If you only read one thingI predicted it could be huge when Elon Musk fired 80% of people, challenging the assumption that you need thousands of engineers to build a tech giant. Now the CEO of Reddit seems to follow. Is this the beginning of a paradigm shift? (If you like them as persons or not, or on what side you are on the Reddit-mod-war, this is important) This episode on Youtube For Easy ListeningTogether with Etienne de Bruin I’m discussing a selection of these stories on YouTube.
Like and Subscribe ;-) Thanks from my ❤️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmaEPKtGXL4 Tweet of the week@Andreas Kling “I have received a $100,000 sponsorship specifically for Ladybird browser development! 🤓🐞🌍” https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1670298370550779905 I’ve been using Firefox for decades now (since Mosaic days), but I’m unhappy. They’ve spent $ 6 billion (!) on Firefox, and the browser is not the best in the field, sometimes it’s unbearable (especially on mobile) to use. I guess a lot of people got rich on this, but users got a bad browser. Now Andreas shows with Ladybird that one person can build a browser. I have great hopes (again this challenges the assumption that you need hundreds of engineers to achieve something significant) for this one.
Stories I’ve enjoyed this weekImaginary Problems Are the Root of Bad Software (13 minute read) I do think this is core of many challenges in development: “Most programmers want to get paid and have fun at the same time.” And fun is not playing video games. Fun explains why developers love to build infrastructure: “Of course, the definition of “fun” is different for everyone, but for many engineers, it boils down to tackling interesting and challenging problems that are within the realm of solvability.” Deep features, baby - those shallow write-a-form-to-a-database feature are not interesting. You wonder why developers seemed bored in meetings with product management? This is the reason. You wonder why developers change frameworks every six months? This is the reason. They’re bored. And stressed is not the opposite of being bored. The article goes deeper into reasons and why these lead to bad software. https://cerebralab.com/Imaginary_Problems_Are_the_Root_of_Bad_Software Estimation Isn’t for Everyone (10 minute read) Estimation arrived at the NYT. Hurray. And it’s about not having estimations at all. ’“But wait,” you say. “Breaking down tickets isn’t perfect! Some of our stories are 8s and some are 3s!” Sure they are. But in the long run, they’ll all average, so why spend the time to debate each individual ticket?’ My personal take: I agree, do away with estimations, try to make alls stories the same size. People do rough estimations (3,5,7!) to calculate precise values (21 velocity!) to plan months ahead (this goes into sprint 37) and wonder why it doesn’t work. Don’t bother with estimations. If you think it helps developers understand complexity - it’s better developers spend planning time to see what classes, files, methods and configs need to change for the feature and find out about the real complexity—not a 3, 5 or 7. https://open.nytimes.com/estimation-isnt-for-everyone-a72484f88b27 GPT-4 Outperforms Humans in Pitch Deck Effectiveness Among Investors and Business Owners (5 minute read) Key moment, you get more money from investors if an AI has written your pitch deck. https://clarifycapital.com/the-future-of-investment-pitching Building a platform that open sources itself (2 minute read) Zed is a code editor. Like many. But they’ve decided to develop in the open. “Instead of reviewing diffs, we usually prefer to have conversations about code.” Really in the open “Day one, you’ll be able to listen in, watch us code, and chat with us via text. Maybe we could even hand you a mic and let you edit our code.” Is this a new way to develop? For teams, in companies, with the outside? Is this driven by remote development? What other changes does remote work bring for developers? We’ve just begun. https://zed.dev/blog/open-sourcing-zed-on-zed What AI Model Should Your Startup Use (7 minute read) You want to implement AI at your company? This goes into different models, large and small, and which one is the right for your business. https://tomtunguz.com/which-model-is-best/ Emerging Architectures for LLM Applications (12 minute read) How does LLM architecture look and how to implement MLOps? https://a16z.com/2023/06/20/emerging-architectures-for-llm-applications/ I found this one a neat hack. Creating a video, so you can create a QR code with HDR, it’s brighter and sticks out of the page. https://notes.dt.in.th/HDRQRCode The article is about delivering. Doing the things that you’re supposed to do, instead of “doing the best you can” I often see this with CTOs who are promoted from a manager to an executive. They still have a manager or developer mindset. As an executive, there are no more excuses. But "[..] if the way to get it done is to ask for help, then that’s what you should do." - not enough people ask for help. Especially from their management team. CTOs sit in their closet, thinking hard about problems on their own, like they need to save the world, but t "[..] is for people to more directly leverage their leaders." https://boz.com/articles/get-it-done Software Development is very subjective (9 minute read) “Most of you are familiar with the feeling of joining a new company and have that urge to rewrite everything.” Oh yes, been there, bought the t-shirt. We’re all opinions (and call the framework opinionated) and no facts. Accept this instead of claiming your way is the right one (mine is of course!) https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/software-development-subjective/ Know someone who could benefit from this? | Please forward the newsletter ❤️ Received this newsletter from someone? 📩 Just Join! |
