Changelog Master Feed

The State of JS 2019 survey left many in awe of the beautifully rendered line graph created by Amelia Wattenberger. So we’ve brought her on JS Party to discuss how she built it! We’ll chat about all things D3, a JavaScript library for creating data visualizations, and even learn a bit about the CSS cascade. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog. DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with a 99.99% uptime SLA, and 24/7/365 world-class support to back that up. Get your $100 credit at do.co/changelog. Algolia – Our search partner. Algolia’s full suite search APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences across all platforms and devices. We’re using Algolia to power our site search here at Changelog.com. Get started for free and learn more at algolia.com. Featuring:Amelia Wattenberger – Website, GitHub, XEmma Bostian – GitHub, LinkedIn, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: CSS Cascade by Amelia State of JS overview survey Star Wars CSS Specificity Wars D3 website The Fullstack D3 book React Spring Pudding.cool Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Johnny and Jon are joined by Andy Williams to talk about some of the unusual ways developers are using Go. In this particular episode they deep dive into building GUIs and discuss all of the challenges imposed by trying to build a UI that is both cross platform and functional. How do you create buttons that work on both mobile and a desktop app? Should you even be designing both apps at the same time? Tune in to find out! Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with a 99.99% uptime SLA, and 24/7/365 world-class support to back that up. Get your $100 credit at do.co/changelog. Algorithms with Go – A free Go course where panelist Jon Calhoun teaches you how algorithms and data structures work, how to implement them in Go code, and where to practice at. Great for learning Go, learning about algorithms for the first time, or refreshing your algorithmic knowledge. Featuring:Andy Williams – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XJon Calhoun – Website, GitHub, XJohnny Boursiquot – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: Enlightenment Window Manager - Window manager mentioned on the show Shiny Go Bindings - A way to access Shiny with Go Qt Go Bindings - A way to interact with Qt in Go andlabs UI - GUI library in Go Fyne - GUI library in Go Wails - GUI library in Go using Vue.js Awesome Go - List of Go projects with a GUI section Hands on GUI Application Development in Go - Andrew’s book on GUI development Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Jon Thornton (Engineering Manager at Squarespace) joined the show to talk about tech debt by way of his post to the Squarespace engineering blog titled “3 Kinds of Good Tech Debt”. We talked through the concept of “good tech debt,” how to leverage it, how to manage it, who’s in charge of it, how it’s similar to ways we leverage financial debt, and how Squarespace uses tech debt to drive product development. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019 OR changelog2020. To learn more and get started head to linode.com/changelog. Retool – Retool makes it super simple to build back-office apps in hours, not days. The tool is is built by engineers, explicitly for engineers. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. Featuring:Jon Thornton – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:3 Kinds of Good Tech Debt ~> discuss “Tech debt” is a dirty word in the software engineering world. It’s often said with an air of regret; a past mistake that will eventually need to be atoned for with refactoring. Head to changelog.com/submit if you’ve written something your fellow devs would find interesting that you’d like us to promote. Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Mireille and Adam discuss shame as an emotional and experiential construct. We dive into the neural structures involved in processing this emotion as well as the factors and implications of our experience of shame. Shame is a natural response to the threat of vulnerability and perception of oneself as defective or inherently “not enough.” Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Mireille Reece, PsyD – LinkedInAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:What is shame? Brené Brown, leading researcher on shame, vulnerability and connection — ​​​​”Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.” The “hustle” of not enough Shame is the response to threat. It is a stress response. ​​Think of Shame as the inner critic. The one who berates and belittles you out of this place of fear of inadequacy or inherent flaw. Shame vs. guilt Shame = I AM bad/marred/irreparably flawed. Guilt = I DID something bad. Guilt is rooted in a behavior you did whereas shame is all encompassing, fundamentally who you are as defective or inadequate. Behavioral response Shame prompts hiding. Because when we feel ashamed, we don’t want to expose ourselves to others. If we “feel” or believe ourselves to be marred, it makes sense that we would be apt to hide. From an evolutionary perspective - ​​Shame is a signal that you aren’t part of the tribe, which would’ve been threatening or dangerous. ​​​Is the culture of today conditioning us to feel dis-content more often? “I stopped trying to keep up with the Jones’ because I realized that when I wake up someone moved the line.” Examine what you are optimizing for as opposed to applying the “one-size-fits-all” approach. How do I manage shame more adaptively? Identify the emotion. What is the perceived threat that I’m reacting to? Identify your tribe. Who can I connect with? Who’s part of my tribe? What is my system for soothing? I need to upload new soothing/calming data. It all comes back to being grounded in knowing what you’re optimizing for and recognizing that being who we are — being human, always involves vulnerability so we have to practice showing up. Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

