2022.05.23 - Misunderstanding of “Less is More”

Title: 2022.05.23 – Misunderstanding “Less Is More”

This Week’s Highlights

Misunderstanding “Less Is More” https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/tZ_vBlh71Di0KrLQ2LYMhA
We over‑emphasize “Don’t make me think,” which can deprive users of opportunities to unleash their own potential. It’s like the training wheels on a child’s bike: they don’t provide perfect balance and are only temporary, but the process lets the child discover how to balance on their own. That’s the “good enough” design philosophy—don’t over‑design. “Less is more” is not just a slogan or a trick; it’s a design philosophy that respects human creativity and willingly treats the user as a container. Behind it lie reflections on economic growth models, the relationship between humanity and the environment, human happiness, and our own agency.

Stripe: Migrating millions of lines of code to TypeScript https://stripe.com/blog/migrating-to-typescript
On Sunday, March 6, we migrated Stripe’s largest JavaScript codebase (powering the Stripe Dashboard) from Flow to TypeScript. In a single pull request we converted more than 3.7 million lines of code. The next day, hundreds of engineers started writing TypeScript for their projects.

The balance has shifted away from SPAs https://nolanlawson.com/2022/05/21/the-balance-has-shifted-away-from-spas/
There’s a feeling in the air—a zeitgeist. SPAs are no longer the cool kids they were ten years ago. Hip new frameworks like Astro, Qwik, and Elder.js tout their MPA capabilities with “0 kB JavaScript by default.” Blog posts are circulating that list all the challenges of SPAs: history handling, focus management, scroll restoration, Cmd/Ctrl‑click, memory leaks, etc. Gleeful potshots are being taken at SPAs.

GitHub: Render mathematical expressions in Markdown https://github.blog/changelog/2022-05-19-render-mathematical-expressions-in-markdown/ https://github.blog/2022-05-19-math-support-in-markdown/
You can now use LaTeX‑style syntax to render math expressions within Markdown inline (using $ delimiters) or in blocks (using $$ delimiters).

The future of personal computing software https://alexanderobenauer.com/weekly/20220521/
We’ve explored lots of possible features for the OS of the future. But how should future systems materialize their functionality? How should they expose their primitives to users? Who will be able to evolve these systems far into the future? This week’s lab note considers how flexible systems could work for users of all levels of computer literacy: LN 028: Designing systems for computer literacy and evolvability

Why You Should Care About Software Architecture https://www.infoq.com/articles/care-about-architecture/
Many software developers distrust architecture practices. They associate them with rigid, overbearing processes and heavy upfront planning and design. As a result, they fear that following those practices will make delivery take forever—and might still miss what the customer actually wants. Related: The Software Industry Is Still the Problem

In‑Depth Reading

Why are so few funded startups using serverless? https://serverlessfirst.com/emails/why-are-so-few-funded-startups-using-serverless/
A few days ago I asked this on Twitter: The value proposition for startups to use serverless is very strong, in my opinion, yet most still aren’t using it. I heard a stat from a recent large accelerator cohort that only a small % were meaningfully using serverless. Why do you think adoption in funded startups is so slow? I got a flood of thoughtful replies, and I’m sharing a curated list below.

Fly.io: the Reclaimer of Heroku's Magic https://christine.website/blog/fly.io-heroku-replacement
Heroku was catalytic to my career. However, I can confidently say that fly.io seems like a viable inheritor of the mantle Heroku left in the cloud. Fly.io is a Platform‑as‑a‑Service that hosts your applications on physical dedicated servers around the world instead of being an AWS reseller. This lets them run your app in multiple regions for far less than it would cost on Heroku. They also use anycasting so your app uses the same IP address globally. The internet itself load‑balances users to the nearest instance via BGP as the load‑balancing substrate. Related: Host a Ghost Blog for Free on Fly.io — In 1 Minute.

Edge Intelligence in Dazhong Dianping’s Search Re‑ranking https://tech.meituan.com/2022/05/20/edge-search-rerank.html
Search is a crucial channel in the Dazhong Dianping app for connecting users with merchants; more and more users rely on search in various scenarios to find the services they want. Understanding users’ search intent and placing the most desired results at the top is the core of any search engine. To further improve personalized ranking and enhance user experience, the Search Technology Center explored deploying deep personalization models on the device. This article shares the practice of on‑device re‑ranking in the Dazhong Dianping app, divided into three parts: (1) analysis of the problems and overall workflow of on‑device re‑ranking; (2) exploration of the on‑device ranking algorithm; (3) architecture design, deployment optimization, and finally a summary and outlook.

Building an animated piano keyboard with JavaScript and MIDI https://www.jamieonkeys.dev/posts/piano-keyboard-javascript/
How I built a simple on‑screen keyboard for my jazz piano tutorial website JazzKeys.fyi.

The web3 world computer is at a 1970 level of development https://interconnected.org/home/2022/05/20/fermi
If the web3 world computer has only just reached 1970, then, first, don’t expect too much. There’s real utility to be found but in very prescribed use cases. But also, second, wild and unrecognizable transformations are coming. There is room for imagination and invention. Related: Web3 is expensive P2P.

Codebases as communication https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/codebases-as-communication/
Conventionally we communicate programming ideas with talks, papers, and blog posts. But we can also communicate ideas with entire codebases. If someone discovers a security exploit, they sometimes publish a proof of concept to show the exploit isn’t merely theoretical.

😵‍💫 Why billing systems are a nightmare for engineers https://www.getlago.com/blog/why-billing-systems-are-a-nightmare-for-engineers
TL;DR: Billing is just 100× harder than you’ll ever think.

How Secure Is Our Data, Really? https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-secure-is-our-data-really/
Economist Michael Kende on how applying the economics of cybersecurity can prevent data breaches and increase digital trust.

Rust: A Critical Retrospective https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6375
Since I couldn’t travel for a couple of years during the pandemic, I decided to use the newfound time to really lean into Rust. After writing over 100 k lines of Rust code, I think I’m starting to get a feel for the language, and like every cranky engineer I’ve developed opinions—and because this is the Internet, I’m going to share them.

Fresh Finds

Web Applications 101 https://www.robinwieruch.de/web-applications/
A website doesn’t equal a website these days. It can range from a marketing page for a product to a full‑blown social media platform. As someone new to web development, …

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Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.