2024.09.09 - Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods

Title: 2024.09.09 – Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods

Art of Finishing & Cost of Speed & IndieWeb & Quantification & 180‑Day Challenge

This Week’s Highlights

Notes on Distributed Systems for Young Bloods https://www.somethingsimilar.com/2013/01/14/notes-on-distributed-systems-for-young-bloods/
Below is a list of lessons I’ve learned as a distributed‑systems engineer that are worth sharing with a newcomer. Some are subtle, some are surprising, but none are controversial. This list is meant to guide a new distributed‑systems engineer’s thinking about the field they’re entering. It isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a solid starting point.

Information Architecture First Principles https://jarango.com/2024/09/01/information-architecture-first-principles/
Examining the foundations of IA to understand how it uniquely provides value.

The Secret Inside One Million Checkboxes https://eieio.games/essays/the-secret-in-one-million-checkboxes/
A few days into building One Million Checkboxes I thought I’d been hacked. What was that doing in my database? A few hours later I was tearing up, proud of some brilliant teens.

The Art of Finishing https://www.bytedrum.com/posts/art-of-finishing/
Understanding both the allure of endless projects and the cost of never finishing is crucial. It’s not about dismissing the excitement of new beginnings, but about finding a balance—learning to channel that initial enthusiasm into the equally important (if sometimes less glamorous) work of seeing things through to completion. By recognizing these patterns in ourselves, we can develop strategies to overcome them and finally slay the Project Hydra.

The Hidden Cost of Speed https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/09/05/the-hidden-cost-of-speed/
It’s tempting to push projects out the door to wow colleagues and supervisors, but the stark truth is that even the smallest projects deserve proper review periods.

Eleven Predictions: Here’s What AI Does Next https://www.honest-broker.com/p/eleven-predictions-heres-what-ai
Are you ready? Is anybody ready? Related:

• AlphaProteo generates novel proteins for biology and health research
• Apple Can Save AI: Manifesto for AI Privacy in a Surveillance Economy
• Introducing Phind‑405B and faster, high‑quality AI answers for everyone
• Meet Yi‑Coder: A Small but Mighty LLM for Code
• Using GPT‑4o for web scraping
• AnythingLLM – Open‑Source, All‑in‑One Desktop AI Assistant
• Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art
• Roblox is launching a generative AI that builds 3D environments in a snap

In‑Depth Reading

IndieWeb vs. indie web https://fyr.io/post/indieweb_vs_indie_web
The IndieWeb, as it stands, is a bit… “elitist” is perhaps the wrong word. It’s a club for those who can, and although part of the IndieWeb’s broader message is about eschewing the commercial web and owning your own stuff, unless you know at least a little about how websites work you’ll end up relying on commercial organisations to get you started and keep you rolling in the IndieWeb.

Every Webpage Deserves to Be a Place https://interconnected.org/home/2024/09/05/cursor-party
If you’ve visited my actual website (instead of reading via email or whatever), you may notice someone else’s cursor passing by as you read. That’s a feature I added, part of something called cursor party. I blur other people’s cursors as if you’re seeing them through frosted glass.

Deno 2 with Ryan Dahl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZBCq8Ijkgw
In this episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Ryan Dahl about Deno 2.0, its new features and use of web standards, and how it seamlessly integrates with popular frameworks like Next.js. Ryan shares insights on the motivations behind Deno’s creation, its emphasis on simplicity and security, and offers his take on the evolving JavaScript ecosystem.

Behind the Scenes: The Making of VS Code https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDU63r4bS9Q
Ever wondered what it takes to build an editor? How does VS Code even work? This is a raw conversation with two principal engineers who give you an uncut look at life behind the scenes with the VS Code engineering team.

The Ultimate Guide to Font Performance Optimization https://www.debugbear.com/blog/website-font-performance
Font performance optimization is a set of web‑development techniques that make fonts load faster and render more smoothly. It includes thoughtful font selection, using performant font formats, self‑hosting, optimized @font-face declarations, font‑display strategies, and more.

Lazy Loading Isn’t Just Lazy, It’s Late: The Web Deserves Faster https://www.differentshelf.com/lazy-loading-isnt-just-lazy-its-late-the-web-deserves-faster/
A manifesto for proactive loading in Angular and other SPAs, explaining why lazy‑loading isn’t merely lazy—it’s tardy. The web deserves faster.

How to Build an Open‑Source Metrics Dashboard https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/how-to-build-an-open-source-metrics-dashboard/
How GitHub volunteers built an open‑source metrics dashboard for the World Health Organization and some best practices they picked up along the way.

Fresh Finds

Alpine.js creator Caleb Porzio: I just crossed $1 million on GitHub Sponsors. Announcing Vue 3.5 Angular: The Future Is Standalone! Bulletproof React: A Simple, Scalable, and Powerful Architecture for Building Production‑Ready React Applications. Redwood v8.0.0: The App Framework for Startups Framer Motion: Open‑Source, Production‑Ready Animation and Gesture Library for React. Announcing TypedSQL: Make Your Raw SQL Queries Type‑Safe with Prisma ORM

Web Design Museum: The First Decade of Web Design Markdown to Amazing Forms and Web Pages Clojure 1.12.0 [Anatomy …]

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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.