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AV

av is a command-line tool that helps you manage your stacked PRs on GitHub. It allows you to create a PR stacked on top of another PR, and it will automatically update the dependent PR when the base PR is updated.

PROTOBUF-ES 2.0 RELEASED

Protobuf-ES 2.0 is a significant update to the Protobuf runtime library for JavaScript and TypeScript. The release brings major improvements, including full support for Protobuf Editions, new APIs for field presence and default values, and a complete runtime reflection API.

TACH

Tach is a Python tool that enforces dependencies using modular architecture.

WHAT THE INTERNS HAVE WROUGHT, 2024 EDITION

Every year, Jane Street presents what its interns worked on that summer. Arya Maheshwari developed Camels, an OCaml dataframe library, while another intern, Arvin Ding, designed a faster binary serialization protocol, resulting in improved tail latencies in production systems. Alex Li enhanced Limshare's time-travel debugger by integrating snapshotting, making it easier to investigate production incidents and understand the history of state changes.

STRIPE DATA VS OPEN‐SOURCE ALTERNATIVES: AN MRR EXAMPLE

Stripe makes it difficult to calculate crucial metrics like MRR through its API, forcing companies to use add-ons like Stripe Data Pipeline and Stripe Sigma. This strategy creates a barrier for businesses, especially those with usage-based billing models, making data analysis challenging. As a result, third-party tools and open-source billing solutions have emerged to fill the gap.

ERASURE CODING FOR DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

This blog post explores the use of erasure coding in distributed systems through practical examples, explaining its benefits in terms of storage efficiency, fault tolerance, and tail latency reduction while discussing the trade-offs involved, such as increased IOPS and decoding costs.

ENGINEER'S GUIDE TO CONVINCING YOUR PRODUCT MANAGER TO PRIORITIZE TECHNICAL DEBT

This is a guide for engineers on how to convince their product managers to prioritize resolving technical debt by aligning it with business strategy and demonstrating its direct impact on developer velocity, time to market, customer experience, and long-term scalability.

LINUX PIPES ARE SLOW

Linux pipes are significantly slower than expected due to the kernel's inefficient memory management and lack of vectorization when copying data, leading to a 10x slowdown compared to writing directly to memory.

AVANTE.NVIM

avante.nvim is a Neovim plugin that provides users with AI-driven code suggestions and the ability to apply these recommendations directly to their source files with minimal effort.

WHY YOU SHOULD USE CURSORS TO ITERATE OVER LARGE DATASETS IN REDIS

Managing large datasets in Redis can be tricky - using cursors with the SCAN command makes it much easier.

JS DATES ARE ABOUT TO BE FIXED

The Temporal API in JavaScript offers a new approach to handling time with the Temporal.ZonedDateTime object, which accurately represents dates and times with their corresponding time zones. This addresses the limitations of JavaScript's Date object, which doesn't capture the nuances of human-readable dates and the impact of time zones and daylight savings time. The new API introduces a standardized format for representing zoned dates and times, allowing developers to work with different calendars and time zones easily.

POSTGRES AS A SEARCH ENGINE

PostgreSQL can be used as a search engine. Combining full-text search, semantic search with pgvector and fuzzy matching with pg_trgm makes PostgreSQL a good-enough search engine for a majority of use cases. This article goes into more advanced techniques to personalized search experiences, adjust for document length, debug rankings, and more.

CORS IS STUPID

CORS is a flawed attempt to address the security issue of implicit credentials being used in cross-origin requests. While it does prevent some forms of data theft, it fails to prevent malicious requests that can manipulate data, such as transferring money from a user's account. A more effective approach is to ignore implicit credentials altogether on cross-origin requests, allowing only explicitly authenticated requests with a secure authorization header.

THE 3 BIG MISTAKES THAT ALMOST COST ME MY PROMOTION (AND HOW YOU CAN AVOID THEM)

Software engineers make some common mistakes when trying to get promoted. They sometimes fall for the “Promotion Donut” trap, where focusing solely on next-level responsibilities leads to neglecting current duties. While it's true “what got you here won't get you there,” you still have to do “what got you here” while also performing at the next level. Additionally, engineers need to make sure they have a supportive manager and fully understand their company's leveling system.

BIG TECH VS STARTUPS (FOR NEW GRADS)

For new graduates, working at a big tech company for the first 1-3 years provides a solid foundation for career growth and skill development, offering better average outcomes compared to starting at a startup. However, startups give a chance for more “outlier” outcomes compared to Big Tech.

