Recent content on Christof Damian
My tip for this week: search for more videos of Danny Leon’s amazing skate in front of the eclipse. If you speak German, the podcast about people believing in pseudoscience is great too. Quote of the Week Paradoxically, change only has a chance of succeeding if failure—at least a little bit of failure—is also okay. Peopleware Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister Leadership Roadmap decisions rather than…
This week I really enjoyed the podcast about compression (The Hutter Prize) and the one about seashells. Quote of the Week “The thing about the future is that it keeps happening without you.” Normal Warren Ellis Leadership Board Meetings: Your Notetaker Is Not Welcome Here - this might be true for more meetings.
I liked the “Border Collie” post today, the podcast about air conditioning in Europe, and the interview with Mike D. Quote of the Week […] the eco-philosopher Derrick Jensen, who says: ‘The good thing about everything being so fucked up is that no matter where you look, there is great work to be done.’ Meditations for Mortals Oliver Burkeman Leadership TBM 433: The…
I have been on vacations, which means today is a bit longer than usual. AI stuff is taking over, so there is a new section. I’ll keep it balanced, as I bounce between loving and hating it. If you are looking for something good, check out the videos about Spike Jonze’s skate video and about Belle and locations.
Rand’s perspective on All Hands is worth a read this week. I did enjoy the interview with the airline pilot. Quote of the Week The first rule is that a measurement—any measurement—is better than none. High Output Management Andrew S. Grove Leadership In defense of AI mandates (xpost) - interesting perspective. You will lose people obviously, in some way or another.
This week I enjoyed the last episode in the Industry Special from Escape Collective about Chinese brands. The Overnight Success podcast is worth subscribing to, even if you are not into bicycles. It’s about founders and their businesses. Quote of the Week The technologies we use to try to “get on top of everything” always fail us, in the end, because they increase the size of the…
This week was weird. Something happened to my RSS reader. Anyway … still some good stuff — the interview with Kelsey Hightower, and the piece on how Meta is messing up its culture. Quote of the Week Remember, Peter Drucker said that if people spend more than 25 percent of their time in meetings, it is a sign of malorganization. I would put it another way: the real sign of malorganization is…
Two good engineering podcasts to listen to this week, the one about OpenCode and the one about spec-driven development. I also really enjoyed the video about the Watchmen comic and film. Quote of the Week I had not quite realized that the interruptions were the journey. Jupiter's Travels Ted Simon Engineering Building OpenCode with Dax Raad [Podcast] - I have been trying to use it with local…
Again a few good podcasts, I especially liked the one about The Pre-Training Wall and the Mythical Man Month. Quote of the Week Rule of thumb: When the debate is no longer productive, it’s time to make a decision. Managing Humans Michael Lopp Leadership The Ask - what is this meeting actually about?
