Issue #410

Tuesday 2nd May’s issue is presented by PostHog

PostHog's open source suite of product tools now includes performance monitoring in session recordings - see not only what your users are doing, but also how long each action takes!

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Avoiding The Rewrite Trap

- Camille Fournier

tl;dr: “Year after year, engineers convince themselves and their leadership that a rewrite will solve all their problems. And then they or their leadership get fired, because most rewrites fail to deliver anything at all. Avoid the trap: don’t go into this exercise unless it is the only way forward, and if you absolutely must, plan accordingly.”

Leadership Management

Theory Of Mind

- Andrew Bosworth

tl;dr: “Theory of mind is a concept I first learned in a class on psychology. It describes our capacity to understand the mental states of others.” Andrew explains why this concept is the reason why its so important for leaders to communicate the context around their decisions.

Leadership Management

The Modern Data Stack Sucks

— Ian Vanagas

tl;dr: “The problem with the modern data stack is that it often fails the people it was originally meant to serve. It creates a gap between engineers and the data that is valuable to them. They are unable to self-serve and must learn the modern data stack tools, or rely on the data team for insights.”

Promoted by PostHog

Management

How eBay Modernized The Most Important Page On Our Platform

tl;dr: “eBay’s View Item page lives at the center of our e-commerce platform. Our customers load this page over 250 million times each day, and stringent budgets on site speed and availability guarantee the quality of their experience. And yet, this page had its last intentional rewrite ten years ago.”

Scale Architecture

“Simple rules guide innovative, intelligent responses. Comprehensive rules guide rote, routine responses.”

— Jim Highsmith

Beautiful Branchless Binary Search

- Malte Skarupke

tl;dr: “I read a blog post that describes a binary search called “Shar’s algorithm”. I’d never heard of it and it’s impossible to google, but looking at the algorithm I couldn’t help but think “this is branchless.” And who knew that there could be a branchless binary search?” Malte describes the algorithms mechanics.  

Algo

The Future Of Programming: Research At CHI 2023

- Austin Henley

tl;dr: “The esteemed CHI conference is happening this week, and I'm jealous that I can't be there. Instead, I'm going through the proceedings and reading all of the papers related to programming, of which many involve AI.”  

AI

Writing Javascript Without A Build System

— Julia Evans

tl;dr: “I want to talk about what’s appealing to me about build systems, why I still don’t use them, and why I find it frustrating that some frontend Javascript libraries require that you use a build system.”

JavaScript

CLI Tricks Every Developer Should Know

— Kedasha Kerr

tl;dr: “We’ve compiled some important tricks and commands that every developer should know from GitHub’s own engineers. By mastering these basic techniques, developers can become more efficient at working with the command line and gain a deeper understanding of how the underlying operating system and programs work.”

CommandLine Tips

Notable GitHub Repos

The Art Of Command Line: Master the command line, in one page.

Trane: An automated practice system for learning complex skills.

AudioGPT: Generating speech, music and sound.

pdfGPT: Chat with the contents of your PDF file.

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