What are our ethical obligations to each other? It's a complicated question. Living in a civilised society implies abiding by a set of shared rules. Some are explicit like laws and contracts, some are implicit like cultural norms, and some are disputed. Whether we have an obligation to care for others, and if so to what extent, often ends up being debated as a political issue, but at its core it's a philosophical question. […10 min read]
What is the point of going to church? I ask myself this question weekly. I didn't grow up going to any sort of regular religious services, but I'm becoming increasingly religious as an adult. I'm inclined to think that church should be a part of my faith journey, but mostly because going to church is just what religious people do. I've never understood the point, and have experienced quite a mixed bag of emotions venturing in and out of a handful of different faith communities over the past couple of years. […7 min read]
This is a book by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas about programming, but not in any particular language. It’s about all the other things that go along with programming, beyond just writing code. It’s a perfect book for beginners or people who don’t have a lot of experience working on a huge code base. You can learn pretty quickly how to write code that works, but writing code that is easy to read and maintain is whole other process. This book is a great place to start if you’re writing code that runs but is still sort of a mess. I feel like a lot of the advice would be common sense to someone with 5+ years of programming experience, but for beginners with a basic understanding of software development and coding this book is a perfect place to start learning how to think about the big picture. […5 min read]