Issue #474

Tuesday 19th December’s issue is presented by Sonar

Catch Bugs, Code Smells, And Vulnerabilities Before They Get Into Production With Sonar

Ensure Clean Code throughout the development workflow with SonarLint in the IDE and SonarQube/SonarCloud in the CI/CD pipeline.

Trusted by 7 million developers, Sonar helps you build secure, high-quality software quickly and systematically.

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Why Should You (Or Anyone) Become An Engineering Manager?

— Charity Majors

tl;dr: "The main reason I would encourage you to try engineering management is a reason that I’m not sure I’ve ever heard someone cite in advance, which is that it can make you better at life and relationships, in a huge and meaningful way. Work is always about two things: what you put out into the world, and who you become while doing it. I want to stop well short of proclaiming that “being a manager will make you a better person!” because skills are skills, and they can be used for good or ill. But it can." Charity discusses how management skills help with personal skills, such as self-awareness, understanding other people, hard conversations, and more.

Leadership Management

7 Challenges With Long-Term Projects And How To Manage Them

— Raviraj Achar

tl;dr: Raviraj, a tech lead from Meta, outlines his approach to the following: (1) Prioritizing hard problems. (2) Dealing with hidden work. (3) Managing attrition. (4) Staging the value. (5) Adapting to changing constraints. (6) Maintaining confidence and perception. (7) Having a concrete timeline.

Leadership Management

What is Clean Code, And Why Does It Matter?

— Gabriel Vivas

tl;dr: Every company is a software company, and improving the quality, reliability, and security of your code matters. Sonar has spent the last 15 years building tools like SonarQube and SonarLint to help improve developer velocity, reduce code-level technical debt, and put security in the hands of developers. In this article, we detail how companies can make Clean Code a priority.  

Promoted by Sonar

Management BestPractices

Biggest Productivity Killers In The Engineering Industry

— Gregor Ojstersek

tl;dr: Perfectionism: (1) Progress is much more important than perfection, waiting for perfect moments causes more issues than actually doing it when it’s not. 95% is often good enough for the majority of cases. (2) Procrastination: focus on finishing the hardest task first thing in the morning. Other tasks become much easier to finish. (3) Context-switching: Timeboxing of tasks, sticking to one task until you finish it. Dividing time into meeting and maker time. 

Productivity CareerAdvice

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

— Albert Einstein

Simple Sabotage For Software

tl;dr: The CIA produced a fantastic book during the peak of World War 2 called Simple Sabotage. It laid out various ways for infiltrators to ruin productivity of a company: (1)  Insist on doing everything through “channels”. Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. (2) Make “speeches”. Talk as frequently as possible and at lengths. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experience. Never hesitate to make a few “patriotic” comments. (3) When possible, refer all matters to committees for “further study and consideration”. Attempt to make committees as large as possible — never less than five.

Productivity Antipattern

Ship Shape

— Rowan Katekar, Kerry Halupka

tl;dr: How Canva does hand-drawn shape recognition in the browser using machine learning to convert user-drawn scribbles into vector graphics, keeping classification latency at the forefront of the user experience. "We wanted to make sure the experience was snappy but still accurate. Therefore, we decided to deploy the solution in the browser, which allows for real-time shape recognition and drawing assistance, providing a seamless and interactive user experience. Users can draw shapes and receive immediate feedback without experiencing delays associated with server-based processing."   

Tips BestPractices

Database Fundamentals

— Tony Solomonik

tl;dr: "I tried thinking which database I should choose for my next project, and came to the realization that I don't really know the differences of databases enough. I went to different database websites and saw mostly marketing and words I don't understand. This is when I decided to read the excellent books Database Internals by Alex Petrov and Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann. The books piqued my curiosity enough to write my own little database I called dbeel. This post is basically a short summary of these books, with a focus on the fundamental problems a database engineer thinks about in the shower."

Database

Text Editor Data Structures: Rethinking Undo

— Cameron DaCamara

tl;dr: "Undo and redo have been a staple operation of text editors probably since the first typo was ever made, yet there has not been a lot of innovation around refining the idea of what undo and redo could be. Let’s explore what I mean..."

DataStructure

Notable Links

AutoAnimate: Adds smooth transitions to your web app.

Copilot Classes: Mastering GitHub Copilot for AI paired programming.

Data Engineering Handbook: Everything about data engineering.

Lobe Chat: OS chatbot framework supporting speech synthesis and more.

PageSpy: Remote debugging tool for web projects.

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