Tuesday 10th June’s issue is presented by Unblocked | | | Unblocked finds the context you need from your team’s code, discussions, docs, issue trackers and more. | Now everyone gets expert-level answers, without having to interrupt a teammate. | | | | | — Mike Fisher | | tl;dr: “For these decisions, I think the best approach is a “portfolio approach” that means evaluating initiatives not just individually, but also in relation to each other and their overall impact on the company's financial and strategic objectives. This approach helps optimize resource allocation, balance risk and reward, and ensure a sustainable, long-term strategy. This approach isn’t just about spreading bets across different time horizons, it also enables smarter, more aligned, and ultimately more effective decision-making across the organization.” | Leadership Management | | | — Claire Lew | | tl;dr: “If we truly care about our team members, it’s essential to speak up compassionately when we notice changes. We’re not rocking the boat — we’re ensuring it’s still headed in the right direction. The sooner you discuss these concerns, the better. Addressing performance early gives them a genuine chance to correct course, which may be the most compassionate act of all.” | Leadership Management | | | — Dennis Pilarinos | | tl;dr: Docs get written, but answers stay hard to find. The problem isn’t the docs themselves. It’s that the context developers need is scattered, outdated, or missing entirely. Why does this keep happening? And what’s the alternative? | Promoted by Unblocked | Documentation Management | | | — Sean Goedecke | | tl;dr: “If you’re not making a narrow technical point, you should avoid making narrow technical claims. Arguments about technical details are the absolute worst way to persuade another engineer to do something for you. If you get them on your side, you can work out the technical details together. If they don’t believe in your mission, you’ll never convince them by proving that they’re wrong about the technical points. Even if you succeed, some engineers will be so resentful about being comprehensively proven wrong that they won’t want to help you anyway.” | CareerAdvice | “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done." | | | | - Bruce Lee |
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| | — Addy Osmani | | tl;dr: “As many of us have learned, the quality of the AI’s output depends largely on the quality of the prompt you provide. In other words, prompt engineering has become an essential skill. A poorly phrased request can yield irrelevant or generic answers, while a well-crafted prompt can produce thoughtful, accurate, and even creative code solutions. This write-up takes a practical look at how to systematically craft effective prompts for common development tasks.” | AI Guide | | | | tl;dr: Godspeed is a super fast, 100% keyboard-driven task manager. It's like Superhuman for your to-do list. It comes with full offline support, attachments, shared lists, E2EE, mobile and web apps, custom macros, and everything else you'd expect from your task manager. | Promoted by Godspeed | Tools | | | — John Ousterhout, Robert Martin | | tl;dr: The document that features a dialogue between Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin and John Ousterhout discussing their differing software design philosophies. They debate three main topics: method length, comments and test-driven development. | BestPractices | | | — Evan Hu | | tl;dr: “I am not affiliated with the Linear team, nor have I consulted them while writing this article. As a result, there may be inaccuracies or discrepancies with the actual implementation. However, I've made every effort—especially by watching relevant talks and comparing LSE to well-studied operational transformation (OT) approaches—to ensure that my description of the LSE approach is as accurate as possible. I hope it serves as a valuable reference for building a similar collaborative engine.” | DeepDive Architecture | | | — Avery Max | | tl;dr: “DuckDB isn’t a database at all, DuckDB is a protocol masquerading as a database, and understanding this is key to knowing what is going to happen next in data.” | DuckDB | | | — Aakash Bhardwaj, Abhishek Dobliyal | tl;dr: “In 2021 our team managed 65 regulatory reports, consuming terabytes of storage. By Q2 2024, this number surged to over 500 reports majorly covering areas related to trips across a given jurisdiction, significantly increasing resource consumption. Although existing solutions could archive and retrieve data, they often risked data mutation, especially during backfills, which isn’t ideal for regulatory and audit purposes. Additionally, retrieving smaller partitions and range-based retrieval wasn’t feasible with the existing solutions, complicating efficient data access.” The Uber team discuss some of the challenges implementing their new system. | Architecture Data | | Most Popular From Last Issue | The Staff Meeting Ritual — Allen Cheung | | Notable Links | Beachpatrol: CLI tool to automate your daily web browser. | Courses: Anthropic's educational courses. | TensorZero: Feedback loop for optimizing LLM apps. | NautilusTrader: Algorithmic trading platform. | Onlook: Cursor for designers. | |
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