TLDR Web Dev 2024-05-01

Our World in Data, a charity org that shows charts about the world, received a complaint about slow map charts. After some profiling, a developer found that the k-means clustering algorithm the site was using was the reason. The issue was due to a 3-character typo in the JavaScript port of the algorithm. Fixing the typo resulted in a 20x speed improvement.

This article describes a new way to show music notation responsively on the web using CSS Grid. The system defines musical staves as grids, allowing notes to be positioned by pitch (on the y-axis) and time (on the x-axis). This approach is responsive, allows for easy swapping of clefs and time signatures, and makes sure elements like chords and lyrics are aligned properly.

Creating software that is “good enough” is much better than trying to create software that is perfect. Software can always be iterated upon after release. HTTP and HTML are examples of imperfect technologies that have staying power thanks to their continuous improvement.

Distractions, usually from too many meetings, are the biggest problem in today's work culture. They prevent engineers from entering a “flow state” where they can do deep work and complete their tasks much faster. Managers can help by clustering meetings together and improving meeting culture. Engineers should protect their focus time and keep their phones away while in deep work.

Pyinfra automates infrastructure using Python with features for ad-hoc command execution, service deployment, configuration management, and more.

Svelte 5 is now in the Release Candidate stage, which means the design of the framework is mostly set. There will probably be no breaking changes, which means developers can now try it out without worries about future changes breaking their project.

Extension.js is an easy way to create cross-browser web extensions without any build configuration. It's plug-and-play and has built-in support for TypeScript, WebAssembly, React, and modern JavaScript.

Current AI leaderboards aren't useful anymore because they don't account for the cost of running AI agents. Researchers should instead use Pareto curves to visualize the tradeoff between accuracy and cost. Surprisingly, simple baseline agents can be just as accurate as the complex, costly agents that top leaderboards.

The AI-powered search engine Perplexity, which has tens of millions of users with less than 50 employees, uses AI internally to inform all aspects of building the company. It has small teams of 2-3 people that work in parallel to reduce any coordination costs. The company hires self-driven and very proactive engineers.

Pablo Azócar made the leap from engineer to photographer to pen plotter artist.

A CSS framework for recreating the Windows 7 UI.

Amazon's AI coding assistant CodeWhisperer has been rebranded as Q Developer and now includes testing, transformation, and autonomous feature implementation.

run0 is a sudo-like command that provides a more secure and user-friendly way to temporarily get sudo privileges while handling issues like the size of the sudo binary.