Xavier

Cofounder-CTO Curai, stealth AI-Health startup. Quora TW & former VP Eng. Netflix alumni. Recsys, ML, AI, eHealth, Software. Catalan in the Valley. Runner.

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Book Recommendations:

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Recommended by Xavier

"The Missing Readme" is a great book, not only for new software engineers, but also for those who mentor new software engineers. I am stoked that authors @criccomini and @squarecog will be visiting @CuraiHQ for a fireside chat with @Viggyfresh next week! https://t.co/PKdWkf2H2u (from X)

Key concepts and best practices for new software engineers — stuff critical to your workplace success that you weren’t taught in school. For new software engineers, knowing how to program is only half the battle. You’ll quickly find that many of the skills and processes key to your success are not taught in any school or bootcamp. The Missing README fills in that gap—a distillation of workplace lessons, best practices, and engineering fundamentals that the authors have taught rookie developers at top companies for more than a decade. Early chapters explain what to expect when you begin your career at a company. The book’s middle section expands your technical education, teaching you how to work with existing codebases, address and prevent technical debt, write production-grade software, manage dependencies, test effectively, do code reviews, safely deploy software, design evolvable architectures, and handle incidents when you’re on-call. Additional chapters cover planning and interpersonal skills such as Agile planning, working effectively with your manager, and growing to senior levels and beyond. You’ll learn: How to use the legacy code change algorithm, and leave code cleaner than you found itHow to write operable code with logging, metrics, configuration, and defensive programmingHow to write deterministic tests, submit code reviews, and give feedback on other people’s codeThe technical design process, including experiments, problem definition, documentation, and collaborationWhat to do when you are on-call, and how to navigate production incidentsArchitectural techniques that make code change easierAgile development practices like sprint planning, stand-ups, and retrospectives This is the book your tech lead wishes every new engineer would read before they start. By the end, you’ll know what it takes to transition into the workplace–from CS classes or bootcamps to professional software engineering.

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Recommended by Xavier

Bill Gates' "How to avoid a Climate Disaster" is a great and necessary book. In fact, I think it should be required reading in all schools if we care about our future: https://t.co/bDwLiWtxr2 (from X)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

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Recommended by Xavier

Just finished reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by psychologist and Nobel Laureate in Economics Daniel Kahneman. Can't recommend it enough. An amazing book that explains how irrational we humans are, and what to do about it. https://t.co/wdwSMVZIuP (from X)

Thinking, Fast and Slow book cover

by Daniel Kahneman·You?

*Major New York Times Bestseller *More than 2.6 million copies sold *One of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year *Selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best nonfiction books of the year *Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient *Daniel Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's best-selling The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers.