Published
Weekend Reading — Myers Briggs type HDMI
Glenda Adams "This took nearly 6 months, working on and off- so many little pixels to stitch."
Tools of the Trade
Christine Love So Vim ported to run in the browser:
This is by far the best version of vim because they finally implemented the one feature that everyone’s been demanding for decades: there’s a little X in the corner, and you can click it
Andy Gocke This is so true. I believe the expression is "squandering their time":
Developer tools seemed like a good industry to be in, "sell shovels in the gold rush" and all, but it turns out developers prefer to dig for gold with their teeth.
browsh This terminal-based web browser renders everything a modern browser can (HTML5, CSS3, JS, video, even WebGL). Use case: run the browser in a data center with fast internet, and access it over SSH from a device that has slow/limited internet.
EricaJoy I'll sign. Meanwhile, this hack mostly works:
petition to make "paste and match formatting" the default paste option.
Defining Component APIs in React Collects some of the best practices for working with React:
The following is a collection of thoughts, opinions, and advice for defining component APIs that are meant to be more flexible, composable, and easier to understand. None of these are hard-and-fast rules, but they’ve helped guide the way I think about organizing and creating components.
Daryl Ginn "React documentation out of context makes you appear to be some kind of monster."
Lingua Scripta
ES modules: A cartoon deep-dive A quick intro to ES modules that covers everything you need to know about them.
Little known trick: the
<script>tag in html runs the code inside, and also hides it using cssdisplay:none. But I can change that todisplay:block, so that I can show sample code to the reader and also run it on the page to generate diagrams. (need to test across browsers)
Lines of Code
I get more programming productivity out of reducing the time that I'm stuck than from increasing my speed when I'm not stuck.
Fabien Ninoles Related:
Too many programmers forget that the fastest way to get out of a dead-end is to drive backward.
JBD 🔥
One important thing that sets us apart from the other primates is that we make tools before we need them. It is also called the phenomenon of ending up with 43 levels of inheritance and no one knows why.
Sarah Drasner Greater context:
I guess "good at code review" can mean different things to different people. For me, it means:
- looks for greater context beyond what's been changed
- doesn't get super pedantic
- notices when something doesn't fit an overall pattern
extra points: teaches without talking down
Jake Archibald Click the link for more of this:
I'd like "// this should never happen" on my headstone.
mattiasgeniar "These captcha’s are getting out of hand ..."
Architectural
Jared Forsyth "Speculative generality" is a good way to frame this:
Over the past couple years I've gotten much more sensitive to the cost of speculative generality. So many bugs could have been avoided by just solving the problem at hand instead of trying to solve a ton of potential future problems.
Goodbye Microservices: From 100s of problem children to 1 superstar This is a cautionary tale of going extreme with no plan in hand, and then having to hard bounce to the other extreme:
Once the code for all destinations lived in a single repo, they could be merged into a single service. With every destination living in one service, our developer productivity substantially improved. We no longer had to deploy 140+ services for a change to one of the shared libraries. One engineer can deploy the service in a matter of minutes.
llogiq 🕵🏻♂️
You have a problem. You: Ah! I know! I use a distributed system. Now you still have a problem, but you no longer know where.
Peopleware
Jonathan Betz The manager's path:
Career phases in software engineering:
- Write code
- Build products
- Grow teams that build products
- Develop leaders to grow teams that build products
- Devise a culture that develops leaders to grow teams that build products
Bilgem Cakir Fortunately, our industry also has a rewarding maker's path:
This is the manager's path. There is another path: technical IC's path. In that, you get deeper and deeper in your coding and design skills and solve progressively harder problems.
My Myers Briggs type is HDMI
Locked Doors
I was billed for 14k USD on Amazon Web Services 😱 TL;DR Don’t commit private keys to public repos.
John Michael So in 6,000 years, all that changed is keys got smaller?
The earliest known key/locking mechanisms were discovered by archaeologists in the mid-19th century at the Palace of Khorsabad in Assyria (modern day Iraq). The key and lock system dates back to 4000 B.C.
Techtopia
maya kosoff This is way creepy (it has a website, but I won't share the link); as Aral points out, exactly the business model of Google, Facebook, et al:
How Silicon Valley Fuels an Informal Caste System Sums up SV very well: the Inner Party of venture capitalists, the Outer Party of skilled technicians and marketers, the Service Class in the “gig economy”, and the Untouchable class of the homeless.
None of the Above
Creatrix Tiara "Malaysian TV show synopses are something else"
When buying watermelons, make sure to do the knock test by rapping your knuckles twice on the watermelon
If something knocks back, that is a dinosaur egg
Watermelons are in the next aisle over
Comparing City Street Orientations Why are some cities (*cough*Boston*cough*) impossible to navigate? Interesting analysis using the polar histogram (aka rose diagram) of street orientation.
Wikipedia:Unusual articles Because you're not wasting enough time on Wikipedia already, this page lists hundreds of interesting articles, like these three I link to below. You're welcome. (via Lifehacker)
Rai stones: “coins” that weigh four tons each
United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins: the best-titled court decision in maritime law
Cadaver Synod: that time the Pope dug up his predecessor’s corpse and put it on trial
This sun-chasing robot looks after the plant on its head A robot that moves your house plant from shade to sun and back, and dances when it needs watering.
Interrobang Is this the most under-used end mark or what‽
In the Tribune article, the writer called the interrobang true genius. Unfortunately, his article was published on the first of April and it may have been that the readers took it as an April Fool’s joke.
Tiny Emus In-browser emulators of your favorite early 80's computers: ZX Spectrum, Commodore C64, Acorn Atom, and friends.
Venkatesh Rao "Random acts of solutionism", a perfect phrase:
Phrase "random acts of solutionism" just popped into my head. I don't buy the critique of solutionism by tech backlashistas in general... but increasing incidence of RAoS definitely a symptom of idiotic reluctance to just raise taxes and do the things governments are supposed to.
Fluff Society "When you remove the glass table top"