5 Non-LLM Software Trends To Be Excited About (8 minute read)
Innovations like local-first software, automated reasoning, and advancements in cross-platform development are trends that are quietly leading to better developer and user experiences. For example, Notion was able to improve its web app performance by over 20% by using SQLite in browser, which is a combination of the SQLite, WebAssembly, and local-first software trends.
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How We Built the BFCM 2023 Globe (29 minute read)
Shopify built an interactive 3D globe visualization for its Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) event in 2023. This article dives into the engineering challenges and solutions used to optimize performance, particularly in instancing and GPU-based animation. It goes through the creation of various elements, such as arcs representing orders, city dots, fireworks, and animated pins, with the use of Three.js, React-three-fiber, and psrdnoise for noise generation.
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How Reddit built a Metadata Store that Handles 100k Reads per Second (6 minute read)
Reddit built a unified metadata store using AWS Aurora Postgres to handle over 100k reads per second for its massive user base. Postgres was chosen over Cassandra since it was easier for querying, debugging, and managing data relationships. To scale, Reddit used table partitioning and JSONB denormalization, achieving low-latency reads without needing a read-through cache.
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What I Wish Someone Told Me About Postgres (22 minute read)
This is a collection of tips and advice for working with Postgres databases. It covers how to improve psql usage, optimize queries, and understand the impact of locks and JSONB on application performance. It is important to normalize data and follow the recommendations of the Postgres developers.
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The slow death of the hands-on engineering manager (4 minute read)
Many engineering managers stop coding as they take on more meetings and management duties and gradually lose the habit. Managers can still write some code by choosing small, impactful tasks that aren't in the critical path of important projects. This benefits their team and helps keep their skills sharp.
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Storybook 8.4 (7 minute read)
Storybook 8.4 provides new improvements to UI component testing and development. The release features a new UI for running and debugging component tests in the browser with one click and reduces bundle size and lockfile size by 50% and 75% respectively. It also brings full support for Svelte 5 along with improved TypeScript and JSDoc support for Svelte components.
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The Long Context RAG Capabilities of OpenAI o1 and Google Gemini (14 minute read)
This blog post presents a benchmark of long context Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities for OpenAI's o1 models and Google's Gemini 1.5 models. OpenAI's o1 models outperform other models on long context RAG benchmarks up to 128,000 tokens, while Google's Gemini 1.5 models maintain consistent performance at extremely long contexts up to 2 million tokens, albeit with lower overall accuracy.
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From GLSL to WGSL: the future of shaders on the Web (10 minute read)
This article compares the new WebGPU Shading Language (WGSL) with the established GLSL. WGSL seems to be the future of shaders on the web, especially with the upcoming release of WebGPU. It introduces new features like explicit types, struct declarations, and function declarations that follow Rust conventions, which allows it to be more robust overall.
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Diminishing Returns (5 minute read)
Increased effort doesn't always lead to proportional results in complex systems. Adding more developers to a project or adding features to a product doesn't always lead to increased efficiency or user satisfaction. Instead, try new approaches and recognize that past successes may not guarantee future success. This can help move things forward in ways that combat diminishing returns.
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Announcing .NET 9 (25 minute read)
Microsoft has released .NET 9, which has improved performance, AI integration, enhanced developer tools, and updates to programming languages like C# and F#.
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Thanks for reading,
Priyam Mohanty, Jenny Xu & Ceora Ford
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