We partnered with Red Hat to promote Season 4 of Command Line Heroes — a podcast about the people who transform technology from the command line up. Season 4 is all about hardware that changed the game. We’re featuring episode 1 from season 4 — called “Minicomputers: The soul of an old machine.” This is the story of Minicomputers and how they paved the way for the personal computers that could fit in a bag and, eventually, the phones in our pockets. Learn more and subscribe at redhat.com/commandlineheroes. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Command Line Heroes – A podcast from Red Hat about the people who transform technology from the command line up. Head to redhat.com/commandlineheroes to learn more and subscribe. Featuring:Saron Yitbarek – Website, GitHub, XAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes:They don’t fit in your pocket. But in their day, minicomputers were an order of magnitude smaller than the room-sized mainframes that preceded them. And they paved the way for the personal computers that could fit in a bag and, eventually, the phones in your pocket. 16-bit minicomputers changed the world of IT in the 1970s. They gave companies the opportunity for each engineer to have their own machines. But it wasn’t quite enough, not until the arrival of 32-bit versions. Carl Alsing and Jim Guyer recount their work at Data General to create a revolutionary new 32-bit machine. But their now legendary work was done in secret. Codenamed “Eagle,” their machine was designed to compete with one being built by another team in their own company. These engineers recall the corporate politics and intrigue required to keep the project going—and how they turned restrictions into advantages. Neal Firth discusses life on an exciting-but-demanding project. One where the heroes worked together because they wanted to, without expectations of awards or fame. And all three discuss how this story was immortalized in the non-fiction engineering classic, The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder The New Golden Age of Building with Soul by Jessie Frazelle The Minicomputers of the 70s by Georg Wittenburg Rise and Fall of Minicomputers by Gordon Bell Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Daniel and Chris do a deep dive into The AI Index 2019 Annual Report, which provides unbiased rigorously-vetted data that one can use “to develop intuitions about the complex field of AI”. Analyzing everything from R&D and technical advancements to education, the economy, and societal considerations, Chris and Daniel lay out this comprehensive report’s key insights about artificial intelligence. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with a 99.99% uptime SLA, and 24/7/365 world-class support to back that up. Get your $100 credit at do.co/changelog. The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. Featuring:Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: The AI Index 2019 Annual Report Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Anders Damsgaard is a climate science researcher working on cryosphere processes at the Department of Geophysics at Stanford University. He joined the show to talk with us about the intersection of open source and climate science. Specifically, we discuss a set of shell tools he created called The Scholarref Tools which allow you to perform most of the tasks required to gather the references needed during the writing phase of an academic paper. We also discuss climate science, physics, self hosting Git, and why Anders isn’t present on any “social” networks. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019 OR changelog2020. To learn more and get started head to linode.com/changelog. Retool – Retool makes it super simple to build back-office apps in hours, not days. The tool is is built by engineers, explicitly for engineers. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives. Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com. Featuring:Anders Damsgaard – WebsiteAdam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XJerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, XShow Notes: adamsgaard.dk The Scholarref Tools Why I deleted my GitHub account Anders Damsgaard’s photography stagit - Static git web viewer Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

It’s a new year which means companies are hiring and developers are interviewing. So we thought it would be fun to host a fun game of technical Jeopardy. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog. Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog. The Brave Browser – Browse the web up to 8x faster than Chrome and Safari, block ads and trackers by default, and reward your favorite creators with the built-in Basic Attention Token. Download Brave for free and give tipping a try right here on changelog.com. Featuring:Jake Dohm – GitHub, XEmma Bostian – GitHub, LinkedIn, XChristopher Hiller – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, XKevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XShow Notes:Here are some of the topics we covered which might be useful to know in a technical interview! You should never have to define any of these things but knowing their concepts and how they work will help you land a job! CSS Flexbox Froggy Flexbox Defense Polypane App Media queries Keyframes Specificity Selectors Pseudo classes / elements Pre-processors Combinators HTML Aside DOCTYPE Meta tag iFrame Canvas The Web HTTPS Cache Cookies TCP/IP JavaScript Const, let, var Scope / hoisting Undefined, null Protoypes / the prototype chain Promises Higher-order functions Callback functions Closures Map Set Event bubbling / delegation Functional programming Strict mode Prevent default Type of / instance of Miscellaneous Stack overflow WAI-ARIA & accessibility XSS attacks / security breaches SEO Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Carmen, Mat, and Jon are joined by Steve Francia and Julie Qiu to discuss the new Go.dev website. What was the motivation behind it? What technology was used to build it? How are they working to make package discovery better? And what resources are there to help you convince your manager to use Go on that upcoming project? Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog. Brain Science – For the curious! Brain Science is our new podcast exploring the inner-workings of the human brain to understand behavior change, habit formation, mental health, and being human. It’s Brain Science applied — not just how does the brain work, but how do we apply what we know about the brain to transform our lives. Algorithms with Go – A free Go course where panelist Jon Calhoun teaches you how algorithms and data structures work, how to implement them in Go code, and where to practice at. Great for learning Go, learning about algorithms for the first time, or refreshing your algorithmic knowledge. Featuring:Julie Qiu – GitHub, XSteve Francia – GitHub, XCarmen Andoh – GitHub, XMat Ryer – GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, XJon Calhoun – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: go.dev - A new hub for Go devs created by the Go team pkg.go.dev - The package discovery portion of Go.dev “Imported By” example - An example of a package and its imports on Go.dev go-discovery-feedback@google.com - Feedback email address go-licenses - A tool to check go package licenses Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Production ML systems include more than just the model. In these complicated systems, how do you ensure quality over time, especially when you are constantly updating your infrastructure, data and models? Tania Allard joins us to discuss the ins and outs of testing ML systems. Among other things, she presents a simple formula that helps you score your progress towards a robust system and identify problem areas. Join the discussionChangelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today!Featuring:Tania Allard – Website, GitHub, XChris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, XDaniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, XShow Notes: “What’s your ML score” talk “Jupyter Notebooks: Friends or Foes?” talk Joel Grus’s episode: “AI code that facilitates good science” Papermill nbdev nbval Books “DevOps For Dummies” by Emily Freeman Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!