What I’m Reading – 2010 Birthday Edition

It’s my birthday today, so I’m going to subject you to more things that I’ve been reading recently. William Gibson says the future is right here, right now – I couldn’t agree with this more. Time gets faster because we’re constantly connected to the world. The Humble Pencil, The Mighty Computer – I love using pencil and paper to work through things. In fact, I don’t understand people who can draw, sketch, or brainstorm straight into a piece of software. Pencil and paper is so automatic, natural, and fun. How to Practice a Technology Talk – Just so you know Index-Only Scans – SQL Server has had the ability to do index-only scans for a long time because of how it handles concurrency and isolation levels. PostgreSQL still doesn’t have this feature, in part due to differences in howPostgreSQL handles concurrency. NoSQL: Don’t Take the Drug Unless You Have the Symptoms – I get paid to do this and I’ll be the first one to tell you that some kind of NoSQL/non-relational doodad may not meet your needs. Writing Your Own Storage Engine for Memcached part 1 part 2 part 3. Just in case you wanted to know what goes into building a storage engine.