Four short links: 10 October 2018
Better Education, Do You Need Blockchain?, Visualization Book, and Hiring Coders
- Generation of Greatness (Edwin Land) — eye-wateringly sexist on the surface but (if you replace “boys” with “children” and “men” with “people”) an astonishingly forward-thinking piece on education. I’d want to hire graduates of this approach. (via Javier Candero)
- Do You Need Blockchain? Flowchart — from page 42 of the Blockchain Technology Overview report from NIST.
- Visualization Analysis and Design (Amazon) — Tamara Munzner’s systematic, comprehensive framework for thinking about visualization in terms of principles and design choices. The book features a unified approach, encompassing information visualization techniques for abstract data, scientific visualization techniques for spatial data, and visual analytics techniques for interweaving data transformation and analysis with interactive visual exploration. It emphasizes the careful validation of effectiveness and the consideration of function before form. (via review)
- Assessing Software Engineering Candidates (Bryan Cantrill) — Joyent’s guidance, originally published as a company RFD. While we advocate (and indeed, insist upon) interviews, they should come relatively late in the process; as much assessment as possible should be done by allowing the candidate to show themselves as software engineers truly work: on their own, in writing.