CHARTDB

ChartDB is a powerful, web-based database diagramming editor. It can be used to visualize database schemas with a single "Smart Query,” customize diagrams, and export SQL scripts.

FUITE

Fuite is a CLI tool that detects memory leaks in web applications by simulating user interactions, analyzing heap snapshots, and identifying leaked objects, event listeners, and DOM nodes.

TRANSFORMERS.RB

transformers.rb is a Ruby gem that provides state-of-the-art transformer models for natural language processing tasks, such as sentence embeddings, question answering, and sentiment analysis.

IS TELEGRAM REALLY AN ENCRYPTED MESSAGING APP?

Telegram, while technically using encryption, doesn't offer end-to-end encryption by default. Users must manually activate "Secret Chats" for individual conversations, a feature that is difficult to find and use, which means that a vast majority of Telegram conversations are visible to Telegram servers. Furthermore, while end-to-end encryption is valuable for protecting message content, it doesn't address the broader issue of metadata collection.

CREATE CALENDAR ENTRIES WITH ANTHROPIC CLAUDE 3.5

This developer used Anthropic Claude 3.5 to create calendar entries from a schedule image. He first asked Claude to identify the dates outlined in green on the image and then asked it to generate an iCalendar file (ICS) for those dates. Claude successfully created the ICS file, which the developer then imported into Google Calendar.

DATABASE “SHARDING” CAME FROM ULTIMA ONLINE?

AUTOMATING CACHE INVALIDATION WITH CLOUDFLARE API

This article describes how Cloudflare Cache can improve website performance by enabling features like Tiered Cache, Cache Reserve, and carefully crafted cache rules.

LIDL'S CLOUD GAMBIT: EUROPE'S SHIFT TO SOVEREIGN COMPUTING

Lidl, a European grocery chain, is challenging major cloud providers like AWS by launching its own sovereign cloud platform, Schwarz Digits, to meet the growing European demand for data privacy and control within EU borders.

SCROLL SNAP EVENTS

Chrome 129 will introduce two new JavaScript events: scrollSnapChange and scrollSnapChanging.

CONTINUOUS REINVENTION: A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLOCK STORAGE AT AWS

Elastic Block Store (EBS) at AWS has evolved from simple shared drives to a massive, distributed SSD system delivering over 140 trillion operations daily. This post shares key lessons learned over the years, emphasizing the importance of incremental improvements, comprehensive instrumentation, and the power of constraints to drive innovation. It also discusses how a team tackled performance challenges by addressing the entire system stack, from the hypervisor to the network, and ultimately by building their own SSDs optimized for EBS.

STRLCPY AND HOW CPUS CAN DEFY COMMON SENSE

strlcpy is a string copying function that traverses the source string only once, compared to strlen + memcpy, which traverses it twice. While it seems intuitive that a single traversal should be faster, benchmarks show that the double traversal method is often significantly faster, particularly for larger strings. This is due to the fact that CPUs can execute independent instructions in parallel, and the memcpy loop in strlen + memcpy has fewer dependencies than the fused loop in strlcpy, allowing for greater parallelism.

WHAT IS UDP?

UDP is a networking protocol that adds port numbers to IP packets, allowing programs on a host to communicate directly with each other. It's often described as "connectionless" and "unreliable" because it doesn't guarantee delivery of packets, but this makes it ideal for situations where speed and efficiency are important. UDP is used in a wide variety of applications, including live video streaming, online gaming, and VPNs like WireGuard.

LESSONS LEARNED IN 35 YEARS OF MAKING SOFTWARE

This blog post contains a list of lessons learned by a developer from 35 years of making software. The advice covers topics such as relationships, chasing interests, how people see the world, different mindsets to develop, and more. A lot of career progression in white-collar work is gained through developing relationships.

ASK HN: WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST STARTUP FAIL? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

Hacker News commenters detail various reasons why their startups failed. Some were too ambitious with their MVPs, while others tried to compete on price in a market that wasn't as price-sensitive as expected. Other people built something that people didn't want, while others hired people too early.

HOW TO GET A JOB AT A STARTUP

To stand out in competitive startup hiring, tailor your application to be concise, clear, and easy for recruiters to scan quickly. Show genuine curiosity by asking insightful questions during interviews and digging into how the company operates. Finally, align yourself with the company's culture, show ownership and optimism, and be flexible with your availability.

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INSTANTDB

Instant is a client-side database that makes it easy to build real-time and collaborative apps like Notion or Figma. You write relational queries in the shape of the data you want and Instant handles all the data fetching, permission checking, and offline caching. It also handles optimistic updates and rollbacks for you when you change data.

