Issue #597
Essential Reading For Engineering Leaders
Tuesday 11th March’s issue is presented by Unblocked
The Only Developer Tool That Explains Both How Your Codebase Works And Why
Unblocked connects the context across your team’s code, discussions, and docs to instantly answer questions about your application. Now everyone can get their work done – without having to dig for answers or interrupt their teammates.
Teams like Drata say they save an hour or more a day per engineer with Unblocked.
Delegating Complex Tasks
tl;dr: Most leaders can delegate simple things - e.g. teams, metrics - pretty well. Most leaders struggle with delegating complex skills or responsibilities. Herein we’ll discuss two proven methods for delegating complex tasks that you can use right away - exponential training and suboptimal standardization.
Leadership Management
The 5 Most Difficult Employees (And How To Actually Handle Them)
— Claire Lew (Views from the Canopy)
tl;dr: Claire shares the five most challenging employee archetypes she’s encountered, and the specific strategies that can help you lead them successfully: (1) The Entitled Veteran. (2) The Passive Resister. (3) The Brilliant Aggressor. (4) The Perpetual Victim. (5) The Performance Rollercoaster.
Leadership Management
AI Dev Tools Are Focused On The Wrong Problem
— Dennis Pilarinos
tl;dr: The biggest challenge in software development isn’t writing code. It’s finding the context to know what code to write.
Promoted by Unblocked
AI Management
40 Thoughts On Turning 40
— Paul Millerd (Pathless by Paul Millerd)
tl;dr: "“The moment” when people take bold action is often a post hoc fabrication. Real change is slow and confusing, I want more people to know this so that they might feel permission to embrace the slow and more confusing journey of going after things that matter to them. And more. "
CareerAdvice
“Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.” — Fred Brooks
A Software Architecture Reading List
— Dr Andrew Leigh
tl;dr: “Dr Andrew Leigh reflects on 25 years of professional experience as a software architect and offers his insights and a reading list of recommendations.”
Architecture Books
Is Kubernetes the Right Strategic Fit for Your Organization?
tl;dr: "Kubernetes is a powerful tool for scaling, automating, and optimizing your infrastructure—but is it right for your business? This short guide walks you through the key strategic factors to consider and a custom survey to help you decide before making the move. Get the guide today.”
Promoted by Fairwinds
Kubernetes Guide
Succinct Data Structures
— Martijn Faassen
tl;dr: “A few months ago, searching for ideas on how to make some code faster, I found myself reading a bunch of computer science papers. I don't pretend to be good at this - but I don't mind some confusion or being overwhelmed, and I'm okay to admit my ignorance. I ran into this 15 year old paper that introduced several concepts entirely new to me. I struggled to understand them.”
DataStructures
Git Without A Forge
— Simon Tatham
tl;dr: “I don’t use any git ‘forge’ system layered on top of Git, like Gitlab or Github, which automatically makes a bug tracking database for each project, and provides a convenient button for a user to open a merge request / pull request. I just use plain Git. People can ‘git clone’ my code, and there’s a web-based browsing interface for looking around without having to clone it at all. But that’s all the automated facilities you get. Occasionally this confuses people, so I thought I should write something about it.”
Git
Supercharging Discord Mobile: Our Journey To A Faster App
— Ruby Feinstein
tl;dr: Ruby discusses key improvements include virtualizing the server list to reduce memory usage, optimizing chat performance for smoother scrolling, and rebuilding the emoji picker natively to prevent blank frames. They also enhanced animated emoji rendering with WebP and eliminated “blanking” issues in lists.