opinion

The ancient Greek poet Archilochus wrote that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In social psychology, these terms have been used as a shorthand for describing two cognitive styles: foxes, who are comfortable with nuance, can live with contradictions, and have different strategies for solving different problems, and hedgehogs, who focus on the big picture, reduce every problem to one organizing principle, and solve problems through that singular lens....

One of the recurring themes of any technology discussion is programming language. It doesn’t take much effort to find blog posts with dramatic headlines (and even more dramatic comments) about how shipping a new project with Haskell or Clojure or Elm improved someones job, marriage, and life. These success stories are posted by raving fans that have nothing but the best to say about their language of choice. A common thread running through these posts is that they are typically tied to building out new, greenfield projects....

After graduating from university my (future) wife and I travelled and worked in Kenya as part of the Commonwealth of Learning — an intergovernmental agency dedicated to open learning and distance education. As fortune would have it, my brother had an internship in the neighbouring country of Tanzania during the same time period, and we were able to meet for a few days to enjoy the East African coast in the city of Mombasa....