A bit of a personal rant —

It is difficult when I see a situation that runs counter to my principles, justice as fairness (Rawlsian), and tolerance. I try hard to understand and empathize with those that upset me and also wonder if I need to take a stand against the situation. I recognize that I won’t be able to change those against me. I also feel some responsibility for the less privileged victims to show solidarity. I worry about personal consequences as well, the stress and possible reputation hit. I wonder if private rants like this are productive.

Photo by Frank Busch on Unsplash

Software Engineering 🌐

Formik – Jared Palmer

I heard of Formik before, but I was never convinced enough to use it. I felt that in simple forms, useState and prop drilling weren’t too bad. I gave it a try last week, and it was an instant game-changer. It made building a form with a deep component tree a breeze. Validation and async states like “isSaving” are easy to manage, as well. Most of the frontend work is form building anyway, so give it a try.

Enduring techniques from the Technology Radar – Thoughtworks

This article surveys mainstream concepts and techniques in the software industry. Reading this article will allow you to see what you have missed. I found a couple of ideas, such as consumer-driven contract testing, to catch up on.

Documenting Architecture Decisions – Michael Nygard

One of the hardest things to track during the life of a project is the motivation behind certain decisions.

I first read this article in March 2019, but I clearly haven’t internalized the learning since the idea felt new again. The article this time is more timely and applicable since I am about to leave one project to the newer members of the team.

People ❤

Designing in an all-remote company – Christie Lenneville

A GitLab’s UX Director wrote about how their UX designers work in a distributed fashion with some good ideas to create an effective design organization (like recording meetings). She touched upon this point briefly, but I want to emphasize that both synchronous and asynchronous communications have their roles.

When you have time, take a look at their recorded design showcases too.

Jeff’s Letter to the Angular Team and Community – Jeff Cross

Sadly, another article on poor leadership in a prominent tech community. Since it is very long, here is a tl;dr: Angular leadership has been putting up the facade that everyone is happy and aligned while imposing ironclad micromanagement internally.

On a similar theme, here is one on Elm leadership that I shared before: https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/why-im-leaving-elm/

Business 💸

It’s Time to Build – Marc Andreessen

Marc Andreessen wrote an emotional piece on how the United States should change, given the lackluster response to the pandemic. He criticizes the inability to “build,” and produce, and start investing in those capacities. Humans are hard to change without a crisis, which this pandemic is. But polarized politics, among other things, will probably squander the chance.

How Medium became the best and worst place for coronavirus news – The Verge

Using any sort of user-generated content looks like a losing proposition these days. Either you censor it and get dinged or not censor it and get dinged.