If you only read one thingThis weekâs only read is a long tweet. Most companies I see get decision-making wrong, so highly relevant.
from https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1773777225185472849
Stories Iâve enjoyed this weekSyntax highlighting is a waste of an information channel (6 minute read) Itâs not about syntax highlighting, but according to the article what to color instead of syntax - there are many good ideas that would be far superior for understanding code and making less bugs than highlighting syntax. A topic to discuss with developers. Some ideas âHighlight imported functions from particular treesâ or âHighlight functions that raise errors not caught in their body.â What if you could prevent bugs and make all developers more productive with just a little trick? https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/syntax-highlighting-is-a-waste-of-an-information/ WSJ: The AI industry spent 17x more on Nvidia chips than it brought in in revenue (55 minute read) As always, the people selling the shovels make more money than the gold diggers. As was the case during the dotcom boom, when Sun supplied all startups with servers. What shovels could you sell? To whom? (Gold diggers are the second best customers after companies that are desperate and have lots of cash). The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome (13 minute read) Just like the article on the boom cycle in the last newsletter. âUnfortunately, however, subordinates often interpret the heightened supervision as a lack of trust and confidence.â The article is from 1998 but has acute relevancy with remote work. âIt may even result in the subordinateâs choosing to leave the company.â With remote work, employees need more trust. I fear, managers wonât give that trust and a large amount of productivity in the companyâand economy - will be lost because of this. My advice: If you canât trust someone, let them go, but donât mistrust everyone. https://hbr.org/1998/03/the-set-up-to-fail-syndrome This is the only Strategy Framework you need. Period. (20 minute read) Not completely my understanding of strategy. Strategy is that path of your choosing of which you think it has the highest probability to reach your vision. Strategy helps everyone on your team make decisions that move you closer to your vision. BUT the article has a long list of questions that you need to answer with your strategy, like âWhat distractions must we avoid to maintain focus on our selected actions?â - If you need a tech strategy, and donât know where to start, start here. https://productify.substack.com/p/this-is-only-strategy-framework-you leapingio/leaping (4 minute read) LLMs for debugging âLeaping traces the execution of your code and allows you to retroactively inspect the state of your program at any time [âŚ] You can ask Leaping questions like: Why was variable y set to this value?â This in particular is something I wanted to have from debuggers. This variable has a bad value, where did it get it from? LLMs will soon make debugging obsolete, theyâll just fix any bug. Until then, use these tools. There is much more for developers in AI than ChatGPT prompts. https://github.com/leapingio/leaping GitHubâs Engineering Fundamentals program: How we deliver on availability, security, and accessibility (14 minute read) Read how the big boys are doing it. Not to copy, not to cargo cult it, because you are not them, but to learn and adapt. It does go into the same direction as macro architecture weâve talked about in the last newsletter. Explain Like I am 5 (ELI5): Tracking Parameters (5 minute read) Understanding tracking parameters is useful: Both for supporting marketing, making sure they understand what they are doing, and for privacy reasons. The script that checks the URLs for this newsletter also tries to remove all tracking parameters (though I asked ChatGPT)âIâm for privacy and against tracking. https://wideangle.co/blog/tracking-parameters-for-beginners Half-Life 2 Developers React to 50 Minute Speedrun (1-15 minute read) Itâs amusing watching this. Speedrunners totally break games. And then you wonder, how our users are misusing our application? I once watched support agents use the internal administration app we wrote. They had installed additional tools, copy & pasted a lot, and on some level, watching them, I felt like the devs from the video watching a speedrun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK_PdwL5Y8g One day, a computer will fit on a desk (1974) | RetroFocus (5 minute read) One day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTdWQAKzESA Classifying bug reports with ChatGPT (10 minute read) Yes, itâs an advertisement for a product. But it does show how easy it is to take away a small chunk out of the software life cycle and replace it with AI. Is there someone in your org who classifies bug reports and sends out Slack messages on urgent ones? No longer. https://pipedream.com/blog/classifying-bug-reports-with-chatgpt/ Up to 8 million UK jobs at risk from AI unless government acts, finds IPPR (9 minute read) I wonder if politicians donât see it coming, donât get it or actively ignore it. We should prepare now. The wave of job loss will be as weâve never seen before. This week I had a discussion on LinkedIn and Hackernews about the future of software development and AI. And itâs grim for coders. Not sure how CTOs fit into the new model yet - youâll all be fine :-) Boeing chief must have engineering background, Emirates boss says (9 minute read) Some years ago, Volkswagen had a public discussion if they need a software engineer at the helm (because of their tremendous software problems). Now a customer tells Boeing having an engineer as CEO. Looking at successful tech companies, they have engineers as CEOs. AMD has Lisa Su, an electrical engineer. Nvidia has Jensen Huang, also an electrical engineer. If you are a tech company, a geek should be in control. (And yes, Steve Jobs could code, donât believe Woz!) https://www.ft.com/content/fcacc767-5f05-414e-bebc-61c737764e7b What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world (13 minute read) The world came to the edge of an apocalypse. Someone did put malicious code into a compression library that is used by SSH. This way he nearly got his private key into every ssh of the world, gaining access to all serversâyes yours tooâwhich have ssh (with keys) enabled. (I have my ssh on non-standard ports, it does not harden security but reduces port scans by a lot) What mines and bombs are still in your supply chain? Can you vouch for every npm your app is using as a dependency of a dependency? At least audit your supply chain constantly with the appropriate tools. Talk to devs about this. Join the CTO newsletter! | |
