2023.08.21 - Chinese Civilization Has Outstanding Peacefulness

Title: 2023.08.21 – Chinese Civilization’s Distinctive Peacefulness

Lose spark & Modular & Adobe之父 & 就业难 & 守时回光

This Week’s Highlights

How a startup loses its spark https://blog.johnqian.com/startup-spark
At a well‑run seed‑stage startup, engineers often describe the work experience as intoxicating. At a larger company, the best you get is “enjoyable.” Why does this happen? Is it inevitable? Related: Motivation and software development.

The #1 Skill to Teach Your Developers Will Save Your Future https://blog.visionarycto.com/p/the-1-skill-to-teach-your-developers
Easily readable code is a testament to a developer’s professionalism and consideration for their peers. Related: Self Documenting Code.

How we reduced the size of our JavaScript bundles by 33% https://dropbox.tech/frontend/how-we-reduced-the-size-of-our-javascript-bundles-by-33-percent
At Dropbox, we understand how incredibly annoying such experiences can be. Over the past year, our web performance engineering team narrowed some of our performance problems down to an oft‑overlooked culprit: the module bundler.

TypeScript is Surprisingly OK for Compilers https://matklad.github.io/2023/08/17/typescript-is-surprisingly-ok-for-compilers.html#TypeScript-is-Surprisingly-OK-for-Compilers
But OCaml is crufty! Is there something better? Today, I realized that TypeScript might actually be OK? It isn’t really surprising, given how the language works, but I never thought of TypeScript as an ML‑like alternative before. So, let’s write a tiny‑tiny typechecker in TS!

The future of open source is still very much in flux https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/17/1077498/future-open-source/
Free and open software have transformed the tech industry. But we still have a lot to work out to make them healthy, equitable enterprises. Related: Terraform: The OpenTF Manifesto.

In‑Depth Reading

How modular can your monolith go? https://microservices.io//post/architecture/2023/08/20/how-modular-can-your-monolith-go-part-2.html
In this article, I focus on the first two issues, and assume that a system operation consists of a single transaction that spans subdomains. In a later post, I’ll discuss transaction management in more detail.

How we reduced the cost of building Twitter at Twitter‑scale by 100× https://blog.redplanetlabs.com/2023/08/15/how-we-reduced-the-cost-of-building-twitter-at-twitter-scale-by-100x/
We recognize the way we’re introducing Rama is unusual. We felt that since the 100× cost‑reduction claim sounds so unbelievable, it wouldn’t do Rama justice to introduce it in the abstract. So we took it upon ourselves to directly demonstrate Rama’s 100× cost reduction by replicating a full application at scale in all its detail.

Introducing Immortal Objects for Python https://engineering.fb.com/2023/08/15/developer-tools/immortal-objects-for-python-instagram-meta/
To get around this issue, we introduced Immortal Objects – PEP‑683. This creates an immortal object (an object whose core state will never change) by marking a special value in the object’s reference‑count field. It allows the runtime to know when it can and can’t mutate both the reference‑count fields and GC header. Related: Textual: a Rapid Application Development framework for Python.

Railway Oriented Programming https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/rop/
Slides and videos explaining a functional approach to error handling.

Complexity Theory’s 50‑Year Journey to the Limits of Knowledge https://www.quantamagazine.org/complexity-theorys-50-year-journey-to-the-limits-of-knowledge-20230817/
How hard is it to prove that problems are hard to solve? Meta‑complexity theorists have been asking questions like this for decades. A string of recent results has started to deliver answers.

Fresh Finds

Debian Celebrates 30 years! What’s new in Flutter 3.13: 2D scrolling, faster graphics, Material 3 updates and more Electron 26.0.0 Deno – Fresh 1.4 – Faster Page Loads, Layouts and More

htmx is part of the GitHub Accelerator! tRPC: Experience the full power of TypeScript inference to boost productivity for your full‑stack application. Moonbit: Fast, compact and user‑friendly language for WebAssembly Linkify: JavaScript plugin for finding links in plain‑text and converting them to HTML tags. useHooks: A collection of modern, server‑safe React hooks – from the ui.dev team

Primo is a visual CMS that makes it a blast to build pages, manage content, and edit code – one block at a time micro: a modern and intuitive terminal‑based text editor PDF Tool: Edit PDF files, with privacy integrated

Opendream: A layer‑based UI for Stable Diffusion AI Town: a virtual town where AI characters live, chat and socialize. How is LLaMa.cpp possible? Stable Diffusion in C/C++ Langui: The perfect UI for your AI Generative AI could change the healthcare industry faster than you think

Products & Others

The Elite's War on Remote Work Has Nothing to Do with Productivity https://www.okdoomer.io/heres-why-they-want-you-back-at-the-office-so-bad/
The elite are trying to whip everyone back to the office to avoid a commercial real‑estate crash. Related: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return‑to‑office plans: “A lot of executives have egg on their faces”.

A Single Article Explains the Legend of the “Father of Adobe” – How Talent and Technological Innovation Changed the World https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20230820A06CAF00
John Warnock is an American computer scientist, inventor, and tech entrepreneur. In 1982 he co‑founded the graphics and publishing software company Adobe with Xerox colleague Charles Geschke, earning them the nickname “the fathers of Adobe.” Warnock served as president for the two years before Adobe’s founding and then as CEO for the next 16 years, until 2000. He continued to serve jointly with Geschke as chairman of Adobe’s board until 2017.

Youth Unemployment: Where Does the Path Forward Lead? https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Knve_SVp036Y9d0sYvo1hw
Youth unemployment is a global challenge; this demographic’s unemployment rate is typically two to three times the overall societal rate. Even in many developed nations, high youth unemployment remains entrenched. The harsh reality is clear: before the economy experiences a noticeable recovery or new industries emerge, the current employment dilemma is unlikely to improve dramatically.

A Decade More of Blossoms on the Branch [https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/j

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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.