Issue #238

20 July 2021


Issue #238
Pointer.io


Presented by Bird Eats Bug
How To Work Hard
- Paul Graham
#Productivity #CareerAdvice
 
tl;dr: "Working hard is a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result."
 #CareerAdvice #Debugging

tl;dr: There are a few methods of bug estimation, e.g.: (1) Dedicated time per sprint (2) Default estimation, e.g. 1 day/bug (3) Estimation with historical data (4) No estimation. Author argues that company size should affect which approach to go for.

Promoted by Bird Eats Bugs
#Leadership #Management
 
tl;dr: When a leader uses this line, it means (1) Your leader can’t / won’t listen or care about this thing, or (2) You need to step up your game and adapt. Lara also lists open questions to ask in place i.e. "What could we try?" or "If you could wave a magic wand, what one thing would you change?"
#Pinterest #CodeReview #CareerAdvice
 
tl;dr: (1) "If something is not clear to you, it probably isn’t clear to everyone," so ask questions. (2) Calibrate feedback - "work to cater recommendations to the individual." (3) Emulate others "by observing how your coworkers review code, you can learn what to pay attention to when you’re writing code.
What I learned From Software Engineering At Google
- Swizec Teller
#CareerAdvice

tl;dr: This post discusses: (1) The difference between engineering and programming. (2) Hyrum's Law - "all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody" so write tests on the code you like. (3) The earlier you find a mistake, the easier it is to fix, and more. 
A Note From Bird Eats Bug...

Engineers spend 2-6 hours/day debugging. Bird reduces that by 30%.

QA Tester / PM makes a screen recording of a bug. Bird automatically captures all the technical logs for engineers to debug faster.

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83% of Developers Suffer From Burnout, Haystack Analytics Study Finds
#Productivity #MentalHealth
 
tl;dr: (1) Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout from work. (2) 81% of software developers reported an increase in burnout as a result of the pandemic, with increased workload cited as the main reason. (3) 83% of developers are concerned about software reliability at their workplace.
#SQLite #Python #Rust
 
tl;dr: Avinash discusses how far he's gotten in attempting to building a 4 column DB with a billion rows in under a minute using Python and Rust scripts, with the following compromises: (1) lack of durability i.e. crashing is fine. (2) Can use machine resources to the fullest. (3) Can use pseudo-random methods from stdlib.
Solving The Three Stooges Problem
- Rajiv Shah
#Search #Infrastructure
 
tl;dr: "In this blog post, we’ll talk about how traffic to Reddit’s search infrastructure is reminiscent of The Three Stooges’ doorway sketch, and we’ll outline our approach to remediate these request patterns. We’ll walk through our methodology step-by-step, and we hope that you’ll use it to make your own microservice boundary doorways more resilient to rowdy slapstick traffic."
#Python
 
tl;dr: Bastian is "still somewhat put off how such a core aspect of a programming language is treated within Python. With some jealousy, I look over to the folks at Rust and how they seemed to get this aspect right from the start." Bastian runs through the improvements he would make. 
#ReactJS
 
tl;dr: "Essentially this checklist makes your onboarding as a React freelance developer more seaming-less when entering a new project and team." Both sides need to talk through this checklist to get their requirements aligned.
 
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