Companies like Meta, Twitter , and Netflix are enacting hiring freezes and layoffs, a situation that’s not great for anybody but is likely to have outsize effects on people of color in tech . Gen Z may not understand file structures , but they sure understand Twitter toxicity. MegaBlock from Gen Z Mafia allows users to block bad tweets, their authors, and every single account that liked the offending tweet. There, doesn’t that feel better? Apple’s WWDC 2022 is just around the corner. What are yo...
May 24, 2022•30 min•Ep. 456
Highly-touted cryptocurrencies like TARA don’t always solve the problems they’re supposed to, as Bloomberg reports . If you’re looking for a compelling deep-dive into a crypto scammer, Cassidy recommends BBC podcast The Missing Cryptoqueen . Ceora is working to improve the quality of her commit messages in order to turn what’s now a personal project into an open-source project that others can contribute to. One great resource she’s found: Zen and the art of writing good commit messages . Attenti...
May 20, 2022•30 min•Ep. 455
You may be running your code in containers. You might even have taken the plunge and orchestrated it all with YAML code through Kubernetes. But infrastructure as code becomes a whole new level of complicated when setting up a managed Kubernetes service. On this sponsored episode of the Stack Overflow podcast, Ben and Ryan talk with David Dymko and Walt Ribeiro of Vultr about what they went through to build their managed Kubernetes service as a cloud offering. It was a journey that ended not just...
May 18, 2022•26 min•Ep. 454
Supabase , the open-source database-as-a-service company, raised $80 million in Series B funding in a round led by Felicis Ventures. In case you were wondering: YYes, the company is named for the Nicki Minaj song !. Today in tech recs: Cassidy recommends budgeting app Lunch Money for everything from crypto to cash. Matt recommends Magnet for window management. Today’s Lifeboat badge goes to user dfrib for their answer to Error "nil requires a contextual type" using Swift . See Privacy Policy at ...
May 17, 2022•16 min•Ep. 453
Ian and Corey met at Microsoft, where they built Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (which boasted its own CD-ROM). They went on to found Mattermost in 2016 to give developers one platform for collaborating across tools and teams. Ian, who previously founded the game company SpinPunch , calls Mattermost “yet another of those video game companies turned B2B software companies,” like Slack and Discord . Says Ian: “Games are all the risk of a movie plus all the complexity of a B2B Saa...
May 13, 2022•33 min•Ep. 452
Check out a manager’s toolkit for preventing burnout put together by Gitlab Cassidy once asked Stephen Colbert for his favorite website. His answer may surprise you. Today in tech recs: Pokémon GO (for extra motivation to get outside) and the Apple Watch activity tracker (to track activity and remind you to move around). Jon recommends that you not get a treadmill desk. Today’s Lifeboat badge goes to user JLRishe for their answer to Error "TypeError: $(...).children is not a function" . Follow J...
May 10, 2022•27 min•Ep. 451
You can check out Michael’s bio here and tune in to his podcast Cloud Unfiltered . If you're interested in some of open source work Michael and his colleagues are doing, check out API Clarity . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
May 05, 2022•23 min•Ep. 450
Stack Overflow’s 2019 Developer Survey found that respondents overwhelmingly considered Elon Musk to be the person with the greatest influence on technology. Now that Musk is taking over Twitter , it’s safe to say that influence will increase. James Stanier, engineering director at Shopify, has some thoughts on one of our perennial topics: transitioning from IC to manager. He’s proposed a 90-day trial period for IC engineers moving into management roles. Listen to Stanier on the Dev Interrupted ...
May 03, 2022•27 min•Ep. 449
The crew has complicated feelings about products like Apple’s augmented reality glasses and Google Glass . Ceora put it best: “I'm very cautious about any big tech company having any more access to my perception of reality.” On the other hand, products like Envision smart glasses that help visually-impaired people navigate their environments exemplify how AR technology can enable accessibility and empower users. Speaking of different perceptions of reality, New York mayor Eric Adams dusts off th...
Apr 29, 2022•33 min•Ep. 448
If you’re not familiar with Stacks , Stack Overflow’s design system, it’s a robust CSS and JavaScript Pattern library that helps users create coherent experiences in line with Stack Overflow’s best practices and design principles. Explore more on Netlify or GitHub . Missed our April Fool’s prank this year? Relive the hilarity and the pain . Atomic CSS is a CSS architecture approach favoring single-purpose classes named based on visual function. Today’s Lifeboat badge goes to user ceejayoz for th...
