Makura no Soshi

More on programming …

• The Lines of Code That Changed Everything, Slate
  To shed light on the software that has tilted the world on its axis, the editors polled computer scientists, software developers, historians, policymakers, and journalists. They were asked to pick: Which pieces of code had a huge influence? Which ones warped our lives?
• UTC is Enough for Everyone, Right? – Zach Holman
  Programming time is pretty weird. It can sometimes make you feel week in the knees, and very days and confused about how it all fits together. But watch it: this is hour burden to bear, and we can’t just let it past us over.
• So you want to be a wizard – Julia Evans
  This zine is about what the skill of “figure it out anyway” looks like.
• In space, no one can hear you kernel panic – Glenn Fleishman, Increment
  When you’re millions of miles from home, it’s hard to install an operating system update—but not impossible.
• Programmer’s critique of missing structure of operating systems – Bystroushaak
  As I was thinking about it, I’ve realized that architecture of the operating system itself is wrong for this kind of job. The stuff it offers and the stuff it allows us to do, is not what we want and expect. […] How about we take away all the weird string formats, whether it’s passing command line parameters when launching programs or communication in between the programs, and replace them with a concise, easy-to-write language for structure definitions?
• Programming for Everyone, Everyone’s a Programmer? – Observations from Uppsala
  It is probably good to be able to do a little bit of it at home for household needs. But don’t equate that to the professional development of industrial-strength software.

On programming …

• A Branchless UTF-8 Decoder – Chris Wellons
  This week I took a crack at writing a branchless UTF-8 decoder: a function that decodes a single UTF-8 code point from a byte stream without any if statements, loops, short-circuit operators, or other sorts of conditional jumps.
• Notes on structured concurrency, or: Go statement considered harmful — njs blog
  Every concurrency API needs a way to run code concurrently. Here’s some examples of what that looks like using different APIs:
• Some reasons for Go to not make system calls through the standard C library – Chris Siebenmann
  On the surface this makes Go sound unreasonable, and you might ask why it can’t just make Unix system calls through the system’s C library the way pretty much every other Unix language does.
• An analysis of performance evolution of Linux’s core operations – the morning paper
  This paper presents an analysis of how Linux’s performance has evolved over the past seven years… To our surprise, the study shows that the performance of many core operations has worsened or fluctuated significantly over the years.
• Git from the inside out – Mary Rose Cook
  The essay focuses on the graph structure that underpins Git and the way the properties of this graph dictate Git’s behavior.
• A half-hour to learn Rust, amos
  I’ll try to go through as many Rust snippets as I can, and explain what the keywords and symbols they contain mean.

On the Web and its tools …

• Front-End Performance Checklist 2019 — Smashing Magazine
  Let’s make 2020… fast! An annual front-end performance checklist, with everything you need to know to create fast experiences on the web today. Updated since 2016.
• Brutalist Web Design – David Copeland
  Brutalist Web Design is honest about what a website is and what it isn’t. […] A website is about giving visitors content to enjoy and ways to interact with you.
• What the hell is REST, Anyway? — programming is terrible
  Originating in a thesis, REST is an attempt to explain what makes the browser distinct from other networked applications.
• Is WebAssembly the return of Java Applets & Flash? – Steve Klabnik
  The first reason that WebAssembly is different is that it’s succeeded, and those technologies did not.
• How to get a direct WebRTC connections between two computers – François Marier
  Here’s how to tell whether or not your WebRTC calls are being relayed, and how to ensure you get a direct connection to the other host.
• Firefox Profilemaker
  This tool will help you to create a Firefox profile with the defaults you like. You select which features you want to enable and disable and in the end you get a download link for a zip-file with your profile template.

On AWS …

• AWS Graviton2 – James Hamilton, Perspectives
  I believe there is a high probability we are now looking at what will become the first high volume ARM Server.
• Observations on ARM64 & AWS’s Amazon EC2 M6g Instances – Liz Fong-Jones, Honeycomb
  For our use case, M6g is superior in every aspect to C5: it costs less on-demand, has more RAM, exhibits lower median and significantly narrower tail latency, and runs cooler with the same proportional workload per host.
• A Detailed Overview of AWS API Gateway – Alex DeBrie
  AWS API Gateway is an awesome service to use as an HTTP frontend. […] In this post, you’ll learn the different steps in an API Gateway request. For each step, we’ll see what you should be doing in that step and how it fits in the overall picture.
• How to optimize AWS Lambda performance – Efi Merdler-Kravitz, Lumigo
  In this article, we are going to talk about various parameters to be considered for AWS Lambda performance tuning.
• Why is AWS IAM So Hard? – Stephen Kuenzli, #NoDrama DevOps
  IAM is really important and it’s really hard for a lot of people, even on good teams with robust processes.
• AWS isn’t killing your business, you just suck at it – Corey Quinn
  Companies that currently aren’t thriving love to blame AWS for their problems. But I don’t think the criticism sticks.

