I am the author, with Svetlana Isakova, of Atomic Kotlin. I suspect most people currently alive were introduced to the concept of zero quite early in their development—early enough that they internalized it as a foundational principle and don’t ask questions about it. In addition, many people probably know that zero was invented after the original number systems. The ancient Greeks didn’t have a zero, and it puzzled them: “How can nothing be something?

I first heard about value-based pricing from an accountant who was creating a startup based on the idea. He tells a story about consulting for a family who inherited an estate. Because of the accountant’s extensive knowledge, he was able to give advice that saved the family a million or more. However, he only charged for his time, a couple of hours. To save that amount, the story goes, the family would have been happy to pay more, an amount based on the value of the work rather than the time it took.

For Atomic Kotlin, I’ve been struggling with an “atom” (very small chapter) during the last couple of months. It’s on object-oriented design, and it brought up a lot of feelings I’ve had for quite awhile about some of the various maxims and design guidelines that have appeared in recent decades, since OO became mainstream. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what bothered me about these design ideas. Then @codingunicorn did it for me by writing a post called Flexible code considered harmful.

A recent interview with The Six Figure Developer podcast. I talk about how much I’m enjoying the design of Kotlin while writing Atomic Kotlin and also my experiment with creating a “Teal” software consulting firm.

The recent developer retreat took place August 20-26th. We arranged it because my friend Luciano Ramalho (Thoughtworker and author of the best-selling Fluent Python) was doing a multi-stop trip to the US (from his native Brazil) and had a gap in his schedule, so he wanted to come to Crested Butte and have a retreat. This seems to have become a pattern: someone I know would like to come here, and we end up organizing a retreat around their trip.

This is the presentation I gave at the Geecon conference in Krakow, Poland last May: