Latest Episodes
BONUS: Seeing like a personality survey
My goal is to help you understand what it means when you see a headline like “Scientists find that people on the political right are less open to experience than peopl...
Personality and destiny
A summary of the "situationist" faction of personality psychology, which holds that behavior is strongly influenced by the situation. Knowing someone's personality typ...
This is not an episode (a diversion into what makes explanations good)
Not an episode that suggests ideas for people to try in software projects. Instead, I am reacting to the book /Communities of Practice/, whose ideas are not explained ...
Legitimate peripheral participation: the book and the idea
"Legitimate peripheral participation" is based on observations about how novices learn in the presence of experts. The novel bits are that novices learn better from fe...
/Talking About Machines/: copier repair technicians and story-telling
Julian Orr tagged along with ~1990-era photocopier repair technicians and made some observations that seem to apply to modern software development. This episode discus...
