Join 📚 Josh Beckman's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Josh's read, .
Or to be more specific, urbanist Kevin Lynch’s city maps from his 1960 book The Image of the City. I’ve described his approach here (March 2021) (where I also pick at the possible neurological underpinnings) so to briefly summarise:
Lynch puts forward five primitive elements: paths (e.g. streets); edges (e.g. uncrossable rivers); districts; nodes (e.g. street corners); landmarks (e.g. a recognisable building). Each element has an intuitive way to sketch it, as if on the back of a napkin.
Collecting My Thoughts About Notation and User Interfaces
interconnected.org
Pike's rules 1 and 2 restate Tony Hoare's famous maxim "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
Ken Thompson rephrased Pike's rules 3 and 4 as "When in doubt, use brute force."
Rules 3 and 4 are instances of the design philosophy KISS.
Rule 5 was previously stated by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month and is often shortened to "write stupid code that uses smart objects".
Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming
University of Texas in Austin
Because going against our natural inclinations can make us feel like impostors, we tend to latch on to authenticity as an excuse for sticking with what’s comfortable.
Shaping Your Authenticity
subbu.org
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise