Hey friends,
Hope all is well - although, not entirely sure what that means in 2020.
Right now, there’s this sense that things might be coming back to normal soon. The stock market is doing well (Nasdaq surpassed 10,000 today) . The May jobs report was good (2.5 million jobs added). People are getting out and about. Protests might actually be getting heard. The mood is optimistic - uncertain, but optimistic.
Are we about to return to normalcy? Is this just the eye of the storm? What happens next?
Whatever comes next, we’ve been grinding away on Summer of Shipping and Feather. Feather has a new website!
And Summer of Shipping is beginning to think beyond summer - like, what will it be, and what will it even be called? 🤔
As parts of the economy start opening up, we might direct a bit of attention to SpaceTime as well! (This is, the SpaceTime newsletter after all! Although to be honest, this newsletter has really just become our public work journal 😂)
Change Log
In addition to the updates we shared above:
Last Thursday, Nick gave a presentation on Docker that was extremely well received by the Summer of Shipping crowd
On Monday, I finally got to write down some thoughts about why the Stripe API is so good, and things an API designer might learn from it. It features a quote from Joshua Bloch on naming “Names are the API talking back to you, so listen to them”.
Miscellaneous
📚 It’s been a little bit since we’ve checked in with what’s on our bookshelves. Here’s a sampling:
Structures - A fun read about why things like bridges and skyscrappers don’t fall down - a great supplement for the engineering mind.
Assata - The autobiography of Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Liberation Army. It’s a powerful book from a powerful woman. She was convicted of murder in 1977, but read the book - get her perspective.
Obviously Awesome - When Joshua Bell, world class violinist, pretends to be a street performer, people walk past him like he’s not the world class violinist he is. But put him in a concert hall, and people pay hundreds of dollars per ticket. Context, and product positioning matters.
🍀 I’ve been working on problems in 4clojure to learn the Clojure programming language (GitHub). I just had a couple “Aha!” moments with the language and am beginning to understand the passion people have for Clojure. It’s been a multi-week investment to get to this point, but it feels worth it.
Alright, until next week!
Phil