Apr 26, 2022•32 min•Ep. 447
A high school class on Pascal launched Andi’s interest in programming (starting on an Apple IIc). Andi was bored with his university studies and took on an extra-credit programming project that turned into PHP3 , the version that built a million websites. PHP gets a lot of hate , and we have two theories about why. First, it’s primarily brownfield development, and we all know that hell is other people’s code. Second, it democratized development—a great thing in many ways - that nevertheless led ...
Apr 22, 2022•31 min•Ep. 446
Average tenure at Google has been reported at 1.1 years, which stands in contrast to a broader average of 4.2 years for software developers across the board. Tech jobs at many so called titans and disrupters last less than two years, according to research from Dice . Uber is forging an unlikely alliance with two taxi tech firms. The ultimate chron job - ensuring users can access a chronological feed on their favorite social media without sacrificing your recommendation algorithm's potency or dat...
Apr 19, 2022•30 min•Ep. 445
Cassidy is co-organizing Devs for Ukraine, a free online engineering conference from April 25-26 to raise funds in support of Ukraine. Register today and donate if you can. Plex.tv is a hub for live TV, on-demand streaming content, and your own media library. Read the full story of Fast’s speedy shutdown. Following the ultimate personal security checklist will protect your digital security and privacy—but it might also raise eyebrows at the FBI. Today’s tech recs: Ben recommends TENS therapy , a...
Apr 15, 2022•22 min•Ep. 444
Read about how New Relic achieved pay equity —and what, exactly, that means. Last month, hacker group Lapsus$ released screenshots showing it had successfully breached Okta’s internal systems using compromised credentials. What does it all mean? Read about it here and here . Matt recounts a harrowing example of a man-in-the-middle attack that nearly emptied a friend’s bank account Today’s recommendations: Cassidy recs Midjourney , an AI art-making tool currently in beta. (Learn more about Midjou...
Apr 12, 2022•32 min•Ep. 443
Quizzes and games like Roblox are a good way to build your knowledge, whether you’re learning to code or becoming a K-pop expert. ICYMI: Listen to our conversation with HashiCorp cofounder Mitchell Hashimoto , who recently returned to an IC role after serving as CEO and CTO. Connect with Jon on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter . Today’s Lifeboat badge goes to user Roko C. Buljan for their answer to Pure CSS 3 image slider—without JavaScript or radio inputs . See Privacy Policy at https://art19....
Apr 08, 2022•30 min•Ep. 442
React 18 is the latest major version of React. Cassidy also provides an excellent summary of React history. Ceora is working on some CSS art (inspired by K-pop, natch) using CodePen . Cassidy explains why Tanya Reilly’s talk-turned-blog-post Being Glue , which Ceora shouted out in Episode 425, was pivotal in shaping her career decisions. Why do women in software engineering have to worry about being seen as “ not technical enough ”? Today’s tech recs: Ceora recommends the Nintendo Switch™ , Matt...
Apr 05, 2022•38 min•Ep. 441
Read a profile of Mattaniah on People of Color in Tech (POCIT) here . Connect with Mattaniah on LinkedIn or follow her on TikTok . Who remembers Vine ?? This week’s tech recs: Cassidy recommends her Hifiman headphones . Ben recommends his hybrid RAV4 (42 miles on the battery alone). Matt recommends Spline , a design app for 3D web experiences. Ceora’s recommendation is a clear phone case from Five Below , perfect for displaying a photo of your favorite K-pop idol (or, you know, your dog). Plus, ...
Apr 01, 2022•33 min•Ep. 440
Why has this empty NPM package been installed 700,000 times? We’ve got the answer for ya. A nice article and podcast on flow state, including the claim that 23 minutes is the magic number of minutes it takes to find your flow. Thanks to our Lifeboat badge winner of the week, Manjusha, for explaining how to: Parse a pipe-delimited file in Python See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Mar 29, 2022•23 min•Ep. 439
Vercel is a developer-first, frontend-focused platform. Together with Google and Meta, Vercel built Next.js , an open-source React framework that helps developers build high-performance web experiences with ease. PlanetScale is a MySQL-compatible serverless database platform that enables infinite SQL horizontal scale. Tools like Webflow and Squarespace have made web development accessible for casual programmers, but what does this mean for professional developers? This week’s Lifeboat badge goes...
Mar 25, 2022•37 min•Ep. 438
Once a company reaches a certain size, their customers might start asking for proof that it has good security and data habits. They want to know if there’s a business continuity plan in place in case disaster strikes. For many companies, formalizing this proof means submitting to an auditing process known as SOC 2. If you’re a developer at one of these companies, particularly if you provide or use SaaS applications, you’ll end up having to implement the controls these audits require. On this spo...
