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A LIST OF TERNARY OPERATORS

A compilation and exploration of ternary operators in programming languages.

NO, QUANTUM COMPUTERS WON'T BREAK ALL ENCRYPTION

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF DROPBOX'S LOAD BALANCING SERVICE

Dropbox's Robinhood load balancing service improved its hardware utilization, reducing fleet sizes by 25% and saving millions annually. Robinhood operates by collecting load reports from services, using these reports to distribute traffic evenly across servers based on metrics like CPU utilization and geographic location. The performance indicators for Robinhood include max/avg ratio, p95/avg ratio, and p5/avg ratio.

WRITING SECURE GO CODE

It's easier to write secure Go code with tools for static code analysis, such as go vet, staticcheck, and golangci-lint, which help identify potential security issues and improve code quality. This article covers the use of govulncheck for scanning code and binaries for known vulnerabilities and introduces fuzzing as a method for automatically testing code with randomly generated inputs.

THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAYS TO IMPROVE CORE WEB VITALS

Better Core Web Vitals mean better web page user experiences. To improve Core Web Vitals, focus on breaking up long tasks, minimizing JavaScript, and optimizing rendering to improve Interaction to Next Paint (INP). Images should be preloaded and a CDN should be used where possible to reduce Time to First Byte.

I'VE HAD A CHANGE OF HEART REGARDING EMPLOYEE METRICS

Tools designed to track individual work output initially may have been predicted to identify "slackers" but they aren't a good gauge for productivity. Instead, managers should take responsibility for their own teams' performance.

PLEASE JUST STOP SAYING "JUST"

Using the word "just" in software engineering discussions can be detrimental. This is because "just" implies simplicity, which is very often not the case when building software.

GET ME OUT OF DATA HELL

This author worked in a data warehouse platform he calls the "Pain Zone." It had poorly designed code, illogical data structures, and a culture that prioritizes speed over quality. After deciding to resign, he decided that he prefers places that respect good code and craftmanship over speed.

DIAGRAMS

Diagrams is a Python library that allows you to draw cloud system architecture diagrams in code. It's designed for prototyping new architectures and visualizing existing ones. Diagrams supports major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes, along with on-premise nodes, SaaS services, and popular programming frameworks.

HTML TO REACT & FIGMA

This is a Chrome extension that allows users to convert any webpage or section into React code or an editable Figma design. It can be used to quickly grab designs for inspiration, import existing designs to work from, and use AI to customize them.

BENCHMARKING RUBY PARSERS

Prism is a new Ruby parser that is much faster than other parsers. It's tested against other parsers like RubyParser, Ripper, and the Parser gem in different scenarios like parsing and walking the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) and parsing directly to C structs. Prism is more than 10 times faster than the Parser gem and RubyParser when parsing and walking the AST, and it is 2.56 times faster than the traditional parse.y when parsing to C structs.

ANTHROPIC HIKES THE PRICE OF ITS HAIKU MODEL

Anthropic has released Claude 3.5 Haiku, which surpasses its predecessor in performance on various benchmarks. The company has decided to increase the price of the model fourfold from Claude 3 Haiku due to its increased intelligence.

REWRITE IT IN RAILS

This developer tried to rewrite a Rails application he was working on in Rust and Svelte. This effort failed due to the complexity and the lack of immediate user benefits. After returning to Rails, he realized that while learning new tech is fun as a developer, it comes with significant trade-offs.

SHOPIFY COMPLETES REACT NATIVE MIGRATION

Shopify has completed migrating its mobile app to React Native, where 86% of its code is now shared between iOS and Android.

REASONS TO WRITE DESIGN DOCS

Writing design documents leads to better design, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and understanding the rationale behind decisions.

THE OVERLOOKED GENAI USE CASE

Data analytics and decision support are the most overlooked GenAI use cases.

DIFFERENTIATING ROUTER.PUSH() AND REDIRECT()

Use router.push() for client-side navigation triggered by events in client components and use redirect() for server-side redirects within server components, server functions, or route handlers.

WHY DOESN'T CLOUDFLARE USE CONTAINERS IN ITS WORKERS PLATFORM INFRASTRUCTURE?

Cloudflare's Workers platform uses a V8 isolate architecture instead of traditional containers due to their ability to achieve sub-millisecond serverless latency and support a massive number of tenants without sharing memory or state. Unlike containers, which take hundreds of milliseconds to seconds to spin up, V8 isolates warm up in under 5 milliseconds. This lets Cloudflare run thousands of tenant workloads at the edge with minimal overhead. However, this has its own limitations, such as the lack of process-level isolation.

RE-IMPLEMENTING JAVASCRIPT'S == IN JAVASCRIPT

This is an article on how to reimplement JavaScript's == operator in pure JavaScript without using the operator itself. It walks through each step of the Abstract Equality Comparison Algorithm, which shows the underlying behavior of the operator and the different complexities of JavaScript's type coercion.

WEIRD LEXICAL SYNTAX

Some programming languages have bizarre syntax, which makes syntax highlighting difficult. This developer built a syntax highlighter. The post goes over how they dealt with the challenges of lexing and parsing complex syntax.

