2023.10.30 - Software disenchantment

Title: 2023.10.30 – Software Disenchantment

Good engineer & Web Components & SQLite & Green computing & 左病右治 & 一带一路 & 今心为念

This Week’s Highlights

Software disenchantment https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/
You’ve probably heard this mantra: “Programmer time is more expensive than computer time.” What it means basically is that we’re wasting computers at an unprecedented scale. Would you buy a car if it drinks 100 liters per 100 kilometers? How about 1,000 liters? With computers, we do that all the time.

Becoming a good engineer is about collecting experience. https://addyosmani.com/blog/collect-experience/
Skill cross‑pollination isn’t just serendipity; it’s engineering elegance. The best solutions often come from pairing unexpected techniques. So the next time you find yourself wrestling with a new problem, delve into your toolbox of experience. You might find that the solution isn’t just in mastering a new tool but in cleverly using the tools you’ve gathered over the years. It’s this layered, nuanced approach to problem‑solving that truly marks career progression and sets you apart as an engineer. Related: Forget the 10X engineer—it’s about building a 10X culture.

Web Components Will Outlive Your JavaScript Framework https://jakelazaroff.com/words/web-components-will-outlive-your-javascript-framework/
If we want that sort of longevity, we need to avoid dependencies that we don’t control and stick to standards that we know won’t break. If we want our work to be accessible in five, ten, or even twenty years, we need to use the web with no layers in between. For all its warts, the web has become the most resilient, portable, future‑proof computing platform we’ve ever created—at least, if we build with that in mind.

Why you should probably be using SQLite https://www.epicweb.dev/why-you-should-probably-be-using-sqlite
In recent years SQLite has received a great deal of development and attention, making it a simple database for even more advanced use cases. Let’s talk about some of those advancements and why, for most of us, SQLite is the best balance of trade‑offs.

How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/10/how-to-think-computationally-about-ai-the-universe-and-everything/
Human language. Mathematics. Logic. These are all ways to formalize the world. And in our century there’s a new and yet more powerful one: computation. For nearly 50 years I’ve had the great privilege of building an ever taller tower of science and technology based on that idea of computation. Today I want to tell you some of what that’s led to. Related:

• Transformers.js 2.7: ML for the Web, Now with Text‑to‑Speech
• Embeddings: What they are and why they matter
• Animated AI
• OpenAPI Devtools: Effortlessly discover API behaviour with a Chrome extension that automatically generates OpenAPI specifications in real time for any app or website
• Jina AI launches open‑source 8k text embedding
• AI as a UX Assistant
• Exclusive: Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, on his hopes and fears for the future of AI
• Privacy in the age of generative AI
• Demystifying LLMs: How they can do things they weren’t trained to do
• Developers are the first group to adopt AI at work. Here’s why that matters.
• Data Formulator: A concept‑driven, AI‑powered approach to data visualization
• LLM‑powered data classification for data entities at scale

In‑Depth Reading

Today was a great day for accessibility! https://christianheilmann.com/2023/10/25/today-was-a-great-day-for-accessibility/
Today was a great day, even though it started at four in the morning to catch a flight. WeAreDevelopers LIVE is a series of online events covering a specialist topic. Today we ran the event with one of my favourite topics of all time: accessibility.

Unified Versus Split Diff https://matklad.github.io/2023/10/23/unified-vs-split-diff.html
Which is better for code reviews, a unified diff or a split diff?

curl from start to end https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/10/24/curl-from-start-to-end/
What happens when you invoke curl. In a single picture.

Base64 Encoding, Explained https://www.writesoftwarewell.com/base64-encoding-explained/
Base64 is an elegant way to convert binary data to text, making it easy to store and transport. This article covers the basics of Base64 encoding, including what it is, how it works and why it’s important. It also shows how to encode and decode Base64 data in various programming languages.

Ways to Keep Software Working https://codefol.io/posts/ways-to-keep-software-working/
Various possible heroes showing off silly but impressive tricks. Yes, but what do they add to the bottom line? I can talk about keeping software working and why we care and theorise all I like. But normally people have something decent working on the ground long before the theorists catch up. What’s working on the ground? How do we currently keep software working? I’m writing this with an eye toward individual software developers keeping things working by themselves, which says a few things about methods and budget. So let’s look!

Fresh Finds

Next.js 14 Yarn 4.0 Javet: an awesome way of embedding Node.js and V8 in Java. Introducing shadow: a new novel browser engine made almost entirely in JS MDX 3: Markdown for the component era react‑magic‑motion: a React.js library that ✨ magically animates your components.

Products and Others

The power of green computing https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/23/1081969/the-power-of-green-computing/
Sustainable computing practices have the power to both infuse operational efficiencies and greatly reduce energy consumption, says Jen Huffstetler, chief product sustainability officer at Intel.

聿修厥德——一带一路一呼百应的原因 https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/GnbjzEenw86SblWPz4
(The title roughly translates to “Cultivating Virtue: Why the Belt and Road Initiative Responds to a Single Call.”)

---

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.