DPL Reading List – September 18, 2015
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
Escaping Solution-First Development Through Impact Mapping (Thanks to Curtis Johnson for recommending this article) – “Perhaps due to this complexity in software creation, it is incredibly easy for people in the trenches to forget the purpose of the software they are building: creating value for customers. When you are not focused on that purpose, you end up caught in the trap of ‘solution-first development’ — creating great solutions before understanding the problem they are supposed to solve.”
Understanding CSS: Selector Specificity (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “You’re working on a feature for a website or web app that requires some overriding or other changes to the style of a component. You jump into Web Inspector, grab the class for the element(s) in question, and write some new CSS. Easy. However, after refreshing the page, none of the changes have been made — or some have, but not all of them. Maybe the color changes, but the `margin-left: auto` you gave the element remains the same. This is usually because of specificity. CSS specificity refers to the specificity of the conditions of a CSS selector.”
The Smartest Camera For Your Home Isn’t For Security, It’s For Your Food (Thanks to Chris Apple for recommending this article) – “The combination of better computer vision and connected appliances means that popping a camera inside your fridge or your oven means that homeowners can finally let an app assemble their grocery list or suggest a recipe, or even let your oven decide when your chicken is roasted to perfection. For harried home chefs, this may be far more valuable than being able to check in and make sure the dog is not laying on your sofa.”
Games Can Make You A Better Strategist – “We think that games have an important place in cultivating good strategists, and that now more than ever games can give executives an edge over their competition.”
The Best Jobs Now Require You To Be A People Person – “To land a lucrative job today, hard skills in math and engineering, for instance, may not be enough. As technology allows us to automate more technical jobs, new research shows that people skills — communicating clearly, being a team player — matter more than ever. And women appear to be the ones capitalizing on this shift in the workplace.”
Hacking A Corporate Culture: Stories, Heroes and Rituals In Startups And Companies (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “While startups have the luxury of building values and culture from scratch, existing companies that want to (re)start corporate innovation must reboot an existing –and at times deeply rooted- corporate culture. It’s not an easy task, but failing to change the culture will doom any innovation efforts the company attempts.”
Super Mario’s Creator Reveals The Design Secrets Of Its Famous First Level – “The first level of Super Mario Bros. is a masterclass in game design. And now Shigeru Miyamoto—the genius game designer who gave us some of Nintendo’s most beloved franchises—explains why. Within the first few seconds of the game, a player is enticed to jump and hit that question mark block, learns how to stomp a goomba, and eats a mushroom to become super.”