LOGTAPE

LogTape is a flexible logging library for JavaScript and TypeScript with zero dependencies designed to work across environments like Deno, Node.js, and browsers. It supports structured logging, hierarchical categories, and customizable sinks.

FILAMENT

Filament is a collection of full-stack components for faster Laravel development that are well-designed, intuitive to use, and fully extensible.

PYTHON'S PREPROCESSOR

Python has a powerful preprocessor that allows users to extend its functionality in unexpected ways, despite the common misconception that it lacks one. It uses custom codecs and path configuration files, allowing the interpreter to interpret code written in different languages. This article explores various examples, such as adding unary increment/decrement operators, interpreting C/C++ code using cppyy, and validating TOML files with jsonschema.

NOTRIS: A TETRIS CLONE FOR THE PLAYSTATION 1

This developer created a homebrew PSX game called "Notris" in C using modern tools. Driven by the desire to understand classic PSX development, they chose to work directly with the PSNoobSDK and C, learning the intricacies of PSX graphics and programming. They started with a JavaScript prototype, then transitioned to C, building a Tetris clone that is playable on original PSX hardware.

CONSTRAINING WRITERS IN DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

This article discusses strategies for minimizing data loss in distributed storage systems by constraining how data is written across multiple nodes. It explores the concept of "copysets," where data is written to specific subsets of nodes, reducing the probability of losing data due to node failures. This approach contrasts with simple replication, where data is written to randomly chosen nodes, increasing the risk of data loss as the number of nodes grows.

IN A LEAKED RECORDING, AMAZON CLOUD CHIEF TELLS EMPLOYEES THAT MOST DEVELOPERS COULD STOP CODING SOON AS AI TAKES OVER

AWS CEO Matt Garman predicts that AI will automate many coding tasks, leading to a shift in the role of software developers, who will need to focus more on innovation and customer needs rather than coding itself.

A TOC OF THE 20 PART LINKER ESSAY

A 20-part essay on linkers.

ISAIAH

Isaiah is a self-hostable clone of lazydocker for the web that lets you manage your Docker fleet easily.

USESTATEOBJECT: A SIMPLE, CONVENIENT API AROUND USESTATE

The useStateObject hook provides a simplified API for managing objects in React state by allowing direct property access and offering methods for merging, updating, and resetting state.

PROTOCOL BUFFER DESIGN: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES FOR COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT

Good protobuf design includes avoiding common pitfalls like ambiguous field naming and leveraging validation tools to maintain future-proof protocols.

(FREE)

P.S. don't miss the pre-event hackathon [6], where you can compete for cash prizes at the main event.

THE 1 HOUR PER YEAR BUG (BUT ONLY IN PACIFIC TIME!)

Google Docs encountered a peculiar bug in 2021. Users in the Pacific Time Zone reported seeing timestamps for new comments and replies in Docs that were displayed as being created "tomorrow", despite being created the previous day. The cause was traced to an error in the date formatting logic used by Google Docs, which incorrectly calculated the number of hours between the current time and a past time due to the change in time zone offset caused by daylight saving time. This bug only affected users in the Pacific Time Zone during the single hour when daylight saving time transitioned.

NEXT.JS + SUPABASE APP IN PRODUCTION: WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENTLY

This developer built a mid-sized Next.js application with Supabase and, as a result, he recommends using server components for data fetching, server actions for data mutations, and shared utility wrappers for authorization, validation, and authentication. In terms of database design, the developer emphasizes the importance of using surrogate keys, implementing row-level security (RLS) in a performant way, and utilizing server-side routing for mutations.

EVERYTHING ABOUT GOOGLE TRANSLATE CRASHING REACT (AND OTHER WEB APPS)

Google Translate can cause significant issues for modern web apps that rely on dynamic DOM manipulation, especially React applications. These issues stem from Google Translate's modification of the DOM. The responsibility lies with browser extension developers to minimize interference with web apps. A platform-level solution might be necessary in the future.

I'VE BUILT MY FIRST SUCCESSFUL SIDE PROJECT, AND I HATE IT

This developer built a successful side project that generated over $15,000 in revenue, but he quickly grew tired of the maintenance and customer support demands. While he initially enjoyed the entrepreneurial adventure, the constant stream of emails, disputes, and requests for features became overwhelming, especially after he stopped using the project himself. The developer ended up putting the project on autopilot by automating payment processing, trial access, and customer support.

THE DYING WEB

The dominance of Chrome has created a browser monoculture, which has resulted in websites being optimized for Chrome. While convincing people to switch to other browsers is hard, it's important to try other browsers so that the web stays open and alive.