Reading List
I keep track of all the blog posts I have read in 2021.
20 January 2021
- TypeScript: Low maintenance types
I write a lot about TypeScript and I enjoy the benefits it gives me in my daily work a lot. But I have a confession to make, I don’t really like writing types or type annotations. I’m really happy that TypeScript can infer so much out of my usage when writing regular JavaScript so I’m not bothered writing anything extra.
- When costs are nonlinear, keep it small.
Jessica Joy Kerr
•
19 Jan 2021
Batching work is more efficient … until cost rises nonlinearly with batch size. Then smaller batches are the most efficient. So don’t delay maintenance!
- Environment variables, config, secrets, and globals
Henrique Vicente
•
16 Jan 2021
Server-side applications are heavily relying on environment variables for holding configuration data, and even credentials like token and password. Is this a good idea?
- How to gather consensus before a big decision
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
The next time you have an important proposal to make, don’t wait until the big meeting to ask for support. Here’s how to gather feedback and build consensus beforehand, so you can make that big meeting into a non-event.
- 3 Reasons You Should Start A Personal Blog in 2021
Jacob Gustin
Us humans tend to place things into narratives, and having a cool blog gives the people around you information about their narrative of you. Having a strong personal brand also makes you more employable and might open doors that you didn’t know existed.
- A solution for social media?
Jan-Lukas Else
•
18 Jan 2021
Sometimes I find it quite interesting to read through articles that I wrote three or four years ago, back then still on the platform Medium. Some time ago I deleted them on Medium and published them on my blog in a “Medium Archive”.
19 January 2021
- From note-taking to note-making
Note-taking is fast, uses the original author’s language, and feels easier. Note-making is slower, more involved, and uses your own language.
- Is Writing as Important as Coding?
Eugene Yan
•
4 Oct 2020
As our careers grow, how does the balance between writing & coding change? Hear from 4 tech leaders.
- Death to covert contracts
“If I do X, then you’ll do Y, even though neither of us have acknowledged it.” This is crap.
- HTML and CSS techniques to reduce your JavaScript
Anthony Ricaud
•
27 Dec 2020
More and more websites are relying on JavaScript for the interactions they provide. It enables pleasant experiences but also comes with undesirable effects: longer page load times, page is unusable until the JavaScript loads and if it does so without any errors...
- I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
TJCX
•
18 Oct 2020
When good ideas make bad business
18 January 2021
- We can do better than Signal
icyphox
•
17 Jan 2021
Centralized silos are never the solution
- Are We Really Engineers?
Hillel Wayne
•
18 Jan 2021
I sat in front of Mat, idly chatting about tech and cuisine. Before now, I had known him mostly for his cooking pictures on Twitter, the kind that made me envious of suburbanites and their 75,000 BTU woks. But now he was the test subject for my new project, to see if it was going to be fruitful or a waste of time.
- That XOR Trick
Florian Hartmann
•
15 Mar 2020
There are a whole bunch of popular interview questions that can be solved in one of two ways: Either using common data structures and algorithms in a sensible manner, or by using some properties of XOR in a seemingly hard to understand way.
- The Embedded YouTube Player Told Me What You Were Watching (and more)
2019, October 11, 00:16: I finish the cold frozen pizza that I made hours before but forgot to eat, finally write the report, press submit on the Google security bug submission form, and see the classic, Thanks! We received your report. message. That feeling is hard to beat.
- Github Stale Bots: A False Economy
Ben Winding
•
18 Jan 2021
Stale Bot’s are a type of automated bot on Github, which locks issues which are “stale” (as in have no recent activity). This seems like a helpful tool at first, but in reality it’s terrible for all parties.
- Build a Simple FLIP Animation in React
Travis Arnold
The FLIP technique allows for declarative and performant animations. In this article, we will look at a simple way to implement this method using React.
- Tidy TypeScript: Name your generics
TypeScript’s generics are arguably one of the most powerful features of the language. They open a door to TypeScript’s own meta-programming language, which allows for a very flexible and dynamic generation of types.
- Consistency beats quality
Do anything consistently for a long time (meaning multiple years), and you’ll be good at it.
- That’s not how 2FA works
Another day, another high-profile website cloned to phish credentials. In the replies, you’ll see lots of techbros saying “this is why you should switch on 2FA people!!!” Except, and I hate to bring accuracy to a technical discussion, that’s not how 2FA works!