(Almost) Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years running infrastructure at a startup
This is an awesome write up about decisions made on operations.
weeklyfoo #20 / 2024-02-19infra
🚀 Read it!
1-billion row challenge with Node.js
Great read if you want to know how to speed up your code.
weeklyfoo #67 / 2025-01-13performance
10 hard-to-swallow truths they won't tell you about software engineer job
2024 Guide to Goals for Software Engineers
Personally I love tipps about getting better. This blog post is all around setting goals.
weeklyfoo #14 / 2024-01-07goals
40 Life Lessons I Know at 40 (That I Wish I Knew at 20)
Practical lessons on career, health, and relationships that you can take action on now
weeklyfoo #43 / 2024-07-29life
42.parquet – A Zip Bomb for the Big Data Age
50 things we’ve learned about building successful products
6 CSS Snippets Every Front-End Developer Should Know In 2025
I think every front-end developer should know how to enable page transitions, transition a dialog, popover, and details, animate light n’ dark gradient text, type safe their CSS system, and add springy easing to animation.
weeklyfoo #69 / 2025-01-27css
A Rant about Front-end Development
A short guide to mastering keyboard shortcuts on GitHub
Say goodbye to constant mouse clicking and hello to seamless navigation with GitHub shortcuts.
weeklyfoo #30 / 2024-04-29github
A student asked how I keep us innovative. I don't.
AI 2027
We predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution.
weeklyfoo #79 / 2025-04-07aifuture
AIAIAI
How tired are we collectively about AI? Are we over it yet? Can you even hear about it anymore? I’m sorry if you can’t, because this essay will be entirely about it.
weeklyfoo #51 / 2024-09-23ai
All my favorite tracing tools: eBPF, QEMU, Perfetto, new ones I built and more
Anyone can Access Deleted and Private Repository Data on GitHub
You can access data from deleted forks, deleted repositories and even private repositories on GitHub. And it is available forever. This is known by GitHub, and intentionally designed that way.
weeklyfoo #43 / 2024-07-29securitygithub
Ask for Advice, Not Permission
Backlog size is inversely proportional to how often you talk to customers
Becoming an Engineering Manager - Is It For You?
Great and entertaining read! Just a five question quiz. Simple. Quick. True!
weeklyfoo #18 / 2024-02-05career
Bloom Filters
First time I read about bloom filters. But the reduction in size for some special use cases is impressive.
weeklyfoo #21 / 2024-02-26algorithms
Brutally honest career advice to my younger self
Build It Yourself
Another day, another rant about dependencies. from me. This time I will ask you that we start and support a vibe shift when it comes to dependencies.
weeklyfoo #70 / 2025-02-03dependencies
Building Reddit’s Frontend with Vite
Cloudflare, Unikernels & Bare Metal: Life of a Prisma Postgres Query
Prisma Postgres is the most innovative PostgreSQL database on the market. In this article, we dive deep into its technology stack, which enables lightning-fast queries, global caching, real-time events, and more.
weeklyfoo #73 / 2025-02-24prismapostgrescloudlfareunikernels
Collection of insane and fun facts about SQLite
Command Line Interface Guidelines
An open-source guide to help you write better command-line programs, taking traditional UNIX principles and updating them for the modern day.
weeklyfoo #19 / 2024-02-12cli
console.delight
I already knew that you can style texts in the browser console. But those examples in this post are awesome!
weeklyfoo #16 / 2024-01-22browserconsole
Context-switching - one of the worst productivity killers in the engineering industry
Nothing gets done at the end of the day. Don’t worry, we got you covered!
weeklyfoo #24 / 2024-03-18workos
CSS is Logical
15 points listed by Geoff Graham why CSS is logical. Quick read, and very true!
weeklyfoo #19 / 2024-02-12css
Dangit, Git!?!
Bad situations described in plain english and the git solutions for it.
weeklyfoo #68 / 2025-01-19git
Dear Europe, please wake up – eu/acc
Death by a thousand microservices
What a fun and really good blog post. One of my highlights this week.
weeklyfoo #1 / 2023-10-07architecture
Decision-Making Pitfalls for Technical Leaders
Tech’s favorite party trick is promoting programmers into leadership roles with zero transition coaching, or even a briefing on what the role entails.
weeklyfoo #74 / 2025-03-03leadership
Do not use secrets in environment variables and here's how to do it better
We developers are well too fond of using environment variables to set application configuration and often use it to store secrets and other sensitive information.
weeklyfoo #54 / 2024-10-14secretssecurity
Dotenv is dead
Good tips how to use the built-in .env support in Node v20 together with zod
weeklyfoo #2 / 2023-10-16dotenvnodezod
Dumb Leadership Mistakes I’ve Made
eu/acc
Everything I've learned so far about running local LLMs
If you want to dig into local LLMs you should read this first.
weeklyfoo #59 / 2024-11-18llmsai
Explain Like I'm Five
If you can’t explain something simply, then you don’t understand it.
weeklyfoo #5 / 2023-11-05eli5
File Over App: A Philosophy for Digital Longevity
My take on the ‘file over app’ philosophy and why it’s essential for keeping my data resilient and built to last.
weeklyfoo #60 / 2024-11-25filesprivacy
Founder Mode
General assumption: the management of a startup is changing towards manager mode - the well-known way of managing and taught in business schools. Founder mode is less known and understood, but may be more effective.
weeklyfoo #49 / 2024-09-09startupsleadership
From Chaos to Clarity - My Journey with Obsidian
Git in Zed, natively
Support for native Git staging, committing, pushing, and pulling in Zed is coming.
weeklyfoo #75 / 2025-03-10zedgit
Hardest Problem in Computer Science: Centering Things
Help, I see a problem and no one is prioritizing it!