Two weeks of links again! Three podcast recommendations from me, if you got the time: Dadaism, Cow Resistance, and Desert Island with Si King. The post by Rands about being overwhelmed as a leader is also great. Quote of the Week Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. Mostly Harmless Douglas Adams Leadership Barely…
Some good podcasts this week, I liked the ones about aging programmers, bees, and GLP-1s. Also some scientific insights into super blocks. Quote of the Week You bring skills, your experience and your presence to a conversation with someone else who is far more experienced in their life and work than you are, even if they are not yet noticing it. Simplifying Coaching Claire Pedrick Engineering How…
Quite a few articles about AI costs getting out of control. For something different I recommend the podcast about the origins of Rose Bikes. Quote of the Week What they found instead was that “who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions” (Google 2015). In other words, it all comes down to team dynamics. Accelerate…
A bit of a mixed bag today. Good reads are the Agents and the Era of Overproduction and AI reshaping values at Enode blog posts. Podcast-wise, give Driverless World and the Pedro Sánchez episode a listen. Quote of the Week “It’s like the free puppy,” I continue. “It’s not the upfront capital that kills you, it’s the operations and maintenance on the back…
I caught up with my YouTube, two good videos from NotJustBikes about cars and oil being bad. I really liked all the links in leadership this week, all highly recommended. Quote of the Week Safe to fail — Organisations need to make it safe to execute a rollback without penalty to the developer. We’ve seen some organisations introduce failure KPIs that demand that all employees (from the CEO…
Two weeks of links. A lot of AI related articles again. I liked the paper about using chatbots in leadership, and the one about the YAML of the mind. If you want a podcast, check out the one about night trains. Quote of the Week The technologies we use to try to “get on top of everything” always fail us, in the end, because they increase the size of the “everything” of…
Logo: Codeberg e.V. — CC BY-SA 4.0 As part of moving my services to EU-based infrastructure, I’ve been migrating away from GitHub to Codeberg , a non-profit code hosting platform based in Germany. One of the things I needed was a CI pipeline to build a container image and push it to the Codeberg container registry for my wildfires project (which also posts to @catfires@rls.social ). It took…
Two great podcasts this week, with the creator of Claude Code, and another one with Werner Herzog. And check out the links from other people, they are much better than mine. Sorry about destroying your productivity with the 100 jumps game. New addition to these posts: Quote of the Week A profusion of ideas spewed forth from his mind. There was no such thing as a bad idea, apparently. But, perhaps…
The podcast about culture is great, so is the one with the creator of Kotlin. Tanith’s techno set is pretty great too. Leadership The more you talk about culture, the less people believe you [Podcast] - I have seen some of the stuff they mention. My preferred product management techniques and frameworks - “Talk to everyone”
The interview with Eugen Rochko, the creator of Mastodon by The Europeans is great, so are their other topics. Both videos in urbanism are a nice watch for today. Engineering Internal Platform Technical Product Manager (TPM) patterns: pros and cons - some scenarios, mostly useful for bigger teams.
A bit quieter this week. The podcast about the golden ages of computing is interesting, the GitHub issue exploit is also worth a read. Leadership The Complicators, The Drama Aggregators, and The Avoiders - I definitely recognise some of these. Engineering Socialize the Plan - Does reviewing plans really make sense? They are basically throwaway. A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4,000 Developer…
Today is a weird one, so much in engineering is about AI. Check out the live coding trance video and pretty Stockholm metro videos. Engineering Extremely Lazy and Immensely Curious - I still think it makes you dumb. Mediations #35: Learning. Again. And Again. - learning how AI fits in and how we fit in. Implementing a clean room Z80 / ZX Spectrum emulator with Claude Code - is it clean code if…
I enjoyed the interview with the OpenClaw creator, even if I hate about half of his opinions. The interview with the baker is also great. Leadership Three Bad Managers - three of many. Engineering Michael Stapelberg: PSA: Did you know that it’s unsafe to put code diffs into your commit messages? - this is only for patches, not merging PRs Evolving Git for the next decade [LWN] security &…
If you watch one thing this weekend, watch the video about being misled about renewable energy. Spoiler: It’s not just about renewable energy. I still haven’t decided what I think about coding with AI. It has been a great help and I see all the drawbacks. My links reflect this. Leadership Culture is built on ‘moments of truth’ [Podcast] - not a technology company, but still…
I have been meaning to do this for a while. Finally, @kpl made me do it. I added a blog roll and a podcast roll to this site. RSS is not dead. I still use it daily to keep up with blogs and podcasts. These pages are generated from my actual subscription lists, so they reflect what I genuinely read and listen to. The blog roll covers engineering, leadership, cycling, urbanism, and various other…
It is a bit sad that he is leaving In Our Time, but I enjoyed the interview with Melvyn Bragg. The blog post about curiosity as a leader is short and great. Leadership Should you include engineers in your leadership meetings? - interesting idea, not really in my area at the moment. Curiosity is the first-step in problem solving - I think curiosity is always a good place to start from.
