Crush these metrics to become a more efficient engineer
Happy Saturday and welcome back to the newsletter! As always, read on for some of the best software engineering insights, opinions, and news, from Triplebyte’s Compiler blog and around the web.
//From Compiler
How to become a more efficient engineer – and show it with metrics
If you were to ask a fellow programmer or software engineer: “How can I be sure that I’m being productive enough at work each day?” You’d likely get an answer that’s as annoyingly unhelpful as this: “Well, it depends. It all hinges on what you’re trying to accomplish, how long you have each day to work on it, and what success looks like for that project.” Don’t worry, this blog isn’t going to leave you hanging. Check it out for actual tips, strategies, and examples of metrics that can be used to measure your productivity. read()
Does your app need a prediction model or an inference model?
There are two major ways to handle the “data science” problems that arise at the end of an engineering pipeline – inference and prediction. The models, or ways that we handle these problems, appear similar but handle the assumptions we make about the data in very different ways. Here’s a rundown, with real-world examples, of how to decide which solution to employ in your project and what you need to know to get started. read()
Coder, developer, engineer: All the (sometimes pointless) titles I've given myself over the years
Software engineer? Coder? Programmer? Developer? Architect? There are often some technical guidelines to what’s what with roles and titles in the software-maker world, but not always. In this blog, Stephan Miller, who’s taken on all of the above titles, lays out his personal experience with the “what’s in a name?” question. (Check the comments section for some other valuable takes on this, as well.) read()
//Around the web
😍 How to make your code reviewer fall in love with you. No one likes code reviews, and if you’re someone who often finds themself on the receiving end of bad code reviews, this goes double for you. Good news: A new and delightfully illustrated blog from developer Michael Lynch outlines all the various steps everyone can take to build a truly positive (or at least less contentious) relationship with your code reviewer. Some of his advice is common courtesy stuff (give your own code a once-over before turning it in) and some is format and procedure suggestions (narrowly scope changes and separate functional and non-functional changes). Check it out now – for the sake of whoever it is that has to process your spaghetti mess : ) read()
🏢 The software architectural patterns every software engineer needs to know. Wanted to give a quick shoutout for this blog by dev and tech lead Trung Anh Dang. It’s a zippy index to bookmark and occasionally review so that you can sound smart when talking about designing full apps and systems. Like so:
“Oh, you want to go with a pipe and filter architecture? Not a bad idea, but you’ll have to watch out for excessive parsing and unparsing leading to loss of performance and increased complexity.”
::Adjusts glasses::
📄 Six principles your resume should follow – so recruiters will read it. Here’s another hit from Gergely Orosz, the Pragmatic Engineer himself. In this job seeking tips blog, he gives suggestions to make your engineering resume stand out, including the idea to retailor your resume for each opportunity (considering both the job itself and whether a hiring manager or HR generalist will be reading it) and how to be more metric when explaining your experience. read()
🎂 Happy birthday, JavaScript! The web’s favorite programming language turned 25 this week. To celebrate, devs took to Twitter to properly roast it.
//Jobs
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