Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2022-18. After a one week break, I mentioned we might have a double issue next… Here it is!

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EU Joins Mastodon Social Network, Sets Up Its Own Server | PCMag

Tags: tech, social-media, politics

This is very good exposure to both Mastodon and PeerTube.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/eu-joins-mastodon-social-network-sets-up-its-own-server

GNOME patent troll stripped of patent rights

Tags: tech, patents, law

Excellent news, hoping to see more such bogus patents cancelled. Also, one can hope, that patent offices would start becoming less sloppy…

https://blog.opensource.org/gnome-patent-troll-stripped-of-patent-rights/

Blockchain is Dangerous Nonsense | Eisfunke

Tags: tech, blockchain, web3, nft, scam

Behind the hype… a speculative bubble completely out of touch with reality.

https://www.eisfunke.com/article/blockchain-technology.html

Magic-trace collects and displays high-resolution traces of what a process is doing

Tags: tech, debugging, profiling, tracing, performance

This looks like a very interesting tracing tool for debugging and profiling purposes.

https://github.com/janestreet/magic-trace#——magic-trace

Python’s “Type Hints” are a bit of a disappointment to me

Tags: tech, python, type-systems, mypy

A good reminder that it’s not all rosy with Python type-hints. There’s definitely room for improvements.

https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2022-04-21/0/POSTING-en.html

Robyn

Tags: tech, rust, python, backend, web

Looks like it’s still in the very early days but the overall approach looks interesting.

https://sansyrox.github.io/robyn/#/

Chopping the monolith

Tags: tech, microservices, architecture

Good arguments around the microservices hype. People advocate for it way more than reasonable, this applies only in rare contexts.

https://blog.frankel.ch/chopping-monolith/

Lies we tell ourselves to keep using Golang

Tags: tech, go, rust, type-systems, complexity

This is in part a rant but lots of points in there are very valid. This is in part why I don’t find Go a very compelling option so far. Modern tooling indeed, nice runtime in some areas but leaves way too much of the complexity in imperative code.

https://fasterthanli.me/articles/lies-we-tell-ourselves-to-keep-using-golang

PyScript | Run Python in your HTML

Tags: tech, python, webassembly, browser

It was only a matter of time until this kind of things would be doable through webassembly. I’m wondering about the size of the payloads the browser needs to download though.

https://pyscript.net/

How I fell in love with low-js

Tags: tech, frontend, backend, browser, javascript, html

There is indeed a trade-off approach available nowadays between “backend computes the whole page” and “frontend computes it all in JS”. This sounds like an interesting patch depending on the project context.

https://edofic.com/posts/2022-01-28-low-js/

Why Your CSS is Always Messy and Chaotic – Understanding CSS Complexity

Tags: tech, web, frontend, css

Good explanation of why the complexity of CSS code quickly gets out of control.

https://blog.shimin.io/understanding-css-complexity/

7GUIs

Tags: tech, frontend, interviews

This is indeed a nice set of tasks to evaluate a frontend tech or your mastery of it. Potentially usable in interviews?

https://eugenkiss.github.io/7guis/tasks/

IBM’s asshole test — johnpublic

Tags: hr, interviews

OK, if true this is indeed an interesting test… kind of a social experiment really. Probably quite a bit ambiguous though.

https://johnpublic.mataroa.blog/blog/the-asshole-test/

11 Principles of Engineering Management

Tags: management

An interesting set of management principles. Most make sense, a couple might be contextual.

https://acjay.com/2022/03/11/11-principles-of-engineering-management/

Having Career Conversations

Tags: management, career, hr

Lots of nice advices, both for mentors and mentees. This is definitely hard work but it’s worth it for people to grow.

http://www.softwareonthebrain.com/2021/12/having-career-growth-conversations.html?m=1

Taking control of your professional growth: a personal experience

Tags: management, hr, career

About growth again, definitely from the point of view of the mentee though. This looks like a nice and lean framework to figure out where you are and where you want to go.

https://medium.com/@jas123/taking-control-of-your-professional-growth-a-personal-experience-b53cbdfd8890

Gen Z does not dream of labor

Tags: management, work, life, remote-working

I find the title somewhat limiting due to the “Gen Z” label, but content is way more balanced even though fairly US centric. There are a few good lessons about work perception by people.

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22977663/gen-z-antiwork-capitalism

The Most Horrible Parasite: Brain Eating Amoeba - YouTube

Tags: science

The title says it all… indeed really creepy… Good thing there’s a very low chance this could happen to you. ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OPg-ksxZ4Y

Mechanical Watch – Bartosz Ciechanowski

Tags: watch, mechanical, science, physics, engineering

Ever wondered about the details of a mechanical watch? Here is an excellent primer. Lots of attention to details.

https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known

Tags: life, wisdom

Really great collection of wisdoms collected through decades. Loved it, some are funny too.

https://kk.org/thetechnium/103-bits-of-advice-i-wish-i-had-known/

Mending Your Cherished Clothes - Hometown Stories | NHK WORLD-JAPAN On Demand

Tags: culture, japan, craftsmanship

Discovering Kaketsugi, this is a very impressive craft. True labor of love. This is incredible work, feels almost magical. So much patience and attention to details. The amount of analysis which went into it is amazing too.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/video/5003184/

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Bye for now!