Grokking Simplicity: Taming Complex Software with Functional Thinking by Eric Normand teaches functional patterns and abstractions that we as developers can use to write good code. Throw away the Haskell-on-a-chalkboard imagery; this isn’t like most functional programming (FP) books. The FP topics covered in this book are practical and will improve your every day code. No monads or applicatives here, instead you’ll learn concepts you can apply in any programming language and …

William Wordsworth. From Lyrical Ballads (1798)

Nay, Traveller! rest. This lonely yew-tree stands
Far from all human dwelling: what if here
No sparkling rivulet spread the verdant herb;
What if these barren boughs the bee not loves;
Yet, if the wind breathe soft, the curling waves,
That break against the shore, shall lull thy mind
By one soft impulse saved from vacancy.

Who he was
That piled these stones, and with the mossy sod
First covered o’er, and taught this aged tree,
Now wild, to …

Deploying code into production costs engineering teams. It’s not the dollar amount we care about but the time and attention engineers have to spend on the deployment. Projects with a complex release process, slow pipelines, or flakey steps are expensive to deploy. This cost feeds back into how we work and has detrimental effects on how we write code, work as a team, and run systems as professionals.

A Zero-cost Deployment is completely automated. Engineers are confident in the correctness …

Another year another lunar eclipse . I was visiting friends in Wanaka and we headed out to Lake Hawea to watch the eclipse. It was a clear frosty night which gave good views of the galactic core intersecting the horizon.

This year I was shooting with the Sony a7rii and 24-105mm f/4 lens. Not an ideal lens but the camera gives plenty of …