Postcard 15: Growth
Hello from New York and happy belated 4th of July.
So I took the day off yesterday, many observed fourth of July on the 5th since it fell on a Sunday but yesterday was also my birthday. That is the reason you are receiving this newsletter a day late.
I wont delay things any further, here are all of the best ideas I ran into from others and from me this last week:
The best ideas I ran into from others this week:
An important idea from Paul Graham that it matters very little what programming language you start out with as long as you are getting good practice in. Many new devs and young people get caught up in what to learn, instead of just running with something. This holds true for more than just programming by the way.
An incredible chart showcasing the power America has had in attracting the worlds inventors. This is all from this study
A couple of fun tweets about how great side projects are. I have seen first hand what Jeremy says. In my own career many of the side projects I have undertaken, even if they failed, have taught me far more than I learned at my fulltime job.
A few Articles I've read from others this week:
Art & Fear: The ceramics class and quantity before quality that anecdote from Art & Fear about the ceramics teacher about quantity vs quality is such a powerful example of why a big body of work is so important.
Casualties of Perfection by Morgan Housel - A great article from Morgan highlighting how trying to become perfectly specialized could lead to our undoing. I spent a little time thinking on this topic too in an article a while back titled What Happens if we Squeeze too much?
The Articles I wrote this week:
I have been expanding my atomic essays on my own blog, this let's me add things I just cannot add on Twitters limited format. Add more thoughts and more insights.
Thanks for reading.
A reminder that my inbox is open; feel free to reply to this email. I love hearing from my friends who subscribed to this weekly postcard, and I am happy to help in any way that I can.
Have a great week,
Louie