Tags: web-review, ethics, computer-vision, twitter, memory, compression, scrum, business, ci, pairing, debugging, privacy, movie, type-systems, agile, mobile, foss, estimates, data, css, interviews, reliability, tesla, pattern, team, profiling, fonts, databases, coverage, engineering, xp, design, complexity, filesystem, distributed, ux, kanban, licensing, syncing, security, codereview, quality, tech, html, standard, performance, history, python, sales, politics, c++, ai, simulation, web, culture, frontend, funny, tests, education, gpt, tools, machine-learning, rust, tdd, attention-economy, hr, programming, sketchnotes, productivity, optimization, cost
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-18. This is another big one with old articles, I’m not done purging the treasure trove I mentioned a couple of weeks back.
Tags: tech, security, education
Need to teach security basics to your family, friends and neighbors? Here is a nice resource to do a good job there. We often approach the task the wrong way.
https://www.securityeducationcompanion.org/
Tags: tech, foss, politics
A reminder that reckless political decisions can have dire consequences for quite a few FOSS projects.
https://osuosl.org/blog/osl-future/
Tags: tech, web, privacy, attention-economy, standard
I have a hard time seeing browser makers truly drop third party cookies without pushing a worse replacement first… Still, it’s nice to see the W3C take a stand in the matter.
https://w3ctag.github.io/web-without-3p-cookies/
Tags: tech, engineering, ethics
This opinion piece is getting old… and yet, it doesn’t feel like our professions made much progress on those questions.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/05/engineering-moral-effects-technology-impact
Tags: tech, licensing, foss
This is one of the best references I know on the topic. It’s not that long, to the point and all developers should know it.
https://matija.suklje.name/how-and-why-to-properly-write-copyright-statements-in-your-code
Tags: tech, data, machine-learning, computer-vision
A look back at the limitations of deep learning in the context of computer vision. We’re better at avoiding over fitting nowadays but the shallowness of the available data is still a problem.
https://blog.piekniewski.info/2019/04/07/deep-learning-and-shallow-data/
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, tools
Interesting point of view… what makes a tool really?
https://tante.cc/2025/04/27/are-ai-system-really-tools/
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, twitter, tesla, security, politics
They’ve been warned of this leak by GitGuardian weeks ago… and did nothing. For people manipulating such sensitive data their security practices are preposterous.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/05/xai-dev-leaks-api-key-for-private-spacex-tesla-llms/
Tags: tech, compression, security, memory
Nice little trick to get rid of some malicious bots.
https://idiallo.com/blog/zipbomb-protection
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, security
Of course it helps also against DDoS attacks… tells something about the state of AI scrapers I guess.
https://fabulous.systems/posts/2025/05/anubis-saved-our-websites-from-a-ddos-attack/
Tags: tech, databases
Looks like a good resource to better understand indices in relational databases.
https://use-the-index-luke.com/
Tags: tech, performance, complexity, profiling
Nice little article. It’s a good way to point out that aiming for the lowest Big-O approach is often not what you want in terms of performance. Always keep the context in mind, and in doubt measure.
https://mrshiny608.github.io/MrShiny608/optimisation/2025/04/22/OhNoYouDidnt.html
Tags: tech, rust, memory, type-systems
Mutable vs immutable is a good first approximation… but it goes further and this little article does a good job explaining why.
https://docs.rs/dtolnay/0.0.6/dtolnay/macro._02__reference_types.html
Tags: tech, tests, python, optimization
Good proposals to shorten the time spent executing tests. Tighter feedback loops make everyone happy.
https://blog.trailofbits.com/2025/05/01/making-pypis-test-suite-81-faster/
Tags: tech, c++, programming
Some tips which are easily forgotten to get the most out of std::vector
.
https://acodersjourney.com/6-tips-supercharge-cpp-11-vector-performance/
Tags: tech, programming, c++
Of course, we’d like more to go away… But that’s already something.
https://www.sandordargo.com/blog/2025/03/12/cpp26-removing-language-features
Tags: tech, html
Nice little resource to better understand some of the tags which appear in and what they’re used for.
