Someone posted a comment on an old blog post this week (the old blog - not the old old blog). It’s a post from 2012 called The Rise of the Customer which (in short) is about how we (as developers) nee
neural networks Tiny Language Models Come of Age October 5, 2023 To better understand how neural networks learn to simulate writing, researchers trained simpler versions on synthetic children’s storie
The internet isn’t the best place to learn software architecture. While you can quickly read about dozens of novel ways to structure software applications the internet tends to pull people towards poo
This is another post in our Code Health series. A version of this post originally appeared in Google bathrooms worldwide as a Google Testing on the Toilet episode. You can download a printer-friendly
A version of this post originally appeared in Google bathrooms worldwide as a Google Testing on the Toilet episode. You can download a printer-friendly version to display in your office. By Tim Lyakho
23rd October 2023 Embeddings are a really neat trick that often come wrapped in a pile of intimidating jargon. If you can make it through that jargon, they unlock powerful and exciting techniques that
I’ve been very slowly working on writing about how Git works. I thought Ialready knew Git pretty well, but as usual when I try to explain something I’vebeen learning some new things. None of these thi
Welcome back. Have you thought about subscribing? It's free. seths.blog/subscribe “Yes” is magical. It brings possibility and forward motion. But it’s almost impossible without “no” and no can be just
Slack handles billions of inbound network requests per day, all of which traverse through our edge network and ingress load balancing tiers. In this blog post, we’ll talk about how a request flows — f
The exterior of an office building in New York. When workplaces are remade by a tectonic shift — women flooding into the work force, the rise of computing — it typically takes some time for economists, psychologists, sociologists and other scholars to gather data on its effects. So when employers…
When you have a big project to do, you should be totally focused—but that’s easier said than done. Whether a lack of of personal interest is keeping you from committing or distractions are coming from
For a pathogen to make us sick, it must overcome a lot. First it has to enter the body, bypassing natural barriers such as skin, mucus, cilia and stomach acid. Then it needs to reproduce; some bacteri
If you've stumbled upon this page and need social proof as to why you should read it, here's what other folks think: One of, if not the best article on the topic of product positioning. — Hiten Shah (
The top 10 design mistakes I identified in 1996 are still bad for web usability and are still found on many websites. So in that sense, not much has changed over the last three years. But unfortunatel
A few thoughts I have about writing: Writing is an art, and art is subjective . Novelist William Maughan said there are three rules to good writing. “Unfortunately no one knows what they are.” I actua
In stories, you will often find the motif of a powerful demon that can be controlled only by knowing its true name. Once the hero finds out that name, through cunning dialogue or by investigating ancient tomes, they can turn things around and banish the demon!
I firmly believe writing code is not…
One Wednesday, I crawled across the passenger seat to get in my car. I’d just struggled through a five-mile run. Now it was my mind’s turn to race: The driver’s side door needed fixing—I made a mental
These are speaking notes for my October 4th, QCon talk in San Francisco. Slides for this talk. Over the course of my career, I’ve frequently heard from colleagues, team membersand random internet stra
A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question. Almost everyone cares what someone th
The internet is full of opinions about how to manage your time. There are even whole books written on it. However, they miss an important nuance: it’s not the quantity of time that you are able to jug
I’ve seen lots of advice about git commits and messages over the years—some good, some not so good. This post will go through what works for me. Note: I’m no git workflow expert, these are just my per
Have you had someone ask you for a favor that seemed unreasonable — a referral you didn’t want to make, a long-term stay at your place, a sizable cash loan? But because they asked, you felt obliged to
Introduction The email hits your inbox, and you let out a little groan: It’s time, once again, for performance reviews. On top of your already jam-packed to-do list, you’ve now got to set aside time f
information theory Data Compression Drives the Internet. Here’s How It Works. May 31, 2023 One student’s desire to get out of a final exam led to the ubiquitous algorithm that shrinks data without sac
Imagine eighty construction workers on a job site. Every couple of weeks, there is a safety issue on the site, and work stops until the issue is resolved. Pausing work delays when the building can sta
Have you heard? My new book Continuous Discovery Habits is now available. Get the product trio's guide to a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery. Many teams, like sales and mark
Imagine a spectrum.
On one side, you have a team basking in the warm glow of a sunny afternoon, free from constraints, shipping high-quality products at will, with instant access to customers and the best tools, and not a care in the world.
On the other side, you have a team thrown into a Sisyphean…
I srael has just experienced the worst day in its history. More Israeli civilians have been slaughtered in a single day than all the civilians and soldiers Israel lost in the 1956 Sinai war, the 1967
Photo by Daiji Umemoto on Unsplash The weakest part of remote / part-time work research is how we assess productivity. For most research in this area, the job being measured barely qualifies for what
President James Garfield died because the best doctors in the country didn’t believe in germs, probing Garfield’s bullet wound after an assassination attempt with ungloved, unwashed fingers that almos
“See, hear, smell, taste, touch… With our five senses, we can learn so much!” You’ve probably heard some variation of this nursery rhyme. Most languages have their own version, walking kids through ea
When psychologist Jonathan Smallwood set out to study mind-wandering about 25 years ago, few of his peers thought that was a very good idea. How could one hope to investigate these spontaneous and unp
This is the latest issue of my newsletter. Each week I cover the latest research and perspectives on developer productivity. This week I read Developers talking about code quality by Jürgen Börstler a
As a company that’s been remote-first since day one, GitHub Engineering has learned a lot about how to communicate effectively across time zones, teams, and tools. We’ve distilled our experience into
"Diving Into Email Hell" by s0.rumi (opens in new tab) First of all, if you're reading this because you unwillingly have to deal with email development, you have my deepest condolences for being one o
On Oct. 26, 2022, Elon Musk enjoyed his first and last good day as the head of Twitter (now X). Following a $44 billion acquisition he tried to scuttle but was legally forced into closing, he attempte
The limits of myth-making are apparent in Walter Isaacson’s new biography. Illustration by William Joel / The Verge The trouble began days before the biography was even published. CNN had a story summ
Screenshots of the note-taking app Obsidian. Image: Obsidian This is Platformer , a newsletter on the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy from Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer. Sign up here . To
Any database schema is likely to have plenty of text fields. In this article, I divide text fields into three categories: Small texts : names, slugs, usernames, emails, etc. These are text fields that
O ne of the first images of AI I encountered was a white, spectral, hostile, disembodied head . It was in the computer game Neuromancer , programmed by Troy Miles and based on William Gibson’s cyberpu