Reading List

This is a list of documents that others have written and chosen to release for free, that I find valuable in some or another way.

I have a special note for people interested in reading texts "on business." As Noah Madden says in "How to Get Rich (without getting Lucky)":

"There is no skill called 'business[…]' Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers."

In that spirit, I recommend anyone interested in writing "on business" read pieces from all categories of this list.

• Matt Mochary's "Founder to CEO", a guide on how to build a a company from the ground up. It's a great read for seeing just what you don't know about building a company.
• Vivek Haldar's "The Automatic Corporation".
• Paul Graham's "What Businesses Can Learn from Open Source".
• Gitlab.com's Remote Only, about running an organization without a central location.

• Bret Victor's "Learnable Programming".
• C. Titus Brown's post asking: for an open-source project, "How Open Is Too Open?"
• Jeff Atwood's "Why Can't Programmers… Program?".
• Eric S. Raymond's Basics of Unix Philosophy.
• Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning Was The Command Line", which takes a long time to paraphrase Alan Kay, who said, "Keep simple things simple, and make complex things possible."
• Paul Ford's "What is Code?".
• Karl Fogel's /Producing Open-Source Software: probably the best book about making a collaborative project work. The title and language are almost unfortunate, it's message is relevant for every market.
• Nick Heer's criticism of "The Bullshit Web".
• Kieran Healy's [[http://plain-text.co/][/The Plain Person's Guide to Plain Text Social Science/], which is an argument for "[using] tools that give you more control over the process of data analysis and writing."
• Nadia Eghbal's "Methodologies for Measuring Project Health".
• Jessica Kerr's "The Origins of Opera and the Future of Programming".
• Ory.sh's [Guide to Web Access Control](https://www.ory.sh/api-security-cloud-guide-overview/).

• The [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/).
• Justin Jackson's [Words](https://justinjackson.ca/words.html), which is a more family-friendly version of the Motherfucking Website.
• Kevin Goldman's [Material Honesty on the Web](https://alistapart.com/article/material-honesty-on-the-web/).
• Grigoria Pontiki's [Accessibility low hanging fruit](http://www.grigoria.gr/2018/08/25/accessibility-low-hanging-fruits.html).

• Scott Alexander's [I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/).

• Nicole Fenton's [Words as Material](https://www.nicolefenton.com/words-as-material/).
• Pramila Rai's [Archetypal Imagination in Mark Twain's Works](http://202.45.147.21:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/154/1/PhD_Thesis_Pramila_Rai_Aug_2016.pdf).
• Einar Bjarnason's [The Hero, the Shadow and The Wise Old Man](Einar).
• The [Chicago Manual of Style](https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/). (Similarly, I recommend Joseph M. William's [Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321953304/) and Kate L. Turabian's [A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations](https://www.amazon.com/dp/022649442X/) but they cost money.)
• I mention it under the technology category as well, but [The Plain Person's Guide to Plain Text Social Science](http://plain-text.co/) by Kieran Healy is an argument for "[using] tools that give you more control over… writing."
• Kate Kinnear's ["The aesthetics of science fiction spaceship design"]() which can be taken as a detailed analysis of "how a trope comes into existence."
• Sam Schlinkert's Digital Security Guide for Friends and Loved Ones.

• W Ben Hunt's piece about [how coyotes are too clever](http://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/), and what that means for us. This led me to another article by Hunt, about [sheep logic](http://www.epsilontheory.com/sheep-logic/).

Like what I read? You might like [what I write](https://emsenn.net/).