Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I’ve been pointed to the (now abandoned) blog of Steve Yegge way too many times. But for some reason I never read it. Maybe it’s the look of it. Maybe it’s because of the lengthy articles. But that’s a fact - I haven’t read a single post there until today, desipte the URLs being saved in those many places where I look for stuff to read.

Steve Yegge worked for several years (7?) at Amazon.com and last time I heard is still there, being a development manager for internal Amazon stuff. You can read more about him here, if you wish. By the way, he has also started a real blog too.

Anyway, today I discovered his excellent writings. It’ll take me some time to go over all of them, but here are the few really good ones from those that I’ve read today.

• The Nonesuch Beast - rant about some irreducibly complex problem domains that people think are “simple”.
• Practical Magic - thoughts about what a programmer is allowed to get away with not knowing.
• Saving Time - rambling montage on productivity, emacs extensions, and automation habits. MUST READ.
• The Five Essential Phone-Screen Questions - an exposition on how he personally conducts the first 10 minutes of a technical phone screen.
• It’s Not Software - an essay about differences between traditional software development and creating software services. This one is an absolute MUST READ.

There’s more, of course.