5 LESSONS I LEARNED THE HARD WAY FROM 10+ YEARS AS A SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Take ownership of your own career, build trust and earn respect through clear communication and impact, and maintain consistency. Great engineers are able to challenge leadership decisions with evidence-based arguments.

IF YOU NEED THE MONEY, DON'T TAKE THE JOB

Software consultants should charge by the hour rather than accepting fixed-price contracts as it benefits both the consultant and the client. Charging a fair hourly rate allows consultants to provide genuine value and discourages clients from squeezing them for every penny.

LEAVING STRIPE

A software engineer at Stripe left his job without another lined up. He was anxious during the interview process and had various successes and challenges at Stripe.

INK

Ink is a React library for building interactive command-line applications. It provides a component-based UI experience similar to React in the browser.

SOMEDAY

Someday is a free and open-source Calendly alternative built on Google-Apps-Script for Gmail users. It has a scheduling integration, customizable work hours, and a simple booking process.

CSV SQL TOOL

CSV SQL Tool allows users to run SQL queries on CSV files directly in their browsers without uploading data, ensuring privacy and speed.

I WAITED 10 BILLION CYCLES AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOADING SCREEN

While hardware has become incredibly fast, the applications we use have not kept pace, resulting in a frustrating experience for users. Modern computers are so powerful that they allow developers to build sluggish software. This article provides examples of applications that consume excessive resources without providing a smooth user experience.

JUPITER NOW SCALES TO 13 PETABITS PER SECOND

Google Cloud has spent 25 years building a sophisticated network infrastructure. Starting with a simple network, Google has made numerous innovations over time, which has led to the fifth-generation Jupiter data center network architecture. This architecture is capable of scaling to 13 Petabits/sec of bisectional bandwidth.

REPEATABILITY: AS DIFFICULT AS IT IS IMPORTANT

It's difficult to replicate research results in experimental systems research due to complex dependencies and a lack of standardized tools. The complexity of deploying state-of-the-art systems remains a significant barrier to entry to repeatability.

APPLE SILENTLY UPLOADS YOUR PASSWORDS AND KEEPS THEM

Apple silently uploads user passwords to iCloud Keychain and keeps them even when the user disables the feature.

PROMPTS ARE PROGRAMS

AI model prompts are essentially programs, which means that software engineering research is needed to develop robust tools and techniques for creating, debugging, and maintaining effective prompts.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF AN ONLINE CONFERENCE?

Online conferences, unlike their in-person counterparts, are still great for fostering coordination, knowledge distillation, and serendipitous discovery through curated content, asynchronous discussion, and accessibility.

BUILDING MY RESUME IN HTML USING ELEVENTY

This developer built their resume website using HTML, CSS, and Eleventy.

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SETS, TYPES, AND TYPE CHECKING

Types are a way to provide information about the structure of expressions and data within programs. Types like `any`, `never`, `and`, and `or` are fundamental in JavaScript and TypeScript. Types can be verified through subtyping and disjoint-ness tests.

HOW GOOGLE TAKES THE PAIN OUT OF CODE REVIEWS, WITH 97% DEV SATISFACTION

Google's code review tool, Critique, is highly rated among software engineers internally. This article looks at what makes Critique so loved and explains how it pairs with Google's code review process. It covers Google's guidelines for efficient code review, internal statistics on Google code reviews, and how Google uses AI to speed up code reviews for engineers.

CACHE ME IF YOU CAN

While caching is commonly used to improve performance, it presents challenges like stale data and cache stampedes. Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) is an alternative that provides similar benefits with less complexity. CQRS separates read and write operations, allowing for optimized solutions for each side.

EVERYONE IS WRONG ABOUT THAT SLACK FLOWCHART

Slack's engineering team published an unnecessarily complex flowchart in 2017. This author presents a simplified version of the flowchart that more effectively conveys the core logic. The way we represent complex systems impacts their comprehensibility. Presenting them simply usually means that they can be understood simply.

I MOVED FROM SVELTE TO REACT

This developer switched from Svelte to React after facing challenges with Svelte's ecosystem and development productivity. He encountered difficulties with network requests, accessibility requirements, and a lack of mature and well-supported libraries. React offered a more robust ecosystem with established libraries like Tanstack's offerings.

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INTRODUCING CHATGPT SEARCH

OpenAI has integrated a web search function into ChatGPT, allowing users to get quick answers and links to relevant sources directly within the chat interface. The feature is currently available to ChatGPT Plus and Team users, as well as SearchGPT waitlist users.

PYLON

Pylon is a framework for building GraphQL APIs without defining schemas. It uses TypeScript definitions to automatically generate schemas. Pylon makes API development easier by reducing manual schema maintenance and offering built-in functionalities like authentication, authorization, and context management.

LOCALXPOSE

LocalXpose is a reverse proxy that allows you to expose your localhost to the internet, making it accessible from anywhere. The platform offers both command-line and graphical user interfaces for easy use and provides advanced access control features for managing permissions and securing your tunnel.

SUITS, MONEY LAUNDERING, AND LINEAR PROGRAMMING

Linear programming can be used to identify money laundering schemes by finding sets of accounts that sum to a specific amount. However, the approach is impractical for real-world investigations. This is because random data often contains numerous sets of accounts that add up to the same amount, leading to an overwhelming number of false positives.