My wife has started her Master’s study at UC Berkeley, which is super exciting (She wrote about her journey to grad school here). Since she will take her classes remotely, I will be able to eavesdrop on her classes and get some free education as well. I am especially looking forward to a case-study class of tech companies.

However, we also ran into a predicament when she and I had meetings/classes at the same time. We live in a one-bedroom apartment, and our desks are sitting right next to each other. When we speak at the same time, our voices bleed into the other’s microphone and get in the way. But it’s already too late to get a bigger place since we just signed a new lease. Well, this explains why the housing price in the area went up.

Photo by Petr Macháček on Unsplash

---

Software Engineering ⚙️

TypeScript React Apollo – The Guild

In my current GraphQL-Typescript setup, I have to manually type individual useQuery and useMutation hooks, which is tedious and error-prone. This code generation tool autogenerates the typed hooks.

Relatedly, graphql-typescript-definitions from Shopify alleviates that problem by providing the necessary interfaces right from the graphql document. But it still requires manual typing at the end.

Svelte ❤ TypeScript – Svelte

The Svelte team recently announced that Svelte now supports Typescript. I have to admit that I had quite a simplistic view of what it means to support Typescript before reading this. The integration was quite involved since Svelte has its syntaxes and language server; the Svelte team extended its language server to understand Typescript and provide the language information to IDE based on the common interface.

jest-axe – Nick Colley

This accessibility testing tool integrates with Jest so that you can unit-test your components for their accessibility. I love that I only have to assert toHaveNoViolations at the container element. A word of caution though: this test does not guarantee your app’s accessibility.

People 💖

What Does Sponsorship Look Like? – Lara Hogan

I learned that, at a larger org, my access to opportunities (visible and impactful projects) matters as much as my ability to execute them. Without the opportunity, I can’t learn from experiences. Without the experience, few will offer the opportunity. Sponsorship, promoting others for the new opportunities, is a great tool to break that logjam. And I am deeply grateful to Lauren for giving me that chance.

Business 💸

Content, Cars, and Comparisons in the “Streaming Wars” – Matthew Ball

I always found how content accounting works strange. All content spends are treated as assets, and they are amortized over the same number of years when some turn out to be a dud right off the gate. The article reminds me that, even if accounting works mechanically, the quality of execution (talents, and IP) matters.