The outbreak of Coronavirus and its consequences make me think about the fragility of our society and lives. I hope everyone stays healthy and safe.

People ❤

The Horrifically Dystopian World of Software Engineering Interviews

For every successful hire, we have tens of horror stories like this. There can’t be an interview process to satisfy everyone, in terms of the resource constraints (for both candidates and interviewers), effectiveness/predictability, and interviewee experience. However, it still is important to remember that the candidates are people too.

On mid-career and managers

The key insight here is that people change over time. What I need now is different from what I needed five years ago. The same applies to the people around you. Do think about that.

Unlearning toxic behaviors in a code review culture

You have to be overly explicit when you are giving feedback because others don’t have the same context as you do. After reading this article, I realized that I sometimes pose alternatives but do not provide why they could be better. Something for me to improve.

Software Engineering 🌐

Rome: An experimental JavaScript toolchain

Rome, in their words, “aims to be a comprehensive tool for anything related to the processing of JavaScript source code.” I am generally skeptical of the tools that try to be-all, end-all. There usually is a subtle but essential use-case that can’t be covered by tools like this (80-20 rule). But, maybe, Rome will be good enough for 80% of the Javascript projects.

JavaScript Internationalization in 2020

It was amazing to see my Chrome console returns the following. I am about to remove a bunch of utility functions 🥳

new Intl.RelativeTimeFormat("en").format(-1, "days") // 1 day ago new Intl.RelativeTimeFormat("en").format(-2, "days") // 2 days ago new Intl.RelativeTimeFormat("ko").format(-1, "days") // 1일 전

Implementing an opaque type in typescript

By using the following technique, you can enforce validations at compile time in Typescript.

declare const validEmail: unique symbol;  type Email = string & {   [validEmail]: true }

Business 💸

The truth behind filter bubbles: Bursting some myths

I learned two things: first, “online news use on search and social media is more diverse,” and second, “this diversity is causing some kind of polarisation, in both attitudes and usage.” Then I remembered my parents only subscribed to newspapers that fit their views. Filter bubbles aren’t a thing.

Chinese smartphone brands build consortium to challenge Google Play domination

Another sign that the Chinese tech industry is going down on its own path, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.