Bas' Take on Tech: Unlimited PTO, Clean Code, CRISPR
đď¸ Buzz
Apple could start shipping touch screen MacBooks in 2025.
More changes at Twitter again: They apparently shut down critical parts of their APIs. Third-party clients like Twitterific stopped working. In addition, they will shut down Revue tomorrow. So this is the last newsletter you get from here. Next week this newsletter will be sent from another platform.
Microsoft has announced unlimited time off for their US-based employees. What seems like a generous offer and hence a probable turnaround amidst all the layoffs we continue to see in tech, in reality, is another way to improve their balance sheet: First, they do not have to build up accruals as they'd have to do with fixed contractual days off. And second, in the current economic climate, they probably expect that their offer is underused rather than exploited.
𧚠Clean Code and Architecture
Recently, there was a vivid discussion on Hacker News on whether people like Software Engineering or not. While the way companies do it with a lot of redundant planning, endless meetings and discussions is most likely a turn-off for most developers that just want to get their job done, a good software architecture (and a plan for executing) is undoubtedly a crucial part of the journey to shipping the final product. An article describing how a team deliberately reduced their technical debt is an exciting read. If you ever need to convince your manager that this is important, the article presents impressive manager-friendly metrics.
"A Skepticâs Guide to Software Architecture Decisions" is another interesting read on communicating effectively in design decision discussions.
âď¸ In other newsâŚ
As someone who likes to investigate tech history, I recently enjoyed this timeline of web browser engines from 1990 until today.
In the life science field, there have been two exciting developments in CRISPR technology for gene editing: We probably will eat gene-edited meat in the future, and the CRISPR-Cas12a2 structure seems like gene-editing on steroids. If these discoveries turn out to be accurate, this could radically change the way we think about medical treatments.
By the way, do you like chatting about nerdy topics? I had so much fun doing coffee chats with fellow devs last year. I'd love to chat with you, too. I have some open spots on my calendly.
đ Shameless Plug: bookmarks.email
Last year, I made bookmarks.email. This service uses your native Twitter bookmarks and sends out a daily email digest of those. No need to mention a bookmarking bot publicly. I use it to search through my bookmarks in GMail.
This little project has been featured on Betalist and ProductHunt.
đ Sabrina's Perspective
Sabrina Pyles is an artist, writer, and programmer based out of Washington, D.C. She enjoys coding applications that bring out creativity in everyday people. I asked her about the exciting technologies she has learned. Here is her answer:
This year, I went from building basic project proof-of-concept sites in Python/Django to utilizing React and Node to dig into more robust APIs and more creative and flexible DOM manipulation. I also resumed my use of Python in Jupyter notebooks to prototype data science, web-scraping, and machine learning modules. Last year I took Andrew Ngâs brilliant Coursera machine learning course. Fast.ai is another great way to learn basic machine learning. This year, with the expansion of API functionality from companies like OpenAI, I was able to play around with NLP functionality with much more ease and velocity.Â
My plans for next year are to combine my Python and JavaScript skills to create beautiful user experiences, dynamic animations, and complex functionality for machine learning backends in Python. In particular, I will be using semantic search and embeddings to create apps intended not to replace the userâs creativity with machine learning, but to use it as a springboard that reflects their own thoughts back at them. If you have only used OpenAIâs playground prototyping feature and basic APIS, I highly recommend embeddings as an accessible next step to get more custom functionality from GPT-3 (and soon 4!) without needing to get too deep into the weeds.
đ What else?
I have changed this newsletter from âoccasionalâ to at least once every two weeks. The new format not only contains curated news and insights from the tech world but also sets the stage for fellow developers.Â
I will ask people about their journeys in the tech world and also in life. Iâm pretty sure there is much to learn from listening to other peopleâs experiences, and I am excited to share that with you!Â
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