users don't know about (which led you to the local optimum) is exactly the lack of humility that Paul was warning against.
Sorry, I didn't actually mean you should try to go straight for the global optimum (I'd argue there's probably no such thing) - I'm just wondering about known local optima. Solutions that already exist. I don't necessarily know about startups, but in open source software, it seems that a lot of the time, there's some slick and cool new take on a problem. As it becomes popular, it eventually just grows in the direction of all the other solutions that are out there, becoming yet another bloated clone. It seems to me that if you find yourself going down that road, you should steer against that trend. Or should you?
It's interesting to me that Paul lists humility as an (the?) important factor leading to successful product design. It seems like there would be a natural tension between the courage it takes to found a startup and the humility it takes to be successful.
I also wonder if honesty might be another word for the skill in question - i.e., being honest with yourself about what works, what doesn't, and what's truly necessary.
I think the point of the Vista comment is to illustrate the theme of patenting fairly obvious programming technology, not to take a shot a the "modern day best and brightest."
Microsoft reputedly engages in a fair amount of this kind of inane patent activity.
Vista is a great example for an essay like this: much of its brokenness is arguably a direct result of design decisions that were driven by entertainment-industry IP lawyers.
The other factor affecting Vista, which Greenspun refers to obliquely when he talks about the "natural progression of an industry", is that the pioneers in a field get to work in an open space. Backward compatibility is not an issue. Installed base is not an issue. Your market is too small to have developed hundreds of independent, politically powerful splinter groups that are each fighting for their own agenda. And your competitors are too few and too poor to have hired lawyers to scrutinize your every move and force you to document exactly how you answer the phone.
This is the real point. In typical Greenspun fashion, he is pretending to call us all stupid, but he doesn't really mean that we're intrinsically stupid. He's appalled by the fact that we live and work in a tangle of legal nonsense that makes us effectively stupid.
Shame on me. As usual, a Greenspun article that is 99% quality and I pick on the sore thumb at the end. I must be still be a little irritable after filling out that 8th TPS report.
I still say Microsoft is not representative of today's best and brightest. When you have $20 billion cash, 85% market share (in some sectors), and total PHB support, you don't have to be as good. So they aren't.
I usually sleep about 7.5 hours. I don't know any hacks for sleeping less.
The best hack I know for getting more done in the same amount of time is to exercise intensely for 45 minutes to an hour every other day. It's best for me when my muscles reach exhaustion during the workout. I need about 30 minutes to an hour to recover, but my mind feels sharper and my enthusiasm is much greater for the rest of the day and the following day. I try to go first thing in the morning.
There's obvious health benefits, but I think the biggest benefit for me is psychological/emotional.
Thanks for the question! I think it may have inspired me to increase my waning dedication to exercise.
Sorry but that's like selling someone a car and saying "Oh you want the chassis to be made of metal instead of wood? Well you can change that can't you."
Except pg isn't selling anything, he's just letting you see and use what's ostensibly made his life easier.
I'd modify your simile to something more accurate, but modifying similes is a black hole.
OK, he's giving us a car with a wooden chassis. Might be a great car, fun to drive. But it will probably need the chassis replacing unless you want to crash.
It's more like he gave you a scalpel, a tool that's great - even indispensible - for a specific set of cutting tasks, but that might leave you disappointed if you chose to use it for cutting down a tree.
Except that scalpels aren't really all that extensible.
You could ask on comp.lang.lisp if you wanted some really well-informed opinions wrt the impact of Arc on CL, but I wouldn't advise it unless your skin is thick and flame-resistant.
His "challenge" is totally missing the point. Just because it is difficult to identify the owner of a random picture doesn't mean that one couldn't use that picture against the wishes of the owner.
