George Verghese
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literature.

Things I've written, and things I've read. A living record of ideas I've spent time with.

Reading

The Enigma of
Reason
The Enigma of Reason
Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber
Argues reason evolved for social persuasion, not individual truth-seeking. Changed how I think about arguments.
Reading

The Design of
Everyday
Things
The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman
Foundational. Affordances, signifiers, constraints — I think about this constantly while designing.
Read

Thinking in
Systems
Thinking in Systems
Donella Meadows
A primer on feedback loops, stocks, and flows. Essential reading for anyone who builds things that interact.
Read

The Staff
Engineer's
Path
The Staff Engineer's Path
Tanya Reilly
What it means to have technical influence without management authority. Practical and unusually honest.
Up next

A Pattern
Language
A Pattern Language
Christopher Alexander
Written for architects, applies to everything. The granddaddy of design patterns — and somehow still surprising.
Read

Writing
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March 2024
On building things slowly
Why I've stopped trying to ship fast and started trying to ship well. Turns out they're not as opposed as the maker community suggests.
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January 2024
The case for boring technology
There is a particular kind of courage in choosing SQLite over a distributed system. A meditation on appropriate tool selection.
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November 2023
What plants have taught me about software
Consistency over intensity. The watering schedule as a metaphor for everything. Plus: my monstera's comeback arc.
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September 2023
Notes on deep focus and shallow work
Cal Newport is right, but incompletely. Some thoughts on context-switching, shallow work that matters, and why not all distraction is equal.
↗
July 2023
Why I keep coming back to chess
It's not about getting better. It's about the particular quality of attention a chess game demands, and how rarely real life asks for that.