stuff tagged with "ecosystems"

All I Need to Know About Engineering Leadership I Learned From Leave No Trace

🔗 a linked post to jacobian.org » — originally shared here on 2024-07-13

I saw Simon Willison share this article and thought it was too good not to share it myself.

We respect wildlife in the wilderness because we’re in their house. We don’t fully understand the complexity of most ecosystems, so we seek to minimize our impact on those ecosystems since we can’t always predict what outcomes our interactions with nature might have.

In software, many disastrous mistakes stem from not understanding why a system was built the way it was, but changing it anyway. It’s super common for a new leader to come in, see something they see as “useless”, and get rid of it – without understanding the implications. Good leaders make sure they understand before they mess around.

Or, as the footnote succinctly puts it: “find out, then fuck around.”

This article also taught me about Chesterton’s fence, a principle that says “don’t destroy what you don’t understand”.

Why Birds Can Fly Over Mount Everest

🔗 a linked post to nautil.us » — originally shared here on 2022-09-17

What starts as an exploration into bird physiology gradually shifts into an easy-to-follow explanation of climate change. I found myself saying “wow” fairly often while reading this.