Join 📚 Josh Beckman's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Josh's read, .
Good architecture is built incrementally, but **not** designed incrementally. The [active-active, sharded architecture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8NWDHgWA28) that powers Shopify today was drawn on a whiteboard in 2014 (not designed incrementally), and it took ~6 years to fully materialize, with a major customer-facing milestone every year (built incrementally). We would’ve hit a local maxima if we had not intentionally spelled this out.
The Napkin Math Methodology for System Design
sirupsen.com
Earth intercepts only a tiny fraction of all of the energy coming off the Sun but it's enough to bathe our planet in radiant light and warmth to the tune of about 55 x 10 joules each year. That means that our estimate of the civilizational energy usage to meet the needs of every human on Earth is about 0.04 percent of the inci dent solar radiation (which also powers the movement of wind and water on the planet). Four parts in ten thousand.
How Infrastructure Works
Deb Chachra
I intended for them to playact a state of communal bliss. As it turned out, the girls didn’t have to pretend. They jumped and half-skipped around each other each time we descended from the car and trekked into spaces of make-believe.
Girl Pictures
Justine Kurland
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise