📚 Reading · the people I learn from
These are the people whose work I keep going back to. Each entry says what I took from them and links to the place in my own writing where it shows up, so you can see the idea in use rather than take my word that it mattered. Go read them first. They said it better.
A method for building interfaces as design systems: small atoms combine into molecules, molecules into organisms, and those into templates and pages.
Why it is here. It is more or less my love language for frontend work, and it is the shape GRAIN is built in.
Read it free onlineA practical book on building software with AI assistants, past the point where prompting alone carries you.
Why it is here. The seventy percent problem, and why the last stretch is where AI work rots. Every gate in my setup exists because of that last stretch.
Open the bookAn essay arguing that durable AI work is built from a few reusable parts in a loop, rather than from one clever prompt.
Why it is here. It is an essay, not a book, so it stands thin on the shelf. It is the framing One loop, every repo applies.
Read the essayA self-taught business education: the core ideas of value creation, marketing, sales, finance and people, each in a short chapter.
Why it is here. I learned business by starting five of them, and not one worked out the way I planned, which taught me more than success would have. This is the book I wish I had read before the first one.
Visit the book’s siteA Nobel-winning psychologist on the two systems of thought: the fast, intuitive one and the slow, deliberate one, and the biases that live between them.
Why it is here. My first answer is usually the fast one, and the fast one is usually the one I should check.
Forty-eight rules of power, each drawn from historical figures who used it well or lost it badly.
Why it is here. I read it to recognise the moves, not to make them. Knowing how office politics work made it easier to stay out of them.
A year of short daily readings from the Stoic philosophers, one page and one reflection for each day.
Why it is here. One page a morning, and most days it comes back to the same thing: what is mine to control, and what is not.
Visit Daily StoicA classicist on how Aristotle's ethics apply to an ordinary modern life: decisions, friendship, work and happiness.
Why it is here. A good life is something you practise, the same way you get good at a craft.
A cognitive psychotherapist on Marcus Aurelius, using his life to teach Stoic techniques for handling stress, anger and fear.
Why it is here. Stoicism used for what it was built for: staying steady while you run something hard.
A book on building software with AI as a working part of the process, from specifying the work to reviewing what comes back.
Why it is here. Where most of my thinking on handing work to an AI got sharpened. It shows up in Ten times zero.
Open the bookA handbook of habits for writing code other people can read and change: naming, small functions, tests and refactoring.
Why it is here. Code is read far more often than it is written, so I write it for the next reader, who is usually me.
The official definition of Scrum, written by its two creators and kept short on purpose.
Why it is here. A guide rather than a book, so it stands thin too. The official version is short, and most of what teams call Scrum is not in it.
Read the guideAddy Osmaniaddyosmani.com
Addy gave me the words for what I was already fumbling toward with AI: durable work is a loop built from a few reusable parts, not one clever prompt. His seventy percent problem is the honest half of that. The machine gets you most of the way, and the last stretch is where unmanaged work rots. Every gate and handoff in my setup exists because of that last stretch.
Shows up inOne loop, every repoTen times zero
Brad Frostbradfrost.com
Atomic design is more or less my love language for frontend work. Atoms compose into molecules, molecules into organisms, and nothing gets built big when it can be built from small parts. I would happily make fifty tiny components before one large one, and GRAIN, the design system under this site, is built in exactly that shape.
Shows up inGRAINOrigin story
Coding2GO@coding2go
Coding2GO reminded me that the web platform grew up while I was not looking. Much of what I used to reach for a framework to do, the browser now does on its own, and that is a large part of why this site runs with no build step at all.
Shows up inOrigin story
Alfonso Grazianoalfonsograziano.it
Alfonso's book is where most of my thinking on handing work to an AI got sharpened. Give a model one sentence of instruction and watch what it does first. If it guesses the stack or invents a folder, that gap is mine and not the model's, and the fix is to write down what I meant.
Shows up inTen times zero
Cole Medin@coleam00
Cole drew the clearest picture I have seen of what an AI-native project actually is, as one artifact rather than a list of parts. I borrowed his cross-section because it was better than the one I was carrying around in my head.
Shows up inBuild the floor
This list grows when someone changes how I work, not when I finish a book. If you think somebody belongs here, tell me who.
