Top 10s

I ran into these top 10 rankings recently and found them interesting:

Ten papers every programmer should read (at least twice)

Ten papers every software architect should read.

Ten concepts every software engineer should know.

Environment and DNAs

Paul Graham has some really interesting essays, not to mention the wonderful "Hackers and Painters" book.

This one regarding Taste and Design is enjoyable and informative line by line:
http://paulgraham.com/taste.html

One interesting paragraph is:
"There are roughly a thousand times as many people alive in the US right now as lived in Florence during the fifteenth century. A thousand Leonardos and a thousand Michelangelos walk among us. If DNA ruled, we should be greeted daily by artistic marvels. We aren't, and the reason is that to make Leonardo you need more than his innate ability. You also need Florence in 1450."

We were having a discussion with guys at work the other day about whether we still have people like Newton or Beethoven around and some thought we do and some thought we don't but the interesting point here is that even if we do, we probably don't have the atmosphere they were in, or at least the environment is not as focused as theirs were, today we live in a world of definitions and rules and regulations that confine us and define us so much that it might be hard to float freely in a dedicated atmosphere were it can nurture talents such as Newton, Beethoven or Michelangelo.

Perfecto Designo

There are certain things which I see as perfect creations. Now do we really have such a thing as a perfect design? A design is a solution to a problem that usually has a measurable criteria and includes different constraints. Now sometimes we don't even have the measurable criteria or aren't aware of it, as is the case in aesthetics, artistic design. Wikipedia has great definitions about design.
What if the problem is to find the shortest path between two points, in that case the design would be a line connecting them, in this case is this a perfect design?
Well I won't get drowned in the idea right now and will leave it for future. The image shown here is a Porsche 911 Carrera, one of these perfectly designed entities that exist. Now why do I think this creation is so well done? Well... maybe because it is not the best in many aspects, Ferraris or Lamborghinis are much better sports cars, stronger, faster ... but it seems like this baby is trying to get the most out of what it has, doesn't have much bells and whistles attached to it and its perfection is something that is outside the normal measurement dimensions that we are used to. Such designs are usually implemented by the subconscious of their designers. Their designers are in love with their designs. Their love transforms into some meanings placed in to their artifacts.
In this specific case, the love of Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche has been behind the story. And lets conclude with two quotes from the master:
"I couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself."
"If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself."