/Tips

I Finally Figured Out How To Take Notes!

- Sam Rose tl;dr: “I had some requirements in mind: (1) I want to tag notes, track things like date, who was there, what the key topics were, and be able to search based on tags. (2) Create action items, and be able to ask “what action items have I not yet done?” (3) It has to be super easy. I want to be able to jump into a meeting and have my meeting notes ready to go.”

featured in #407

Writing Tips for Improving Your Pull Requests

- Jeff Mueller tl;dr: “I’m going to show you how to purposely write less by using the techniques below.” Tips are: (1) Make it scannable. (2) Speak plainly. (3) Avoid adverbs. (4) Simplify your sentences. (5) Avoid a passive voice. Jeff adds examples to each.

featured in #404

System Design Interview Cheat Sheet

tl;dr: “The system design questions are subjective. This cheat sheet is a work in progress and is written based on my research on the topic.” Topics include databases, API design, capacity planning, high level design, design deep dives, and more.

featured in #403

Naming Conventions In Programming – A Review Of Scientific Literature

- Iwo Herka tl;dr: This article is divided into 2 chapters: (1) “Introduction to naming in programming”: A review of scientific literature present on the topic to deepen your understanding of the current body of knowledge on naming things. (2) “Guidelines for naming conventions in programming”: recommendations to improve your skills in choosing thoughtful class, function or variable names.

featured in #397

PSQL Tips

tl;dr: 43 tips starting with: (1) If you want to simply send a single line command to psql and exit, try using the -c or --command=command flag. (2) You can combine several -c or --command=command flags to execute several commands or queries. (3) With the --csv flag, psql will display the result as a csv file. And more.

featured in #392

Examples Of Problems With Integers

- Julia Evans tl;dr: Examples of integer problems that Julia discusses are: (1) The small database primary key. (2) Integer overflow / underflow. (3) Decoding a binary format in Java. (4) Misinterpreting an IP address or string as an integer. (5) Security problems because of integer overflow. (6) The case of the mystery byte order. (7) modulo of negative numbers. (8) Compilers removing integer overflow checks. (9) The && typo.

featured in #384

Examples Of Floating Point Problems

- Julia Evans tl;dr: Julia wanted specific examples of floating point bugs in real-world programs and asked folks for "examples of how floating point has gone wrong for them in real programs." This post shares 8 examples of such problems. Julia writes programs to highlight the problems and ways to solve them. 

featured in #383

A Beginner’s Guide To Chrome Tracing

- Nolan Lawson tl;dr: Chrome tracing lets you record a performance trace that captures low-level details of what the browser is doing. It’s mostly used by Chromium engineers themselves, but it can also be helpful for web developers when a DevTools trace is not enough. This post is a short guide on how to use this tool, from a web developer’s point of view. I’m not going to cover everything – just the bare minimum to get up and running."

featured in #383

A Neat XOR Trick

- Matt Keeter tl;dr: "With this last trick, we're down to O(N) running time, with no dependence on the window size! I didn't do rigorous benchmarking, but one reply said that this trick sped up their code by almost 3x. There's no moral to the story, other than "xor is cool"."

featured in #376

Tips For Analyzing Logs

- Julia Evans tl;dr: 14 useful tips including the following: (1) Search for the request’s ID - often log lines will include a request ID and searching for the request ID of a failed request will show all the log lines for that request. (2) Build a timeline - keeping all of the information straight in your head can get confusing, so keeping a debugging document where I copy and paste bits of information.

featured in #374