This week I enjoyed the podcast about Venezuela, the blog post about asking, and the one from Lara Hogan about employees getting stuck. Leadership How can we make asking easier? - if you want public question, you have to make it safe, otherwise accept private ones. Creating momentum when an employee is stuck - this was more helpful than I expected :-) I’m Going to Dig a Hole - sometimes you…
Like a lot of Europeans, I realise that the US isn't a reliable partner anymore. I am just talking about myself here, and not my employer, or my family. I do use a lot of services that are based in the US, and some I will probably not migrate in the near future. But when I receive a bill, it is a good moment to consider if it is a candidate for migration.
This week I enjoyed the podcast about Godbolt’s Rule and the one with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. You might notice more podcasts this week. Something went wrong with my link collection system recently. I am also moving the blog … more things will go wrong. Leadership Stop Picking Sides: Manage the Tension Between Adaptation and Optimization - nicely put. It’s similar to the creation vs…
First round of links for 2026. Everything is bad, so have some links to cheer you up. I really liked the article about visibility, the one about Friday deploys, and sitting alone in a café … which I can relate to. I am a big fan of Bill Nighy’s podcast, that certainly will improve your mood. For some reason, the random section is full of cassette tape related links.
Another year, another bunch of books. I spend most of the year binging through thriller series that I had already had started in 2024. The books I really liked were the newest book from the Slough House series, the spy novel The Persian, and Fundamentals of Software Architecture (even if I didn’t finish it). I am still using Goodreads to track these, so you can find the pretty Year in Books…
Clearly, I have been slacking for the last weeks. Just look at all the links from other people at the bottom! This might also be the last post for the year, as I will be enjoying the festive season. Nonetheless, a lot of great content this week. I discovered a few new blogs that will keep me busy for the future.
OK, Zoo might slightly be overstating it. Let’s start at the beginning. In March 2019, we moved from Barcelona into the countryside. While I grew up in a village and studied in a small town, my recent life I spend in London and Barcelona. It was also my first house, farmhouse even, having lived in flats most of my life. So clearly, I thought about how I could complete my cosplaying of…
Screenshot from TI99 Pirate Adventure game This week, I enjoyed the blog about chat programming, and coding at work, which is probably related. Leadership Hybrid workers are putting in 90 fewer minutes of work on Fridays – and an overall shift toward custom schedules could be undercutting collaboration - Friday is always different in Spain. Thermostats - Tuning team temperature - first rule of…
I’ve mentioned my approach to technical debt often, but I’ve never actually written it down. Here’s the framework I use. Technical debt is most typically brought up from individual engineers or the engineering department. If not attended to, technical debt can slow down future product development and reduce the developer experience. To me, technical debt is simply technical work…
Skateboarder jumping off a building in NYC Short, but with lots of good stuff. The fad of engineering management, drug policy in Spain, and Mr. TIFF are my favourites. Have a lovely weekend! Leadership “Good engineering management” is a fad - you will have to adapt and core skills are reusable Seven Decisions - “Inspired” – right. Engineering Mr TIFF - the story of…
Short one today. Listen to the last episode of Science in Action, or check out the archive. For a fun, scary game, have a look at The Scope Creep. One for the product managers. Leadership Become the Consequence - I’ll have to digest this a bit more. The Scope Creep - scary product game
I was busy last week, which means more links for today. I really like the podcast with Charity Majors about teams, and it made me rediscover her blog. Some interesting posts about security and LLMs and LLMs in general this week. Leadership Thoughts from LeadDev NYC 2025 - good high-level summary. I should have a look at the videos. Vibe Engineering: A Field Manual for AI Coding in Teams - this got…
A few interesting articles about AI this week. A good interview with Jane Goodall from 2020, and a weird assembler tutorial game. Also check out the link from Jason at the bottom, I could have copied them all. Leadership The illegible nature of software development talent - boring work is important work, and invisible.
