Wisereads Vol. 97 — Give First by Brad Feld, Andrej Karpathy on LLMs, and more
Last week, we featured a preview of Pat Flynn's recent release: Lean Learning, a guide for lifelong learners ready to cut through the chaos and start making real progress. This week, we're excited to share an exclusive preview of Brad Feld's recent release, Give First: The Power of Mentorship.
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Most highlighted Articles of the week
AI-assisted coding for teams that can't get away with vibes
Atharva Raykar dissects how AI-assisted coding can dramatically boost productivity, but only when paired with solid engineering principles and deliberate practices. "AI thrives far, far better in an environment in which a human would also thrive. Which means your team’s software fundamentals should be strong."
Are you stuck in movie logic?
Communication expert Cate Hall skewers the “movie logic” that keeps teams, friendships, and marriages circling their real problems instead of confronting them outright. "Communication failures like these make for good storytelling where we, the audience, get to watch the characters stumble towards understanding. But you shouldn’t live like someone waiting for the screenwriter of your life to arrange a convenient resolution. Functional people don’t let things linger unspoken — they name what’s facing them out loud."
Men, Where Have You Gone? Please Come Back.
In this evocative New York Times essay, Rachel Drucker draws from her decades of experience in the adult entertainment industry and personal relationships to reflect on the growing emotional absence of men in intimate spaces. "This idea that vulnerability is a threat instead of an invitation has created a culture of hesitation, of men circling intimacy but never entering it. And the result is thousands of tiny silos. Everyone performing closeness, but no one making a move that binds. Isolation. Loneliness. A hunger for contact that has nowhere to land."
Most highlighted YouTube Video of the week
Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again)
Andrej Karpathy, former director of AI at Tesla, shares his perspective on how programming is evolving with the rise of large language models. “[LLMs are like] circa 1960s in computing, and we're redoing computing all over again. … What is new and unprecedented is that they're not in the hands of a few governments and corporations; they're in the hands of all of us because we all have a computer, and it's all just software.”
Most highlighted Twitter Thread of the week
A braindump of all the guidelines that I follow
Shaped by his experience transitioning from Google to Snowflake, Graham Helton shares a comprehensive set of practical guidelines to help new employees ramp up effectively. "Read all the documentation for products you’re working on. Understand how they work in and out… Read them in full. It will take days or weeks. Find all the docs possible. Talk to people about them. Annotate them with questions and ideas."
Most highlighted PDF of the week
Welcome To The Era Of Experience
Leading AI researchers David Silver and Richard S. Sutton outline a future where agents continuously learn and adapt through their own real-world experiences, surpassing limitations of human-centric data. "This era of experience will likely be characterised by agents and environments that, in addition to learning from vast quantities of experiential data, will break through the limitations of human-centric AI systems in several further dimensions: Agents will inhabit streams of experience, rather than short snippets of interaction. They will plan and/or reason about experience, rather than reasoning solely in human terms."
Hand-picked book of the week
Give First
You've likely received calls or emails asking you to volunteer locally, donate to your alma mater, or mentor an aspiring entrepreneur—all in the spirit of "giving back." But what if contributing to your community didn't have to feel transactional or obligatory? In his new release, Give First, author and investor Brad Feld flips the script on mentorship, revealing how proactively giving without immediate expectations can transform both your impact and future rewards.
"One of my deeply held beliefs to the secret of success in life is to give before you get. In this approach, I am always willing to try to be helpful to anyone, without having a clear expectation of what is in it for me. If, over time, the relationship is one way (e.g., I’m giving, but getting nothing), I’ll often back off on my level of give because this belief doesn’t underlie a fundamentally altruistic approach. However, by investing time and energy up front without a specifically defined outcome, I have found that, over time, the rewards that come back to me exceed my wildest expectations."
We’re thrilled Brad is sharing an exclusive preview with Wisereads readers, introducing the basics of "giving first" and offering a sneak peek at applying his philosophy to mentorship. If you enjoy the excerpt, you can purchase the full book here. 🎉
Handpicked RSS feed of the week
Feld Thoughts
When early-stage investor and entrepreneur Brad Feld isn’t writing books, he's musing about startups, technology, writing, and philosophy, and reviewing recent reads on his blog, Feld Thoughts. From Read Everything: "The first book I remember reading about censorship was Fahrenheit 451. I remember being repulsed by the idea that a government would ban (and burn) books... Thoughtcrimes, Newspeak, and Doublespeak were grotesque ideas to me. I hated the idea of the Memory Hole. I grew up feeling like it was important to read everything, even if I didn’t like it or disagreed with it. I still try to do that in today’s world."