Issue #383

24 January 2023


Issue #383
Pointer.io
Tuesday 24th January's issue is presented by CodeSee


 
CodeSee unlocks growth and engineering productivity. Our code visibility platform helps development teams understand, build and refactor applications without guesswork. Instantly map and automate app services, directories, file dependencies and code changes. See your impact before you commit.
 
#Leadership #Management #TechDebt
 
tl;dr: Alex discusses how "Tech Debt Friday" started at his org, what was learned and how it's executed: (1) We spend 10% of our time to deal with tech debt. (2) The first rule is not to create debt in the first place. (3) The PR that creates tech debt should come paired with the issue to deal with it. And more. 
How We Improved DNS Record Build Speed By More Than 4,000x
- Alex Fattouche
#Performance #Architecture #DeepDive

tl;dr: "Our network now spans over 270 cities in over 100 countries, interconnecting with more than 10,000 networks globally. According to w3 stats, “Cloudflare is used as a DNS server provider by 15.3% of all the websites.” This means we have an enormous responsibility to serve DNS in the fastest and most reliable way possible."
What Is Code Visibility?
- Shanea Leven
#Management #Productivity

tl;dr: Onboarding to a new codebase often involves hours of frustration. But, it doesn’t have to. Shanea explains how code visibility tooling keeps codebases from becoming untouchable black boxes. With a shared visual model that can be maintained through code iterations, developers can be more productive and ship code with fewer bugs.

Promoted by CodeSee
#Leadership #Management
 
tl;dr: Jessica explains resiliency in the context of the Southwest Airlines software failure. "When software is brittle, it falls over in production, and that falls to people to fix. While software can be robust to anticipated conditions, only people handle unexpected events. When software can’t even handle stuff that happens all the time, then people suffer the strain." 

"If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think."

- Kurt Vonnegut
 
How Uber Optimizes The Timing Of Push Notifications Using ML And Linear Programming
#ML

tl;dr: "We introduced a system we call the Consumer Communication Gateway: a centralized intelligence layer to manage the quality, ranking, timing, and frequency of push notifications on a user level."
Examples Of Floating Point Problems
- Julia Evans
#Tips

tl;dr: Julia wanted specific examples of floating point bugs in real-world programs and asked folks for "examples of how floating point has gone wrong for them in real programs." This post shares 8 examples of such problems. Julia writes programs to highlight the problems and ways to solve them.  
Git Commands You Probably Do Not Need
- Martin Myrseth
#Git

tl;dr: Martin discusses: (1) The empty commit. (2) Pushing locally. (3) Commit ranking. (4) Cat file. (5) Orphan commits. (6) Filter branch. (7) Octopus merge. (8) Rounding off.
A Beginner’s Guide To Chrome Tracing
- Nolan Lawson
#Debugging #UsefulTool #Tip

tl;dr: Chrome tracing lets you record a performance trace that captures low-level details of what the browser is doing. It’s mostly used by Chromium engineers themselves, but it can also be helpful for web developers when a DevTools trace is not enough. This post is a short guide on how to use this tool, from a web developer’s point of view. I’m not going to cover everything – just the bare minimum to get up and running."
Notable GitHub Repos
Modern Errors
Handle errors in a simple, stable, consistent way.
 
Neural Networks: Zero To Hero
Course on neural networks starts at the basics.
 
SRE Checklist
Checklist of anyone practicing Site Reliability Engineering.
 
LazyVim
Customize and extend your config.
 
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