I still like Zabbix as a simple allround monitoring solution. With its agent and UserParameter configuration it is very flexible and can be used (and abused) in many interesting ways. Here I want to show and compare three different patterns of collecting metrics from a service:

1. simple item fetch
2. fetch and send
3. preprocessing

Read the rest of this entry »

On Gaming …

• The cost of games – Raph’s Website
  Lots of people have made the observation that in terms of raw purchasing power, players pay around half of what they used to in the 80s.
• Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 Engineering Firefighter – Allar’s Blog
  Engineering is sometimes the most asinine and painful thing you can do, but those who love it understand the feeling of solving a problem and having something Just Work.
• The Existential Terror of Battle Royale – Jeff Atwood
  Battle Royale is not the game mode we wanted, it’s not the game mode we needed, it’s the game mode we all deserve. And the best part is, when we’re done playing, we can turn it off.
• How to survive in Fortnite if you’re old and slow | Keith Stuart, The Guardian
  If you’re thinking of dipping your toe in, here are 13 tips to get you started.
• Elite: Dangerous — A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide
  Let’s be honest, Elite: Dangerous (ED) doesn’t exactly go out of its way to explain things to players.
• World of Warcraft perfectly predicted our coronavirus panic – Amit Katwala, WIRED UK
  An accidental pandemic in the online game offers a valuable insight into the way people are behaving during the coronavirus crisis.

On Covid-19 induced work from home conditions …

• Work in the Time of Corona – Alice Goldfuss
  As someone who has worked remotely for multiple companies, in different setups, I wanted to offer some assurances and tips for maintaining your mental health while adjusting to this new life.
• How To Work From Home | You’ve Been Haacked
  So now that you finally have the opportunity to work from home, don’t blow it! Working from home is a skill.
• Managing Remote Teams – A Crash Course – Andreas Klinger
  Remote work is the logical evolution of digital work. And the best-practices of remote teams are often learnings for all digital knowledge work teams.
• Creating predictability and stability in times of rapid change | Lara Hogan
  So let’s talk about what we can do for ourselves, and for those around us, to help address those core needs.
• Psychologische Sicherheit in unsicheren Zeiten – Michael May, Mayflower Blog
  Unternehmen haben gegenüber ihren Mitarbeitern eine Fürsorgepflicht, die in der Regel durch die Führungskräfte gelebt wird. Ich hoffe, deine Firma hat die nötigen Schritte eingeleitet und wartet nicht, bis die Einschläge noch näher kommen.
• Diese Form von Home Office ist: alles andere als normal! – Sabine Wojcieszak, getNext IT
  Die Situation, in der sich viele Unternehmen und auch viele unserer Kunden gerade befinden hat, wenig mit dem zu tun, was eigentlich unter verteiltem Arbeiten oder Home Office verstanden wird. Und es hat noch weniger mit New Work und der Motivation dahinter zu tun.

On teams, agile methods, and remote work …

• How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects – Neil on Software
  48 personalities that cause software development projects to fail.
• Why companies are still designing open plan offices – Katharine Schwab, Fast Company
  First, you tear down the walls and dispense with the soulless cubicles. Then you put everyone at long tables, shoulder to shoulder, so that they can talk more easily.
• Why Enterprise Agile Teams Fail – Sam McAfee
  No, you’re not crazy for trying this.
• Asynchronous Communication: The Real Reason Remote Workers Are More Productive – Amir Salihefendic
  Study after study after study into remote work has made one thing clear: Remote workers are more productive than their office-bound counterparts. What’s not entirely clear is why.
• Software Sprawl, The Golden Path, and Scaling Teams With Agency – charity.wtf
  Recently you saw something terrifying that you cannot unsee: your company is using all the languages, all the environments, all the databases, all the build tools. Shit!!! Your ops team is in full revolt and you can’t really blame them.
• How to run a Futurespective | Liz Keogh, lunivore
  Futurespectives, like Retrospectives, look back at the past… from the future! I find them very useful when there isn’t much to retrospect on: at the start of a project or initiative.