TLDR Dev 2024-01-05

Lyft transitioned from using Apache Druid to ClickHouse for its sub-second analytics system. The move was driven by several factors, including a steep learning curve and maintenance complexity associated with Druid, cost considerations, and ClickHouse's better alignment with Lyft's infrastructure and engineering expertise. ClickHouse's benefits included simplified infrastructure management, a reduced learning curve for engineers, native data deduplication support, lower costs compared to Druid, and specialized functionalities that made various tasks easier.

Standard Ebooks served over a million ebook downloads with a VPS, all without relying on JavaScript or a database. Instead, it used classic web technologies and PHP in an efficient manner. The ebooks are actually stored on Git repositories and an ebook build process is run on the VPS whenever an ebook is released or updated.

ReactDOM.flushSync is a function that forces React to flush any pending work and update the DOM synchronously. This post is an in-depth look at what React does on updates and how flushSync can solve problems when React updates the UI later than you need it to. The article provides a good distillation of how React updates the DOM even if flushSync isn’t used immediately in a use case.

Cold-blooded software uses boring technology and can usually run without changes for years. Warm-blooded software has more flexibility but requires constant energy to maintain. It’s important to choose the right context for a project.

Managers who continue thinking about work after hours may actually harm their leadership performance. A study found that not taking a break from work in the evening, especially for new managers, drained their mental resources and reduced leadership effectiveness. Leaders who mentally switched off from work the night before felt more recharged and identified more strongly with their role as a leader.

Four WebAssembly (Wasm) developments are anticipated in 2024: Wasm becoming an ideal match for AI workloads, the completion of critical Wasm standards, a shift towards server-side use cases, and the emergence of web applications that can run Wasm on both client and server sides. Wasm isn’t quite production-ready yet, but 2024 may be the year that it makes the transition.

QA Wolf gets web apps to 80% automated end-to-end test coverage in just 4 months. And they include unlimited parallel runs on their infrastructure + 24-hour maintenance and triage at no additional cost.

A collection of libraries and tools aimed at helping developers create adaptive, accessible, and robust user experiences. These libraries include a React implementation of Adobe’s design system (React Spectrum), unstyled React components and hooks (React Aria), and a set of React Hooks for cross-platform state management (React Stately).

A comprehensive list of New Graduate software engineer positions across the industry.

Jan is an open-source ChatGPT alternative that runs offline on your computer. It runs on any hardware.

US software companies, particularly smaller ones, are facing unexpected high tax bills due to changes in Section 174 of the US tax law. This change requires R&D costs, including software engineer labor, to be capitalized and amortized over 5 years (or 15 years if labor is done outside the US). As a result, companies have to pay taxes on profits they technically haven't realized yet, leading to layoffs and reduced hiring of software engineers. Large tech companies are able to manage the tax increase better than startups.

Implicit returns and if-expressions can lead to more concise and readable code. This post provides examples in Rust, Ruby, and other languages. On top of implicit returns, block expressions and single expression functions are also useful to further simplify code.

Design to code is the process of automating the conversion of visual designs into clean, functional code that matches the design's layout, styling, and interactions. It involves collaboration between designers who create visual designs and developers who translate those designs into code using languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. New AI tools aim to automate the manual collaboration process.

Go is an "80%-language," meaning it can achieve 80% of the performance and functionality of other languages with only 20% of the effort.

On December 29th, a package named "everything" was released to the NPM registry that installed all other public packages. This resulted in an extensive network of dependencies across the entire registry that made it impossible to unpublish any package on the site.

Reading books on soft skills and leadership is useful in the workplace as both a dev and a manager. To read books with limited time, first start with book summaries to evaluate relevance, then read selectively from the actual book while taking notes. Finally, connect and apply the lessons to your own personal experiences.

The One Billion Row Challenge (1BRC) explores how far modern Java can be pushed for aggregating one billion rows from a text file.