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It is also notable that the Feynman lectures (3 volumes) write about all of physics in 1800 pages, using only 2 levels of hierarchical headings: chapters and A-level heads in the text.
It also uses the methodology of *sentences* which then cumulate sequentially into *paragraphs*, rather than the grunts of bullet points. Undergraduate Caltech physics is very complicated material, but it didn't require an elaborate hierarchy to organize.
A useful decision rule in thinking and showing is "What would Feynman do?"
Book design: advice and examples
edwardtufte.com
One of my favorite systems papers ever is the [COST](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos15-paper-mcsherry.pdf) paper, which examples a number of big-data platforms, and observes that many of them have the desirable property of scaling (near-)linearly with available hardware, but do so at the cost of being *ludicrously* less efficient than a tuned single-threaded implementation.
Efficiency trades off against resiliency
Posts on Made of Bugs
This reminds me of the story where a Houston airport kept getting complaints from airline passengers that it took too long for their luggage to arrive. So they moved baggage claim farther away. This made travelers walk farther to get to their bags, but have a shorter "wait" time. Complaints dropped to zero.
This Reminds Me of the Story Where a Houston Airport Kept Getting Complaints Fro... | Hacker News
ycombinator.com
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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