Tags: tech, web, css, fonts
Didn’t know we had this unit. It’s welcome indeed.
https://webkit.org/blog/16831/line-height-units/
Tags: tech, web, frontend, html, css, fonts
A good tour of various techniques available on the web for making textured text.
https://tympanus.net/codrops/2013/12/02/techniques-for-creating-textured-text/
Tags: tech, html, css, ux, mobile
Avoiding them requires some care when designing the page and CSS.
https://matklad.github.io/2025/04/22/horizontal-scroll.html
Tags: tech, design, pattern, programming, engineering
There are clearly more to know. But this is a good list already.
https://sahandsaba.com/nine-anti-patterns-every-programmer-should-be-aware-of-with-examples.html
Tags: tech, debugging, coverage
This is indeed a good way to guide your debugging. Using coverage information can sometimes reduce the search space.
https://research.swtch.com/diffcover
Tags: tech, quality, cost, productivity
We often hear that question about the trade off between quality and cost. The question is badly framed though. If it’s low quality it’s requires more effort to add or change features… and so it’s more expensive mid-term (not even long term).
https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html
Tags: tech, syncing, filesystem, tests
Testing sync engines can be especially challenging. This story from Dropbox gives ideas on how to do it well.
https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/-testing-our-new-sync-engine
Tags: tech, tests, distributed, reliability, simulation, complexity
At some point the complexity is high enough that you indeed need more tools than only handcrafted tests to discover bugs.
https://pierrezemb.fr/posts/simulation-driven-development/
Tags: tech, tests, tdd
A bit long and dated for a some advice. Still it does a very good job going through all the different type of tests you’ll want to find on your project and how they’re structured.
https://martinfowler.com/articles/practical-test-pyramid.html
Tags: tech, tests, c++
Of your tests are friend with implementation classes in C++, then something is wrong. Such tight coupling between tests and implementation is not welcome.
https://arne-mertz.de/2015/08/unit-tests-are-not-friends/
Tags: tech, tests, tdd
Good reference to get an idea about what we should be considering when we talk about unit tests.
https://martinfowler.com/bliki/UnitTest.html
Tags: tech, tests
Definitely be careful when using mocks. You can end up introducing too much coupling between your tests and the application code. Use alternative test doubles instead and reduce duplication.
https://8thlight.com/insights/loosely-coupled-tests
Tags: tech, tdd, history
A reminder that the technique goes back to way before XP.
https://arialdomartini.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/you-wont-believe-how-old-tdd-is/
Tags: tech, ci, sketchnotes
Very nice sketchnotes about Continuous Delivery.
https://continuousdelivery.com/2014/02/visualizations-of-continuous-delivery/
Tags: tech, agile, xp, team
What is the “Whole Team” practice from XP? Well, it’s fairly simple in the end… it’s about collaboration really. Needs to be reminded often though.
https://codingjourneyman.com/2015/04/13/extreme-programming-whole-team/
Tags: tech, codereview
A good reminder that reviewers have many things to keep in mind and evaluate. This is why what can be automated should be automated.
https://www.infoq.com/articles/effective-code-reviews/
Tags: tech, pairing, business
Developers tend to push for pair programming mostly for technical and code quality reasons. This is fine, but often the fact that it also spreads knowledge and ensures business continuity is forgotten.
Tags: tech, pairing, programming, codereview
A good in-depth article about pair programming. Shows well the pros and cons.
https://martinfowler.com/articles/on-pair-programming.html
Tags: tech, agile, xp, estimates
They’re so misused that it’s better to let them go. Indeed, we can go as far as wondering if estimating stories instead of slicing them is a good idea at all. Doesn’t mean all estimates disappear of course, but at the single story resolution? You likely better invest time in slicing them better.
https://ronjeffries.com/articles/019-01ff/story-points/Index.html
Tags: tech, agile, scrum
Short and to the point. It needs repeating from time to time for some reason.
https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-difference-between-a-story-and-a-task
Tags: tech, agile, scrum
Or why the term “user” in “user stories” need to be seen very liberally.
https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/writing-user-stories-for-back-end-systems
Tags: tech, agile, kanban
Indeed, Kanban is massively misunderstood. This is unfortunate, this article does a good job explaining what this is about.
https://www.agileupgrade.com/why-90-percent-gets-kanban-wrong-and-getting-it-right/
Tags: hr, interviews
As I often says: interviews are also for candidate to evaluate the potential employer. If you’re interviewing there are good questions to ask, here are a few ideas. I think I’m almost never asked those unfortunately…
Tags: sales
I generally don’t like this kind of articles. It’s often snake oil salesmen writing this… Now this one has good advice instead. Of course it doesn’t mention how much luck has to be involved as well.
https://oliveremberton.com/2013/how-to-win-your-first-clients/
Tags: movie, culture, funny
Still a masterpiece if you ask me. I love that movie.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/04/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-turns-50/
Bye for now!