TLDR WEB DEV 2023-08-15

ASK LIKE A HUMAN: IMPLEMENTING SEMANTIC SEARCH ON STACK OVERFLOW

This blog documents how Stack Overflow transitioned from traditional lexical search using matching keywords to semantic search that uses embeddings to understand queries as natural language questions. It describes the problems with lexical search that made the team transition to semantic search and the challenges with implementing semantic search, such as choosing the right tech stack and model.

RESOURCES

This is the first of a two-part tutorial that focuses on best practices for designing accessible text over images for web and mobile app content. Each technique has examples and additional resources for implementation. For example, you should strive to maintain a high contrast ratio between text and images to ensure legibility and readability. There are various techniques for achieving this, such as using overlays, scrims, and blurred backgrounds.

WHY TAILWIND CSS WON

Tailwind CSS is a ubiquitous frontend styling framework. It became popular because there is no need to context switch to CSS files during development, it makes it easy to copy & paste styles on HTML blocks, and it doesn't depend on other libraries.

IF YOU SUCCEED, YOU WILL FAIL

Sometimes, success can lead to inevitable failure. This is especially when success is achieved through short-term strategies.

DISTRIBUTED CODE REVIEW FOR GIT

Google has released a command line tool for performing code reviews on git repositories. This tool is a distributed code review system for git repos. Code reviews are stored inside of the repository as git objects. Every developer in a team has their own copy of the review history that they can push or pull. The tool automatically merges updates from the remote repo when pulling.

LEARNDB

LearnDB helps students better understand the internals of databases by implementing a relational database management system from scratch. It allows students to delve into the internals of a functioning relational database and learn from it.

Supabase Studio 3.0 has been released with big improvements to its AI SQL editor. You can interact with your SQL queries as easily as talking to ChatGPT.

HOW DISCORD ROLLED OUT YUBIKEYS FOR ALL EMPLOYEES

An interesting read on how Discord rolled out WebAuthn and YubiKeys to all its employees in global locations. The article talks about why Discord made the decision to transition - the vulnerability of traditional MFA methods to phishing and SIM jacking attacks. Discord's rollout involved migrating to Okta as their primary Identity Provider, distributing two or more Web Auth authenticators, like YubiKeys, to all employees, and implementing a phased rollout plan across different departments. The article highlights the challenges and lessons learned during the rollout, many of which can be applicable to many other corporate environments.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR ENGINEERS: SELLING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE

No matter what kind of company you intend to build — open source or proprietary, DevTool or not — at least one of the company founders will have to close deals at the beginning of the company’s life. Even as the company gets larger, founders still need to be involved in sales, especially big deals. Selling open source software can be difficult, but talking to multiple experienced open-source salespeople can provide some eye opening perspectives.

JAVASCRIPT WAITFOR POLLING

A quick look into JavaScript’s waitFor, an async function that allows developers to provide a condition function, polling interval, and optional timeout.

WAYS I EXPECT AI REGULATION TO INCREASE X-RISK

Short stories about some of the ways AI regulation could increase existential risk to humanity.

CAN REACT SERVER ACTIONS FINALLY FIX FORMS?

Interacting with the server used to be painful in React. React’s new Server Actions makes building forms much easier.