Issue #305

5 April 2022


Issue #305
Pointer.io
Tuesday 5th April's issue is presented by PostHog

 
PostHog is the open-source product analytics suite you can self-host. Heatmaps, Recordings, Funnels, Feature Flags and more — all in a platform you can self-host and sync with your data warehouse!
 
 
How I Think About Code Management
- Andreas Klinger
#Management #BestPractice

tl;dr: Split code management into 2 tasks: Reducing complexity & increasing confidence. (1) Reducing complexity so you have fewer parts and interconnections between them. Develop "concepts with better boundaries." (2) Increase confidence by streamlining. Minimize ways things can be done, make them obvious and make sure they work. Andreas explains light-weight processes to do both. 

Should You Prioritize Infrastructure Costs?
- Will Larson
#Leadership #Management

tl;dr: Varies on whether the company is early-stage, prioritizing growth or profitability. (1) Early stage: If you reduce your infrastructure costs to $0, and it doesn’t increase your runway by at least two months, it’s not worth focusing on. (2) Growth: "The fundamental question is whether infrastructure’s share of cost of goods sold are increasing as a percentage of revenue?" (3) Profitability: Align with the business on dollars spent on infrastructure overhead per engineer. 

Automating A Software Company With GitHub Actions
- Michael Matloka
#Management #Productivity
 
tl;dr: This post shows how a good CI solution can automate your engineering workflow and help you focus on actual challenges instead of chores. 

Promoted by PostHog.
#Leadership #Management

tl;dr: "WebCore is part of a strategy to re-imagine BBC Online and create a single website for all the digital services." Graeme covers how the engineering team: (1) Went about re-organizing for success. (2) Viewed the team topologies and interaction modes between teams. (3) Viewed the role of the platform in enabling teams to interact with one another. 

"Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out."

- Chris Pine

 
Wisdom From 50+ Years In Software (Audio)
- Brian Kernighan
#Podcast #Audio

tl;dr: "You’ll hear about the birth of Unix, Ken Thompson’s unique skillset, why Brian thinks C has stood the test of time, his thoughts on modern languages like Go and Rust, what’s changed in 50 years of software, what makes platforms like Unix and the web so powerful, his take as a professor on the trend of programmers skipping the university track, and so much more."

Horrible Edge Cases To Consider When Dealing With Music
- Julien Voisin
#Database #SystemDesign

tl;dr: Julien highlights some of the challenges: "Weird" album names, albums without names, confusing names, long tracks up to 23 hours, tracks with different versions and more. Julien also links to the DB schema to show how to "tame this madness."

#Swift #Algorithms
 
tl;dr: Part of Swift’s move toward safe, simple, and performant asynchronous programming, Swift have launched a package of algorithms, which has 3 main goals: (1) Integration with async/await. (2) Provide a home for time-based algorithms. (3) Be cross-platform and open source.
The Project With A Single 11,000-line Code File
- Austin Healey
#Entertaining
 
tl;dr: "Something I found hilarious is that a variable might be used on lines 200-210 and then again on line 8544. No where else."
 
Notable GitHub Repos
Uptime Kuma
Self-hosted monitoring tool.

 
Helix
Post-modern modal text editor.

 

Rayon
Another SSH machine manager.

 
NocoDB
OS Airtable Alternative.

 
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