Mar 23, 2022•26 min•Ep. 437
Geriatric millennials unite. Learn more about GitHub’s move to put prebuilt Codespaces into public beta , plus check out CodeSandbox , home of self-proclaimed lazy developers. Meanwhile, in blockchain: Polygon, a solution designed to expand transaction efficiency and output for Ethereum, raised $450 million “to consolidate its lead in the race to scale Ethereum.” Is Decentraland the most annoying blockchain project? The competition is fierce. The 2022 Java Developer Productivity Report found tha...
Mar 22, 2022•35 min•Ep. 436
Danielle’s path to software engineering began when she was accepted into MIT’s Women’s Technology Program , an education and mentorship opportunity for high schoolers interested in engineering or computer science. She later earned her CS degree from MIT. Danielle’s first role out of college was a junior developer working on Meteor , a full-stack JavaScript framework that was just starting a GraphQL project they called Apollo. She tells the team how Meteor started looking at GraphQL and how that ...
Mar 18, 2022•37 min•Ep. 435
The team pays tribute to Microsoft’s Visual Studio , an IDE and source code editor that turns 25 this month. Read Simon Willison’s article on how companies can financially support the open-source contributors they rely on. Learn more about open source’s diversity problem, and how to address it, here and here . Why are K-pop NFTs so unpopular with fans? The Atlantic digs in. ICYMI: Listen to our conversation with HashiCorp cofounder Mitchell Hashimoto: Moving from CEO back to IC . See Privacy Pol...
Mar 15, 2022•29 min•Ep. 434
David is a CS major who worked in Apple’s music group in the 90s and went on to become CEO of eMusic in the aughts. At Venrock , David invested in early-stage crypto, consumer, and enterprise tech companies. He was early to crypto as a node maintainer on the Bitcoin blockchain and an Ethereum miner, setting up a rig in his basement several years ago. At CoinFund , he focuses on early- and growth-stage crypto and blockchain companies and technologies like Upshot , a platform for crowdsourced NFT ...
Mar 11, 2022•20 min•Ep. 433
Learn more about GitHub’s machine learning-based code scanning , which finds security issues before they make it to production. Google invests $100 million in a skills training program for low-income Americans . Is there a catch? Take2 is a New Zealand program that teaches incarcerated people to code: building marketable skills, opening up employment opportunities, and dramatically reducing recidivism. At the time of writing, Take2 has a 100% success rate in preventing recidivism. We have two ...
Mar 08, 2022•31 min•Ep. 432
Expensify is an expense management solution that integrates with your travel, ERP, and finance/accounting software. Check out their full list of integrations . Expensify engineers rely on Stack Overflow for Teams to make knowledge accessible and shareable, rather than wading through swathes of documentation. Read the case study . Flat organizations like Expensify have minimal or no middle management, meaning there’s no management layer between staff and executives. A similar model for decentrali...
Mar 04, 2022•38 min•Ep. 430
Ceora shouts out Mermaid , a JavaScript-based diagramming and charting tool that creates diagrams dynamically based on Markdown-inspired text definitions. Coinbase’s bouncing QR code ad proved so popular it crashed the app . Considered passé pre-pandemic, QR codes have obvious value now: they’re touch-free, easy to scan, and ubiquitous. (Just don’t call it a comeback .) In preparation for his move from New Zealand to Canada, Matt is overhauling his hardware and transitioning to an M1 MacBook Pro...
Mar 01, 2022•25 min•Ep. 429
Here’s a useful primer on functional programming with JavaScript. This tutorial will guide you in exploring the fundamentals of functional programming with React . If you’re looking for more info on functional programming in React, we’d like to tell you why hooks are the best thing to happen to React . Functional not your thing? Learn why object-oriented programming (OOP) has become such a dominant paradigm . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https:...
Feb 25, 2022•28 min•Ep. 428
Learn more about AlphaCode here . Check out an amazing video essay critiquing the NFT market, The Line Goes Up . Read up on Josh Wardle, the developer who built Wordle for his partner to help pass the time during the pandemic, then sold it to the NY Times for a sweet seven figures. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
Feb 22, 2022•21 min•Ep. 427
You can learn more about Clement's career on his LinkedIn and on Twitter (assuming you speak French). You can learn more about Dailymotion here and check out the roles they are hiring for here . You can find Cassidy Williams on Twitter and at her website . You can find Ceora Ford on Twitter and at her website . Our Lifeboat badge winner of the week is Swati Kiran, who helped solve an error causing permission problems in an angular app. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Californ...
Feb 18, 2022•20 min•Ep. 426
