OK, friends, real talk now. The nautical fact free-ride has come to an end. It’s time for you to endure the mandatory marketing pitch for my new startup.
One day Hecate will be a whole suite of tools to help all kinds of humans stay in the loop on rapidly changing code. Today I want to share what the first tool in that suite will be: a Github app to share merge notifications with non-technical stakeholders such as your product managers or your customer support team. If that sounds useful to you please enrol in the private beta.
With that out of the way, please enjoy this fortnight’s links dump.
Frontend
Identifying, Auditing, and Discussing Third Parties
Helpful guide to working through the technical and political problems of third party code slowing down your website.
New CSS Features That Are Changing Web Design
Long post, but worth scanning at a high level if you’re a designer. Not enough content gets published showing how new browser capabilities can lead to new aesthetics in web design.
My struggle to learn React
Turns out it wasn’t just Brad’s struggle. React up-ends so much about frontend dev it’s hard to transfer skills.
Building forms using React — everything you need to know
In keeping with the above, a handy primer on how to do forms in React because everything you used to know is wrong.
The best way to bind event handlers in React
More handy tips, I kept screwing this one up myself, but maybe that’s because I’m a dumbass.
Ops
How Your Systems Keep Running Day After Day - John Allspaw
If I get a fresh Allspaw link, it goes in the newsletter no question.
Want to Debug Latency?
Tech agnostic how-to on debugging latency in systems. Worth including in your on-call training material for the general troubleshooting approach.
Write code that’s easy to delete, and easy to…
Moving past a superficial idea of “clean code” to focus on what really makes code debuggable. I’ve agreed with nearly everything this blog has ever posted.
Google Cloud Platform Blog: SRE vs. DevOps: competing standards or close friends?
High level overview of SRE concepts and how the relate to everyday “devops” practices. The labels are garbage but the points are not.
Is K8s Too Complicated?
Betteridge’s Law of Headlines does not apply.
Culture
Aurora Arktika on Instagram”
Rather than sharing a nautical fact with you this fortnight, I’ll instead send you to my new favourite nautical photo.
Tech Platforms and the Knowledge Problem
Tech Platforms are upending one of the core tenets of markets - that central planning can’t work because too much distributed economic information is unknowable.
Reader Request Week 2018 #6: The Fall(?!?!?) of Heinlein
Robert Heinlein was one of my favourite authors when I was younger but he’s meaning less and less to me and the rest of the world over time. John Scalzi has some things to say about it.
Business & Management
Getting started with “Getting Things Done”
I was coaching someone last week about time management and shared with them the original post that go me into GTD. Now I’ve shared it with you too.
How to Run a Meeting Without Talking Too Much
Tactics on running a meeting without running your mouth. If I ever master the technique I’ll let you know.
Running an Agency
Hard won lessons in running a service business distilled into a very well written post.
15 Books Every Indie Hacker Should Read
I cannot resist an annotated bibliography, especially when I’m the exact target market.
Team reviews – Marc Hedlund – Medium
Excellent process addition for managers and managers of managers. If I was still running a team I would adopt this.
Gibson’s Bankruptcy is a Cautionary Tale about Corporate “Innovation”
Another strategic compare and contrast post with a lot of insight, this time in the Guitar market, but relevant lessons for anyone really. Gibson’s bankrupt, and Fender is growing faster than the market.
GDPR
What you think you know about the GDPR… and why you may be wrong. - Privacy, Security and Information Law Fieldfisher
Everyone stop panicking! OK, panic a little. GDPR == RIP my inbox.
EmailOctopus - Privacy Policy
My favourite updated privacy policy. Clear and understandable. I’m gonna model mine after it.
Thaks for reading. You can find this issue online here. If you know anyone who might enjoy these emails, feel free to send them to the subscribe form