Issue #414

Tuesday 16th May’s issue is presented by QA Wolf

Kiss bugs goodbye. QA Wolf gets web apps to 80% automated end-to-end test coverage in 4 months. With unlimited, parallel test runs and our Zero Flake Guarantee. Skeptical? 

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Say Goodbye To Bugs

Maintaining Productivity As Engineering Teams Scale

— Vasan Subramanian

tl;dr: Key takeaways: (1) Deal with technical debt: recognize it, spend time fixing it but justify it. (2) Avoid distractions. (3) Protect old hands: spend time with your senior engineers. They are more valuable than you think. (4) Recognize different skills: create a managerial path and a technical path for people, identify your senior folks as one or the other. (5) Communicate often.

Leadership Management

The Complicated Parts Of Leadership: Betting On People

— AbdulFattah Popoola

tl;dr: “This experience left me wondering how many teams could be transformed with the proper investment in training and development. And also how many teams are struggling because they are too busy to invest in training.” The author provides the following tips when betting on people: (1) Have skin in the game. You must push past your discomfort and genuinely believe in the team’s abilities. (2) Stay curious and maintain curiosity, even when confronted with obstacles. (3) Verify and have accountability checkpoints.

Leadership Management

So You Want To Build End-To-End Tests

— Rebecca Stone

tl;dr: A well-built test suite runs faster, gives more reliable results, and makes long-term maintenance easier and cheaper. After thousands and thousands of end-to-end tests, QA Wolf has picked up a few tricks to build fast, stable, and accurate ones. This guide teaches you how.

Promoted by QA Wolf

Management Testing Guide

Escaping Creative Downturns

— David Heinemeier Hansson

tl;dr: "But as I've grown older, I've come to terms with the fact that it can't be eternal sunshine in the productive mind. You need to let weather pass. The grey, wet days of today soak the soil for the sun of tomorrow.”

CareerAdvice

“The mark of a mature programmer is willingness to throw out code you spent time on when you realize it’s pointless.”

- Bram Cohen

RLHF: Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback

— Chip Huyen

tl;dr: How exactly does RLHF work? Why does it work?” Chip discusses the  answers to these questions. “RL has been notoriously difficult to work with, and therefore, mostly confined to gaming and simulated environments. Just five years ago, both RL and NLP were progressing pretty much orthogonally – different stacks, different techniques, and different experimentation setups. It’s impressive to see it work in a new domain at a massive scale.”

AI ML Architecture

Distributed Counter System Design

tl;dr: "The counter is the most primitive distributed object and is a crucial abstraction in distributed computing”. This article explores different approaches to implementing the distributed counter.

Architecture

ugit: DIY Git In Python

tl;dr: ugit is a small implementation of a Git-like version control system. “It's top goal is simplicity and educational value. ugit is implemented in small incremental steps, with each step explained in detail. Hopefully you will be able to read the small steps and slowly build a complete picture of the internals.”

Python Git

Testing A New Encrypted Messaging App's Extraordinary Claims

tl;dr: The author used reverse engineering and decompilation tactics to view the inner-workings of an encryption app that was making “wild” claims, comparing its novel encryption protocol against established encrypted messaging apps.”

Security

Notable GitHub Repos

Background Remover: Remove background from images and video.

Prompt Engineering Guide: Tips and tricks for working with LLMs.

WebWhiz: AI chatbot instantly responds to your customer's queries.

Windmill: Turn scripts into workflows and UIs.

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