Published
Weekend Reading — Fidgety
Design Objective
A Bad Product Decision "Fuck-ups will happen. You won’t be perfect. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be a great PM."
Five tips for improving your technical writing and documentation. Get more users and fewer support requests by leveling up your writing and technical documentation.
Tools of the Trade
7 Good Developer Habits I Wish I’d Adopted Sooner These are all excellent habits, and it's never too late to start:
- Look It Up. Everytime.
- ASK!
- Clean Code, Right from the Start
- Use Version Control
- Raid the Bathtub and Grab Your Rubber Ducky
- Work in Parallel
- Circle Back to What You Know
The Building Blocks Of Progressive Web Apps Start your PWA journey here. Explains what PWA are, when/where to use them, what currently works and doesn't (*cough*Safari*cough*).
Oh shit, git! How to get yourself out of your git messes, explained in plain English.
Fuse.js Lightweight fuzzy-search library.
Robin Hood Hashing should be your default Hash Table implementation Cool trick for dealing with collisions efficiently and speeding up lookup times (also part II).
Complete List of “Secret” Chrome URLs And Their Uses chrome://chrome and friends.
The XY Problem Ever wondered why so often people answer a technical question with "why would you want to do that?"
The XY problem is asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem. This leads to enormous amounts of wasted time and energy, both on the part of people asking for help, and on the part of those providing help.
The problem occurs when people get stuck on what they believe is the solution and are unable step back and explain the issue in full.
Lingua Scripta
When Not to use an Arrow Function TL;DR arrow functions are not "concise function expressions" — they have different semantics and specific use cases.
Lines of Code
Becky Sweger This!
Ways to be the best programmer without being the best at programming:
- humility & willingness to collaborate
- read docs
- learn biz domain
Marc Andersen Gather around all who love puzzles:
Lecturer at R course: “Programming is like this amazing puzzle game, where the puzzles are created by your own stupidity.” So true.
you: its broken but it was just working why did it stop working
computer: times change man dont cling to the past its not healthy
Locked Doors
discovering how Dropbox hacks your mac Remember when Dropbox lost 60 million account details? Their desktop app is asking for root access. What could possibly go wrong? (How to fix Dropbox permissions)
The story of how WoSign gave me an SSL certificate for GitHub.com Are we heading towards an HTTPS security plateau?
House of Keys: 9 Months later... 40% Worse 4.5 million devices on the web are using known private keys for their HTTPS server certificates.
Is HTTP Public Key Pinning Dead? How a browser feature you never heard of can let someone else brick your website.
PEGASUS iOS Kernel Vulnerability Explained - Part 2 The problem with partial security patches: attackers use the patch to find out similar vulnerabilities still present in the patched code.
Startup Life
Intercom This should be familiar to any business with a freemium model, also anyone who does paid development and open source:
Customers on free plans will ask for more features, customers who are paying will ask for better ones.
Urchin Software Corp. The unlikely origin story of Google Analytics, 1996–2005-ish.
Peopleware
The Futility of the Workout-Sit Cycle American Heart Association warns that exercise doesn’t seem to undo the health effects of excessive sitting.
This drug commercial is gonna blow your mind! "Warning: nothing in Nature is clickable. Clickable withdrawal is normal."
None of the Above
Sarah Drasner "Me trying to code before coffee"
Why the White Lab Coat Changed Medical History The story and reasoning behind the costume change.
This might be the coolest visualization of evolution ever Watch these bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance in just 12 days.
We hope that this year's Fibonacci conference will be as big as the last two combined.
Northland man denies burning down house but insurer refuses to pay out Bland headline — bizarre story involving a couple of inkjet printers, blackmail, and the IRA threat that wasn't.
Fidget Cube: A Vinyl Desk Toy Can't wait until I get mine (KickStarter).
