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Inefficient modern software 🦥, hard-earned dev lessons ✍️, React for CLIs 🧑‍💻️

TLDR Web Dev <dan@tldrnewsletter.com>

November 4, 12:12 pm

TLDR WebDev
While hardware has become incredibly fast, the applications we use have not kept pace, resulting in a frustrating experience for users. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

TLDR

 TLDR Web Dev 2024-11-04

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Articles & Tutorials

Why doesn't Cloudflare use containers in its Workers platform infrastructure? (8 minute read)

Cloudflare's Workers platform uses a V8 isolate architecture instead of traditional containers due to their ability to achieve sub-millisecond serverless latency and support a massive number of tenants without sharing memory or state. Unlike containers, which take hundreds of milliseconds to seconds to spin up, V8 isolates warm up in under 5 milliseconds. This lets Cloudflare run thousands of tenant workloads at the edge with minimal overhead. However, this has its own limitations, such as the lack of process-level isolation.
Re-implementing JavaScript's == in JavaScript (13 minute read)

This is an article on how to reimplement JavaScript's == operator in pure JavaScript without using the operator itself. It walks through each step of the Abstract Equality Comparison Algorithm, which shows the underlying behavior of the operator and the different complexities of JavaScript's type coercion.
Weird Lexical Syntax (21 minute read)

Some programming languages have bizarre syntax, which makes syntax highlighting difficult. This developer built a syntax highlighter. The post goes over how they dealt with the challenges of lexing and parsing complex syntax.
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Opinions & Advice

5 lessons I learned the hard way from 10+ years as a software engineer (12 minute read)

Take ownership of your own career, build trust and earn respect through clear communication and impact, and maintain consistency. Great engineers are able to challenge leadership decisions with evidence-based arguments.
If you need the money, don't take the job (13 minute read)

Software consultants should charge by the hour rather than accepting fixed-price contracts as it benefits both the consultant and the client. Charging a fair hourly rate allows consultants to provide genuine value and discourages clients from squeezing them for every penny.
Leaving Stripe (15 minute read)

A software engineer at Stripe left his job without another lined up. He was anxious during the interview process and had various successes and challenges at Stripe.
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Launches & Tools

Ink (GitHub Repo)

Ink is a React library for building interactive command-line applications. It provides a component-based UI experience similar to React in the browser.
Someday (GitHub Repo)

Someday is a free and open-source Calendly alternative built on Google-Apps-Script for Gmail users. It has a scheduling integration, customizable work hours, and a simple booking process.
CSV SQL Tool (Website)

CSV SQL Tool allows users to run SQL queries on CSV files directly in their browsers without uploading data, ensuring privacy and speed.
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Miscellaneous

I Waited 10 Billion Cycles and All I Got Was This Loading Screen (9 minute read)

While hardware has become incredibly fast, the applications we use have not kept pace, resulting in a frustrating experience for users. Modern computers are so powerful that they allow developers to build sluggish software. This article provides examples of applications that consume excessive resources without providing a smooth user experience.
Jupiter now scales to 13 Petabits per second (8 minute read)

Google Cloud has spent 25 years building a sophisticated network infrastructure. Starting with a simple network, Google has made numerous innovations over time, which has led to the fifth-generation Jupiter data center network architecture. This architecture is capable of scaling to 13 Petabits/sec of bisectional bandwidth.
Repeatability: As Difficult as it is Important (9 minute read)

It's difficult to replicate research results in experimental systems research due to complex dependencies and a lack of standardized tools. The complexity of deploying state-of-the-art systems remains a significant barrier to entry to repeatability.

Quick Links

Apple silently uploads your passwords and keeps them (6 minute read)

Apple silently uploads user passwords to iCloud Keychain and keeps them even when the user disables the feature.
Prompts are Programs (9 minute read)

AI model prompts are essentially programs, which means that software engineering research is needed to develop robust tools and techniques for creating, debugging, and maintaining effective prompts.
What is the point of an online conference? (8 minute read)

Online conferences, unlike their in-person counterparts, are still great for fostering coordination, knowledge distillation, and serendipitous discovery through curated content, asynchronous discussion, and accessibility.
Building My Resume in HTML using Eleventy (8 minute read)

This developer built their resume website using HTML, CSS, and Eleventy.

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Thanks for reading,
Priyam Mohanty, Jenny Xu & Ceora Ford


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