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Things I have learned

sounds like something a character in The IT Crowd (forgive the laugh track) would say. If you're curious, you can read about how these pages were built using Astro and Notion.

2024-08

Don’t ask to ask, just ask

XY problem


2024-07

Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly

The Case for Intellectual Loneliness

Dev Deletes Entire Production Database, Chaos Ensues

How GitHub's Database Self-Destructed in 43 Seconds

crowdstrike accidentally destroys 8,000,000 computers (banks, hospitals, airports)

Bug compatibility


2024-06

The Twelve-Factor App

I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again

Learning OpenTelemetry

The problem with lying is keeping track of all the lies

A beginner’s guide to Read and Write Skew phenomena

oom_pardon, aka don't kill my xlock

Why, after 6 years, I’m over GraphQL

How a single ChatGPT mistake cost us $10,000+

The Two of Three Rule - Stonecharioteer


2024-05

Rabbit Gaslit Me, So I Dug Deeper

I was sold on the marketing at first but after I digesting the thought of this device, I was skeptical of how much a small device like this could practically do.

React Compiler: In-Depth Beyond React Conf 2024

I’m not sure I am ready to face another Angular compiler and the build orchestration that comes with it.

Merging Remix and React Router

I always thought Remix would take over Router, since the two were pretty much synonymous. This is a weird turn.

Tmux has forever changed the way I write code.

The best (and worst) types for storing money in PostgreSQL

I’ve been procrastinating on an expense application that I wanted to build, this YouTube recommended video was just what I needed to start thinking about it again.

Difference between Apache parquet and arrow

Node.js: The Documentary

How a Leap Day Took Down Microsoft

Kind of annoyed at React


2024-04

Migrating from Zod to Valibot: A Comparative Experience

Improving API error responses with the Result pattern

I have found C# to be quite inflexible when trying to reuse code, primarily running into limitations with the type system which, disappointingly, are circumvented by the community using reflection.

Why you should stop doing code reviews!

In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome

Readme driven development


2024-03

Everything I know about the XZ backdoor

A Beginner's Guide to WebSockets

An Illustrated Proof of the CAP Theorem

Reviewing EVERY Samsung Galaxy S Ever!

I once blew out the /efs partition on one of the Galaxy S i9000’s while messing around with ClockworkMod. Fun times.

Small Phones are Dead and We Killed Them

I find small phones very practical but I have been seeing less of them every year. Sad to see them go.

Reality of Frontend Developers

Startup life: Wearing all the hats (UX, Frontend, Support, IT) by day, wrestling with “bleeding-edge” tech by night.

Sentinel value

We see these all over the place, I’ve even seen them being implemented incorrectly. Thankfully, knowing more about what these flags are called will help me implement them better in the future.


2024-02

Diffie Hellman - the Mathematics bit

My journey so far has deepened my appreciation for the power of the modulo operator in solving computational problems

How to be different

“deviation from the norm will be punished unless exploitable” is now burned in my head. Thanks.

A Personal Interface

Communicating work style and preferences has been very useful for me in the past. I feel like putting these preferences into concrete sentences helps with communication and making it public sets expectations the right way.

Traits I Value

This article resonated deeply with me. The importance of ownership, and a bias for action is something I've always valued, even during my college years.

The fastest-growing countries for software development, according to GitHub

“Is more public developer activity a leading or trailing indicator for other kinds of development?” he said, reframing the question. “It might be leading for some and trailing for others.”

Give Up Sooner

Goose chases can go very deep. Working with a lot of engineers that think highly of ChatGPT, I’ve found them trust it blindly without having a good sense of when to quit it. The same with google search results.

The Toxic Business of 2023

OrdinaryThings trying to make jokes about how surreal the world has gotten is possibly the joke that everyone on my instagram feed has been making.

Software Engineering: The Soft Parts – Addy Osmani


2024-01

Software Engineering: The Soft Parts – Addy Osmani

We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made.

I wonder what it would take for me to become this person. Not a lot, it seems.

Dear Functional Bros

If you have gone through the GATE exam preparation for Computer Science and Engineering, you'll be familiar with questions that ask you to select the equivalent recursive function to a procedural one. This video should make it clear why these conversions are significant.

Progress Bars - Computerphile

In the past, I’ve built TUIs using curses in Python and C. It is fascinating to see frameworks like Textualize abstract away a lot of the heavy work.

Should You Be Optimistic About The Future of Technology?

Climate change is possibly the one thing I am hoping we can fix with technology. Rockets for fast transportation will be fun too, I guess.

Inside .git

Julia Evans is a great educator. All I know about DNS is because of their DNS zine. This is a good introduction into what goes on inside the .git folder, or so I have been told.

The Outsider – Albert Camus

Weird dreams ensued after reading this book. It is an interesting commentary on morality and society and the foreword is quite a lot to pack.

4 billion if statements

"computers are magical so who knows what is going on”

const fn: Pure Functions in Rust

Rust is such a delight to work with.

HTML & CSS for a One-Time Password Input

The one-time password input has always bugged me. I’ve seen too many websites get it wrong due to custom logic they have writted around 4 or 6 separate inputs.

Seriously, Don’t Use Icon Fonts

I really like using the Material Symbols variable icon fonts to make transitions but the author has a point, icon fonts are just bad.

HTML: The Bad Parts

If you’ve ever tried to build Web Components or write semantic HTML, you will find something to relate to in this article.

Work is work

“Companies are groups of people being compensated for having to spend some of their finite lifetimes not being with their partners, children, pets, or super weird hobbies. They deserve to be members of organizations which honor that time by ensuring that their work has value and meaning. There is no mathematical model to guide us to that goal.”


2023-12

Zero-config type safety

Similar mechanisms in Astro try to make the most of TypeScript and provide a better developer experience.

Svelte 5: Introducing Runes... with Rich Harris

Signals in frontend frameworks surely solve a lot of issues. Looking at this video made me try out Svelte 5 which was somewhat of a pain to get started with but I am starting to warm up to the idea of using Svelte over Angular or React after this release.

Refactoring UI

I’ve worked as a UI designer in the past so this was a breezy read but I would recommend this to anyone who is building interfaces for the web.

Transport Layer Security

Computerphile made me come back to YouTube and subscribe because of how well they explain basic and complex topics.

Why I Use Astro

touché

How to embrace asynchronous communication for remote work

My team and I have been feeling synchronous communication eating into our time and the GitLab playbook serves as a comprehensive guide on how to do async.

The anatomy of shadcn/ui

If you’re wondering why shadcn/ui is the way it is.