Tuesday 18th March’s issue is presented by Augment Code |
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Most coding AI struggles with complex codebases. Not Augment Code. |
Augment is the only AI coding assistant that: |
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Trusted by engineering teams at Datastax, Lemonade, GoFundMe and Kong to tame complexity and maintain flow. |
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— Wes Kao |
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tl;dr: “Rigorous thinking is asking critical questions about tactics, and having a systematic way of making decisions. It isn’t a single mental model. It’s an approach to problem solving that allows you to deconstruct ideas, gain clarity, and make decisions that are far more likely to be right.” Wes shares her playbook for leaders here. |
Leadership Management |
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— Will Larson |
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tl;dr: Will notes how LLMs can’t meaningfully replace many essential roles of software professionals. However, he also understands how decision-makers can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent in the context of rapidly improving technology. He shares his thoughts here. |
CareerAdvice |
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— Scott Dietzen |
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tl;dr: Scott debates over IDE integration approaches, contrasting a plug-in strategy with competitors who fork VS Code. He argues that forking creates disadvantages: forcing IDE switches, losing support / ecosystem / updates, and causing compatibility issues. |
Promoted by Augment Code |
AI Tools |
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tl;dr: Advice includes: (1) Don't be frustrated. (2) Taking notes. (3) Avoid boundary objections. (4) Let people be wrong. (5) Time your interactions. (6) Prioritize your meeting agenda and don't force yourself to get to everything. |
CareerAdvice |
“The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.” | | | | — Grady Booch |
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— Dan Luu |
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tl;dr: "Dan discusses the effectiveness of simple architectures in software development, using Wave, a $1.7B company, as an example. Wave's architecture is a Python monolith on top of Postgres, allowing engineers to focus on delivering value to users. The article emphasizes that simple architectures can be created more cheaply and easily than complex ones, even for high-traffic apps. Despite the trend towards complex, microservice-based architectures, Dan argues for the ""unreasonable effectiveness"" of monoliths, detailing Wave's choices, mistakes, and areas of unavoidable complexity. Simplicity in architecture can lead to success, allowing companies to allocate complexity where it benefits the business. " |
Architecture |
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tl;dr: Explore BlueOptima’s deep dive into code quality and its real impact on maintainability. The report reveals how static metrics provide a clear picture of technical debt and genuine cost-saving opportunities, and why consistent refactoring and proven design patterns are key to sustainable software performance. |
Promoted by BlueOptima |
DeepDive Productivity |
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— Mark Griffin |
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tl;dr: “I ended up figuring out what made this codebase so difficult to stick with, but it didn’t turn out to be what I expected (Cyclomatic Complexity). After doing a little reflection and research, it ended up being something more related to readability – something I didn’t have a lot of data on, but was curious to learn if there was objective terminology or common metrics.” Mark shares his observations. |
BestPractices Guide |
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— Werner Vogels |
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tl;dr: “A few months ago at re:Invent, I spoke about Simplexity – how systems that start simple often become complex over time as they address customer feedback, fix bugs, and add features. At Amazon, we’ve spent decades working to abstract away engineering complexities so our builders can focus on what matters most: their unique business logic. There’s perhaps no better example of this journey than S3.” |
BestPractices Architecture |
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— Nick Agliano |
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tl;dr: “So how was there a zero-day in PostgreSQL, that had just been sitting there for at least 9 years, maybe longer? And not just that, but a SQL injection vulnerability?” Nick explores these questions. |
Security |
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Most Popular From Last Issue |
Systems Ideas That Sound Good But Almost Never Work — Steven Sinofsky |
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Notable Links |
Carbon: OS design system. |
Glance: Your feeds in one place. |
LeRobot: Making AI for Robotics more accessible. |
Xpipe: Access your entire server infra from your local desktop. |
Yaak: Desktop API client. |
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How did you like this issue of Pointer? 1 = Didn't enjoy it all // 5 = Really enjoyed it | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
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