the Origins of Opera and the Future of Programming

Jessica Kerr writes eloquently about how some groups of people in music, painting, science, and programming produce extraordinary results, like the invention of a novel genre of music. She goes deep into the theory behind it and introduces the concept of symmathesy:

Nora Bateson points out that there’s more to a living system than parts and interrelations: the parts aren’t constant. We grow and learn within the system, so that the parts don’t stay the same and the interrelationships don’t stay the same. She gave a word to this, something deeper than any mechanical or model-able system, a learning system composed of learning parts: symmathesy.

I am still processing what this all means. My immediate takeaway is that some teams have dynamics in which positive outcomes are amplified to form a virtuous cycle. I believe this is equivalent to what people mean by “synergy”.

How I Write SQL, Part 1: Naming Conventions

This post covers a lot of detail on the naming conventions Sehrope Sarkuni prefers when writing SQL, including the rationale behind for each convention. I agree with most of the conventions. In reality, I am more interested in my team having conventions in the first place.

How To Index Your Database

The slides for Baron Schwartz’s presentation at PostgresConf US 2018 cover a lot of detail on what indexes are, how databases use them and in the uses cases where indexes help: Read less data, read data in bulk, and read data presorted. This is one of those slide decks that contains enough information and context without needing to see the talk – not available on video at the time of writing.