TLDR Web Dev 2024-05-17

Design docs at Google πŸ“, testing ChatGPT-4o πŸ€–, ​​State of HTML 2023 🎁

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Articles & Tutorials

You probably don't need to validate UTF-8 strings (21 minute read)

The design of strings in Rust and Julia are different. Rust enforces UTF-8 validation, while Julia allows invalid UTF-8. Rust treats all code as production-quality, while Julia encourages hacking and prototyping. Julia's flexibility with string encodings is often more practical and efficient.

5 easy tips to improve your personal website performance (11 minute read)

Serve static HTML whenever possible instead of relying on server-side rendering to improve your personal website's performance. Optimize images by converting them to next-gen formats and using the `picture` element for browser compatibility. Also, use system fonts to avoid the performance issues of loading custom fonts and try to not have render-blocking resources.

Why do CPUs have multiple cache levels? (14 minute read)

CPUs have multiple cache levels to balance speed and size. The L1 cache is small and fast, primarily for storing frequently used data at the byte level. The L2 cache is larger but slower. It deals with cache lines (groups of bytes) and handles most communication between the CPU core and other components. The L3 cache is even larger and slower, serving as a shared resource for multiple cores and handling less frequent requests.
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Opinions & Advice

Show, Don't Tell: How to multiply your chances of influencing others (3 minute read)

"Show, don't tell" can be applied to workplace communication and leadership, where visual aids, storytelling, and hands-on demonstrations can make complex information more accessible and compelling. It's a useful technique to get buy-in for projects and also helps make presentations better.

Design Docs at Google (11 minute read)

Design docs outline the implementation strategy and key design decisions for a software project. They help identify potential issues early on, achieve consensus, and ensure cross-cutting concerns are addressed. They're used extensively at Google for every software project and for documentation and knowledge sharing.
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Launches & Tools

Announcing the Web Platform Dashboard (1 minute read)

Google's Web Platform Dashboard is a tool for visualizing web platform features and browser support.

React Components for the Google Maps JavaScript API (GitHub Repo)

This is a TypeScript/JavaScript library that integrates the Google Maps JavaScript API into React applications. It provides reusable components for maps, markers, and info windows along with hooks to access additional functionalities like geocoding.
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Miscellaneous

Test Driving ChatGPT-4o (7 minute read)

This author tested ChatGPT-4o's ability to solve a math problem using five different approaches. They experimented with text-only prompts, multi-modal prompts with images, and prompts with chain-of-thought prompting. The most successful approach was the text-only prompt with chain-of-thought prompting, which resulted in consistently correct answers. The multi-modal prompts led to incorrect answers because the AI misinterpreted the image details.

AI's Communication Revolution: We're All Talking to Computers Now (13 minute read)

AI-centric communication is expected to fuel a new wave of tech companies and products, similar to how social media platforms arose from earlier internet technologies. While most communication today is done with people through technology, eventually people could primarily just communicate with technology (AI) itself. This will impact human behavior and interaction, but in what direction is unclear.
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Quick Links

D3 in Depth (Website)

A complete guide with visualizations to D3.js.

Improvements to data analysis in ChatGPT (3 minute read)

ChatGPT is introducing better data analysis features for its premium users, which include directly uploading files from Google Drive/OneDrive, interacting with charts and tables, and customizing charts for presentations.

State of HTML 2023 (Website)

The State of HTML 2023 survey reveals strong demand from developers for more interactive and customizable HTML elements with styling and extensibility options.

Google Gemini: Context Caching (Website)

The new Gemini API context caching feature reduces the cost of repetitive requests by caching and reusing input tokens.
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