TLDR Web DevJune 12, 2024

TLDR WEB DEV 2024-06-12

6 sections16 entrieslinks blockcomplete parse

Parse notes

Subscription/account footer truncated before parsefooter_truncated

01GENERAL

02ARTICLES & TUTORIALS

ENGINEERING FOR SLOW INTERNET

Minor issues in app development and speed can become significant problems in areas with slow Internet. While developers shouldn't be expected to spend excessive time on extreme cases, it's important to acknowledge elements of websites that may perform worse with slower internet. Apps should be resilient enough to handle basic tasks like transmitting text without getting stuck due to hardcoded timeouts.

brr.fyi26 min read

MY VERY FIRST PRODUCTION BUG

A developer working on an autonomous driving system encountered an issue where a new, faster camera made the tracking system worse. The root cause was a preprocessor directive for the framerate, which was mistakenly defined as an integer and not a floating-point number due to a missing decimal point. This caused the sampling time to be calculated as zero, leading to incorrect position predictions by the Kalman filter.

robinverschueren.com3 min read

SOMETIMES, OBJECT PROPERTY ORDER MATTERS

Since version 4.7, the order of properties in an object in TypeScript can affect type inference. This change was introduced to address bugs related to context-sensitive functions, but it can lead to unexpected errors when properties are reordered.

totaltypescript.com4 min read

03OPINIONS & ADVICE

THREE LAWS OF SOFTWARE COMPLEXITY (OR: WHY SOFTWARE ENGINEERS ARE ALWAYS GRUMPY)

There are three fundamental laws of software complexity: systems inevitably degrade in design quality over time, successful systems create complexity through leaky abstractions to gain market share, and there is no upper limit to the complexity a system can reach. Most engineers end up working on poorly designed systems, which only grow more intricate and challenging to work on over time.

links.tldrnewsletter.com4 min read

CLEVER CODE IS PROBABLY THE WORST CODE YOU COULD WRITE

Clear, readable code is more valuable than clever code in the long run. This developer's experience at a large tech company revealed that even though clear code might seem trivial, it's actually more difficult to write and maintain. In order to “preserve complexity” for promotion packets, documentation was important for demonstrating the complexity of the work.

read.engineerscodex.com8 min read

SELF-SERVE DASHBOARDS

Self-serve BI dashboards don't work because they assume that the main barrier for business stakeholders is writing SQL queries, while the real issue is the lack of context and understanding of the data.

briefer.cloud4 min read

04LAUNCHES & TOOLS

FLAMESHOT

Flameshot is an open-source screenshotting tool with a customizable appearance and in-app screenshot editing.

flameshot.orgTool

UNFORGET

Unforget is a minimalist, offline-first, and end-to-end encrypted note-taking app with desktop, mobile, and web support. It's open-source and has public APIs for creating your own client or syncing across devices.

github.comGitHub repository

CLIPBOOK

ClipBook is a free clipboard history app for macOS.

clipbook.appTool

05MISCELLANEOUS

GENERATIVE AI IS NOT GOING TO BUILD YOUR ENGINEERING TEAM FOR YOU

While generative AI can help in producing code fast, it's not a substitute for the experience and mentorship required to develop junior engineers into seniors and beyond. The industry will face a bottleneck in the future if it believes that AI can simply replace junior engineers (which it can't).

stackoverflow.blog27 min read

THE COST OF SHUTTING DOWN THE INTERNET

A recent survey examined the economic impact of internet outages on countries and businesses and found that the United States and Amazon would face the highest financial losses in such a scenario. The U.S. would incur a $11 billion loss in a 24-hour outage, while Amazon would suffer a $1.5 billion loss in the same period.

cloudzero.com8 min read