thelinklist.dev

It's Juuuuuuune! Another round of hot links fresh of the press. We've got complexity, we've got focusing on what matters, what more could you ask for? Let's Go!

1. Carving The Scheduler Out Of Our Orchestrator (26 minutes)

This blog post details how fly.io transitioned from using Hashicorp's Nomad scheduler to their own. I'm a huge fan of Nomad so it's interesting to read on where it falls short. Nomad's centralized scheduling approach was not something I would have anticipated creating so many issues. Good engineering practice says it's good to avoid re-inventing the wheel. But if it's a problem core to the business, it makes sense to invest your focus there. See link 6 about choosing boring technology.

2. Github Repo: Glow

Glow is such a cool tool. Think less, but much more pretty. The company behind the tool is charm.sh. If you enjoy all sorts of pretty command line tools, be sure to check out their other repos.

3. The broken window to the developer's soul (5 minutes)

In criminology, the broken windows theory states that visible signs of crime, antisocial behaviour and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes. Now, hopefully, nobody reading this is committing crimes to their code repos. This article by Tiago Franco suggests that the core idea also applies to code quality. Messy code can lead developers to subconsciously lower their own coding standards. That's why it's so important to see values of high standards emulated from the top down in an organization. If it's not valued at the top, you're not going to have fun swimming against the current.

4. That's Not an Abstraction, That's Just a Layer of Indirection (5 minutes)

If you've ever had to deal with code that has poor abstractions, this will hit home. In this post, Fernando Hurtado Cardenas critiques the overuse of superficial abstractions in software development. We're all a little guilty of this the first time we learn about "Don't repeat yourself" (DRY). If this kind of stuff interests you, I highly recommend reading A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout. He's also got a Talks at Google presentation you can watch as well.

5. Evil tip: avoid "easy" things (4 minutes)

Yossi Kreinin offers a satirical yet insightful perspective on task selection in professional environments. I don't necessarily agree with everything in the article, but it made me think. It is always a good idea to consider where a task falls on the Eisenhower Matrix before you take it on. Making time for the important stuff requires intentional planning, it doesn't magically happen. Like making time to write a monthly newsletter when you want to watch Malcolm in the Middle reruns.

6. Choose Boring Technology (12 minutes)

This one almost feels like a gimmie given its popularity, but it's always a good reminder. Dan McKinley's essay, "Choose Boring Technology," advocates for selecting mature, well-understood technologies over newer, unproven ones. New technology is the siren's call that brings an engineer's ship of attention to ruin. There are some legit scenarios where new technology is the right choice, but it takes an honest assessment of the company's needs. Boring is good, save your brain juices for the real problems.

thelinklist.dev is a project by Cody Hiar.

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