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

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