Gorilla in Barcelona Zoo This week, I remembered Jane Goodall. I love the interview with her in The Live Scientific. Some reasonable predictions for the future of AI, too. And the progress of public transport in Medellín should be an example for everywhere. Leadership 25 proven tactics to accelerate AI adoption at your company - Some good and some awful ideas. People not Resources - there is even…
Don’t Need Money by Poorly Drawn Lines Some “AI” related stuff today, with the idea of prompt engineering being requirements engineering and how these new tools can enable non-programmers to get closer to the code. I also liked how much Wil Wheaton likes a new metro line. Leadership RTO mandates lead to us questioning leaders - it was never about RTO. Engineering Prompt…
If you have a weird fascination with trams, you should probably check out the full World Tramdriver Championship video. Otherwise, the podcast with the author of Code Complete is great, so is the one about a train ride through Canada. Engineering Hashed sorting is typically faster than hash tables - in case it comes up in the next interview :-) “Shai-Hulud” NPM attack runs malicious…
Small selection today. Some good reads, about the job market, corporate job, and a good podcasts about teams & AI. Leadership Organizational design and Team Topologies after AI [Podcast] - a much more balanced view on the changes AI brings to teams MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing - a bit older article AI Adoption Rate Trending Down for Large Companies - this is…
Quick selection. This week I liked the podcast with the whaler, and the Chinese cycling industry. Leadership Rate My Manager - Oh, no! It’s pretty new. (Side note: This looks vibe coded) Engineering Bringing BASIC back: Microsoft’s 6502 BASIC is now Open Source - very nice. It is one , 7000 line file. Browsh - new text-based browser. BYTE - visual history - I still have my favourite issues,…
TI 99/4A home computer original box for European market This week I enjoyed the post about dealing with abandoned EV charger hardware and of course, the video about the TI 99/4A. Leadership Nobody Wins at Calendar Tetris - busy doesn’t mean productive Tech debt isn’t an ‘IT issue.’ It’s a business strategy - yep. The Management Skill Nobody Talks About - how to fail good. Engineering…
The band Kraftwerk on stage Lots of good stuff again this week. I recommend listening to the history of TrainingPeaks and coding in the red-queen area. Leadership Using postmortems to break out of infinite loops | Adnan Karač | LDX3 London 2025 [YouTube] - a quick talking about how to make them useful. Team OKRs in Action - they have to be co-created, not top down. Why Do Interviewers Ask Linked…
I liked the work bringing Doom to the Amiga, without actually using Amiga code. And I learned some new things about the history of Civility in the BBC podcast. Leadership How We Encourage Self-Improvement at Buffer - $1000 is nice, it is more than in many organisations. I don’t think it is enough. TBM 370: Dependencies Aren’t Your Problem - “Shift the goal from managing…
These are too many links. I was on holiday … twice. I could stagger these, but there will be more next week. There are still many good things here. Too many. I am sorry. Leadership How We Plan Retreats, After Hosting 14 over 12+ Years (+ Get Our Retreat Planning Playbook!) - important for fully remote companies, and I didn’t often see this done right
Photo: Oto Godfrey and Justin Morton Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0 Too many random links this week. The interview with the creator of Praise You (sampled by Fatboy Slim) is pretty good, what a strong woman. If you need some inspiration to get on a bike, watch the video about riding 2500 km in London. Leadership Expert Generalists - “But we’ve found that our most effective colleagues…
Today is apparently the Urbanism YouTube edition. I also really liked the podcast about Hindenburg, and the video about the bikepacking trip (in Germany, sadly). Engineering Annotation Mono v0.2 - a pretty new mono font Libxml2’s “no security embargoes” policy [LWN] - It is a pretty drastic move, and I wonder if anything will change after this. Setting Up MCP Servers in Claude…
My YouTube links got lost because of my new workflow. It is working now. This week I enjoyed the Podcast about copyright and the video about cycling couriers in Seoul. Leadership The Heart of Innovation: Why Most Startups Fail - long read about demand. Your Manager Is Not Your Best Friend - your manager should be thinking about the company and the team, then the individuals.