TLDR Web Dev 2024-04-24

Frontend developers should know some basic latency numbers as web page load times and user action responsiveness online are often influenced by network latency. For example, 200ms is the duration of time perceived by humans as “sluggish.” It takes about 150ms to parse about 1MB of JavaScript.

For resilient payment systems, Big Tech uses idempotency keys to prevent duplicate transactions and sets short timeouts to provide quick feedback to users. Circuit breakers, like in the stock market, are used to prevent cascading failures. These companies monitor the “four golden signals” (latency, traffic, errors, and saturation) to find and fix issues before they affect users.

This interview tells the story of Pedro, who transitioned from a lorry driver to a Ruby on Rails developer at the age of 38. He was relentless in getting his first job after learning to program online through a bootcamp. Pedro encourages developers to always focus on learning, ask questions often, and find a mentor to help them grow faster.

The “Joel Test” rates the quality of a software development team. It should be updated so that employers who allow the use of AI tooling while coding are given a boost.

An internationalization plugin for Vue.js.

Twinny is a completely free AI code completion plugin for VS Code. It uses local or API-hosted LLMs to power its code completion and is compatible with multiple tools and frameworks, like Ollama and LM Studio.

Apple CoreNet is a deep neural network toolkit that allows researchers and engineers to train standard and novel small and large-scale models for a variety of tasks, like object classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation.

A potential implementation of CSS Grid Level 3 called the “Masonry layout” allows for much more flexibility in designing web pages. Developers would be able to define grid columns, use subgrid functionalities, and explicitly place grid items. Level 3 is still being developed, so the WebKit team is inviting feedback from the web development community to guide the direction of this CSS specification.

Google Search's search quality has been reportedly declining since 2019 due to revenue pressures. In 2020, Prabhakar Raghavan, the former head of Yahoo Search, replaced Ben Gomes, a dedicated search engineer who prioritized user experience, as the head of Google Search. Raghavan's focus on advertising and growth metrics prioritized profit over search quality, leading to more ad-heavy search.

Apple's latest version of CarPlay deeply integrates with a car's entire infotainment system. While some carmakers are excited to partner with Apple, others see CarPlay 2 as a threat to their own software platforms and brands. Apple has to balance control over the user experience with carmaker desires, while carmakers need to see how much CarPlay is a factor in car buying decisions.

This is a network visualization of 50,000 blogs and links.

Django's reputation for complexity is somewhat unfair because it often stems from a comparison with oversimplified Flask examples.

The FTC has banned most noncompete agreements that will allow tech workers to freely move between jobs, potentially leading to higher wages and more tech entrepreneurship.