To the Reader - Start Building Your Information Hub

To the Readers – Start Building Your Information Hub

Dear valued readers,

​

Hello everyone! Thank you very much for your long‑standing interest in this weekly 🤝. My original motivation for keeping it going is simple: to collect the good things I encounter daily so I can refer back to them when needed. Sharing great articles and books with the people around me is a habit of mine, so I naturally started sharing the compiled results.

​

As a programmer, I love coding, and “sustainable programming” is a principle I constantly practice. The topic of health naturally falls within my sphere of interest. In recent years, beyond technology, I have been studying classical Chinese thought and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), both of which are extremely helpful for balancing mind and body. In practice I’ve noticed many parallels between TCM and programming, and I often blend Chinese‑medicine thinking into product and technical work. In the second half of 2021, inspired by a series of coincidences, I made a vow: after ten years of honing my skills, I would study and practice TCM—not to become a doctor, but to safeguard the health of myself and my family and to contribute to the ideal of “everyone knows medicine, fewer illnesses in the world.”

​

The “Medicine King” Sun Simiao https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%AD%99%E6%80%9D%E9%82%88/430161 writes in the Qianjin Yaofang https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%8D%83%E9%87%91%E8%A6%81%E6%96%B9/509576: “In ancient times, the best physicians treated the nation, the middle physicians treated individuals, and the lowest physicians treated diseases.” Healing a nation is a higher calling than healing a disease, underscoring the depth of the medical path. Human energy is limited; to free up more spare time for learning TCM and studying the complex system that is the human body, the weekly will become more concise from 2022 onward. There may be occasional breaks or even some random medical material thrown in 😄.

​

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. In 2016 I shared How I Put Together a Weekly https://github.com/zenany/zenany.github.io/blob/master/_posts/about_time_and_knowledge_management.md. Over the past few years I’ve gathered new insights, which I now share to help you build your own information hub.

​

1. What tools should you use?

First, “de‑evolve” from WeChat public accounts, Zhihu, Weibo, etc., and return to the classic RSS tools. I recommend Feedly: https://feedly.com/ https://feedly.com/. The article The web starts on page four https://christianheilmann.com/2021/12/20/the-web-starts-on-page-four/ also mentions this practice.

These days I personally use Pinboard.in to record all the links I tweet about. I also use Feedly to read RSS feeds and most of what I post in social media came from there. Both are products that allow me to curate my findings, share it with people and follow others. Much like the web used to be in the past.

​

2. How to build your own sources?

• Subscribe to the tech blogs of major companies and products.

• Subscribe to the blogs of experts in the technical fields you care about.

• Keep reading existing weeklies; follow the recommended excellent articles to the original sites and subscribe there. Below are some of the weeklies I aggregate:

  • L0

    • http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/
    • https://changelog.com/ https://changelog.com/

  • L1

    • Wednesday: React Status http://react.statuscode.com/
    • Wednesday: FrontEnd Focus http://html5weekly.com/
    • Friday: JavaScript Weekly https://javascriptweekly.com/
    • Friday: Node Weekly http://nodeweekly.com/

  • L2

    • Friday: Go Newsletter http://golangweekly.com/
    • Friday: Serverless Status https://serverless.email/

  • L3

    • Postgres Weekly http://postgresweekly.com/
    • Bitcoin Weekly http://bitcoinweekly.com/
    • Ruby Weekly http://rubyweekly.com/
    • TLDR – Byte‑sized news for busy techies https://www.tldrnewsletter.com/

• Browse Medium and use Feedly to subscribe to authors you like.

Tip: Feedly has a recommendation feature; after you subscribe, check the suggested feeds for anything that catches your interest.

​

3. How to read?

• When you have spare time, visit http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ and add the sites of the highlighted articles to your RSS list.
• You don’t need to check RSS every day; pick one evening each week for a focused reading session.

​

㊙️❇️ 🈯 Staying informed about the industry broadens your perspective and keeps you aware of trends, but the truly worthwhile reading are the timeless classics that embody wisdom—e.g., the Four Books of Confucianism, the Classic of Purity, the Dao De Jing, the Diamond Sutra, and other millennia‑old masterpieces.

☆☆☆ Classic Soul‑Nourishment ☆☆☆

1. The Four Books – These contain practical life wisdom that ordinary people can apply. You can read them chapter by chapter or spend a few minutes each day copying passages. As Zhu Xi said: “Study should begin with the Great Learning, then the Analects, then Mencius, then the Doctrine of the Mean. First read the Great Learning to set the scope; then the Analects to grasp the roots; then Mencius to see the development; finally the Doctrine of the Mean to seek the subtlety of the ancients.”

2. Selections from Mao Zedong – In an era described as “a great upheaval not seen in a hundred years,” arming yourself with the spirit of a teacher is especially important.

☆☆☆ Master Guidance ☆☆☆

1. Product Thinking Behind WeChat – In the digital age, every person and every company needs a product mindset.

2. The Art of Unix Programming – This has greatly inspired me; I’ve been applying its ideas for a long time.

3. Out of Control – A must‑read for anyone building products.

---

May everyone be able to create their own information hub, stay connected with the industry, and keep pace with the times.

May every programmer who loves coding live and learn forever, coding until they can’t—or don’t—want to code any longer. 💪

Ping Xia

2021‑12‑26

---

Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.