Issue #465

Tuesday 14th November’s issue is presented by Flatfile

Is the process of importing, validating, transforming, and parsing data costing your business time & money?

Solve your data file import inefficiencies with Flatfile. Whether it’s a simple use case like an embedded import button in your app or a collaborative workflow that requires multiple levels of review, get the control of a homegrown import tool without having to build & maintain it yourself.

Build With Flatfile, It’s Free!

Your Small Imprecise Ask Is A Big Waste Of Their Time

tl;dr: "Imprecise asks from managers and leaders cause a disproportionate amount of turmoil and wheel-spinning. To combat this, leaders should be very precise with the amount of time investment they’re asking for when they ask for things. A little bit of awkward precision up front can save major headaches down the line." The author shares examples to illustrate such asks. 

Management

Effective Engineering Teams

— Addy Osmani

tl;dr: The Google research team concluded that the following were pillars of team effectiveness. Addy discusses each in depth: (1) Psychological Safety: "On our team, making a mistake is seen as an opportunity to learn rather than a blunder to be penalized." (2) Dependability: "I can count on my teammates to deliver on their promises and commitments." (3) Structure and Clarity: "We have a clear and effective roadmap for decision-making within our team." (4) Meaning: "The work I contribute to the team holds personal significance for me." (5) Impact: "I can clearly see how our team's efforts make a difference to the broader goals of the organization."

Leadership Management

The Ultimate Guide To Modernizing Your Data Import Solution

tl;dr: When should you invest in modernizing your tech stack to drive long-term success? Discover crucial business milestones that signal the need for a tech upgrade and learn how to evaluate alternative solutions.

Promoted by Flatfile

Guide Data

Benchmarking

— Will Larson

tl;dr: It’s easy to lean too heavily on benchmarks by believing that they answer questions: they don’t really do that. Benchmarks only ask questions, they never answer them. It’s up to whoever is using the benchmarks to extract the questions and do your own work to answer them. If you look at “R&D costs as a percentage of revenue” across companies, you’ll notice that some are four or five times higher than others. Are the high spenders early in making a calculated bet into releasing a new service, or are they just inefficient? Either, or both, could be true, and that’s the sort of interesting question-answer pair to work through when using benchmarks to evaluate.

Leadership Management

“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.”

— Tony Hoare

Cursorless Is Alien Magic From The Future

tl;dr: "Cursorless is a plugin that integrates with voice control software to let you do AST level code editing with your voice. This is crazy alien magic from the future. I've talked about cursorless before on my blog, but I have decided to really get deep into it this time around. The last time I used it, I didn't actually use it for much more than moving around the screen, but this time I'm going to try to use it for everything."

UsefulTool

67 Weird Debugging Tricks Your Browser Doesn't Want You to Know

— Alan Norbauer

tl;dr: "A list of useful, not-obvious hacks to get the most out of your browser’s debugger. Assumes an intermediate-level-or-higher understanding of the developer tools." These include logpoints / tracepoints, changing program behavior, quick and dirty performance profiling, using function arity, using time. And more. 

Debugging

The Architecture Behind A One-Person Tech Startup

— Anthony Simon

tl;dr: "This is a long-form post breaking down the setup I use to run a SaaS. From load balancing to cron job monitoring to payments and subscriptions. There's a lot of ground to cover, so buckle up. As grandiose as the title of this article might sound, I should clarify we’re talking about a low-stress, one-person company that I run from my flat here in Germany. It's fully self-funded, and I like to take things slow. It's probably not what most people imagine when I say "tech startup"."

Architecture

Else Nuances

— Stan Chan, Sam Lee

tl;dr: "If your function exits early in an if statement, using or not using an else clause is equivalent in terms of behavior. However, the proper use of else clauses and guard clauses (lack of else) can help emphasize the intent of the code to the reader." The authors discuss this with examples.

Tests

Notable Links

Fx: Terminal JSON viewer & processor.

Draw A UI: Draw a mockup and generate HTML for it.

Monaspace: An innovative superfamily of fonts for code.

Nango: A single API for all your integrations.

Smallchat: Minimal programming example for a chat server.

Click the below and shoot me an email!

1 = Didn't enjoy it all // 5 = Really enjoyed it

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