A Visual Introduction to Machine Learning

This stunning presentation will give you a quick introduction to machine learning and how it applies statistical learning techniques to identify patterns in data. In turn, those patterns are then used to make highly accurate predictions. The visualization are beautiful and explain intuitively the concepts described. I commend the R2D3 team behind this work and look forward to the second installment.

On-call at Any Size

This article is part of the first issue of Increment, a new digital magazine about how teams build and operate software at scale. The post is a report on what they found after interviewing teams of many sizes. There are some commonalities and best-practices that emerged from their interviews, some of which only apply at certain scales.

One of the things I love about being in software is the current environment of openness that a lot of companies operate in. They publish how they work, what they have tried. Everyone benefits.

Moneyball Teams

Brian Graham takes on hiring at software teams and makes an analogy to Moneyball (book and movie). His concept is that hiring only “the best” is hardly an effective strategy. The focus should be on building a team that can deliver on needs. Each developer brings different capabilities and are rarely interchangeable with each other. By looking at the needs of your team, your are in a better position to make good hiring choices.