Hiring (and managing) cracked engineers
Cracked - Term used for people who are insanely good at something
weeklyfoo #35 / 2024-06-03careerproductivity
How AI Takeover Might Happen in 2 Years
I’m not a natural “doomsayer.” But unfortunately, part of my job as an AI safety researcher is to think about the more troubling scenarios.
weeklyfoo #72 / 2025-02-17aifuture
How AI-assisted coding will change software engineering: hard truths
A field guide that also covers why we need to rethink our expectations, and what software engineering really is. A guest post by software engineer and engineering leader Addy Osmani
weeklyfoo #67 / 2025-01-13llmsaiengineering
How fast is your shell?
How I’ve run major projects
An attempt to describe my playbook for when I’m being intense about project management.
weeklyfoo #77 / 2025-03-24projectsengineering
How not to learn Rust
I’ve seen too many good programmers struggle learning Rust, or even give up. Here are the mistakes I’ve seen which may make you fail at learning Rust. I hope this list will help you avoid them.
weeklyfoo #68 / 2025-01-19rust
How Stripe Creates the Best Documentation in the Tech Industry
How to (and how not to) design REST APIs
You cannot read it often enough, there are so many bad designed REST APIs in the wild.
weeklyfoo #5 / 2023-11-05restapi
How to be more concise
The truth about why it’s so hard to be concise, and 9 tactics I use to tighten my communication
weeklyfoo #45 / 2024-08-12productivity
How to be the best programmer, according to Daniel Terhorst-North
Great programmers are not born; they are made - says Daniel Terhorst-North, the author of the viral Twitter thread on the best programmer he knows.
weeklyfoo #81 / 2025-04-21engineeringperformance
How to become a more effective engineer
The importance of soft skills, implicit hierarchies, getting to “small wins”, understanding promotion processes and more.
weeklyfoo #58 / 2024-11-11careerengieering
How to Build Anything Extremely Quickly
Do outline speedrunning - Recursively outline an MVP, speedrun filling it in, and only then go back and perfect.
weeklyfoo #37 / 2024-06-17productivity
How to document your JavaScript package
How to Help Underperformers
On systemic performance, the accountability dial, feedback, and the underperformance checklist.
weeklyfoo #41 / 2024-07-14career
How to save $13.27 on your sAAs bill
Building your own analytics tool. But the exciting part is how entertaining this story is written!
weeklyfoo #44 / 2024-08-05analytics
How to scale a large codebase
Good advices by Vercel, lots of things I’m personally also do since ages. Nevertheless a good read!
weeklyfoo #7 / 2023-11-19structurecodebase
How to send progress updates
How to Write Blog Posts that Developers Read
I recently spoke to a developer who tried blogging but gave up because nobody was reading his posts. I checked out his blog, and it was immediately obvious why he didn’t have any readers.
weeklyfoo #78 / 2025-03-31blogging
How we deleted 4195 code files in 9 hours
htmx sucks
I Accidentally Saved Half A Million Dollars
I asked 100 devs why they aren’t shipping faster. Here’s what I learned
I spent five years building a web app, posted it on Hacker News, and got my first $1.
I've Built My First Successful Side Project, and I Hate It
If Not React, Then What?
Frameworkism isn’t delivering. The answer isn’t a different tool, it’s the courage to do engineering.
weeklyfoo #62 / 2024-12-09frameworksreact
Internet Artifacts
Interviews in the Age of AI: Ditch Leetcode - Try Code Reviews Instead
Good approach to use code reviews instead of coding challenges
weeklyfoo #3 / 2023-10-22hiringinterviews
JavaScript Visualized: Promise Execution
Deep dive into promises. Check out the animations <3
weeklyfoo #27 / 2024-04-08javascriptpromises
Leading Effective Engineering Teams - a Deepdive
What makes software teams effective, and how do the TL, EM and TLM roles differ?
weeklyfoo #48 / 2024-09-02performanceengineering
Leading From The Front
Lessons learned in 35 years of making software
Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career
Look out, kids: PHP is the new JavaScript
What an entertaining read about Laravel. I know, it’s php, but wow.
weeklyfoo #50 / 2024-09-16phplaravel
Meet Nightshade, the new tool allowing artists to ‘poison’ AI models with corrupted training data
Microsoft taught Apple nothing
I love apple products, but the latest news go in the absolute wrong direction. Besides lots of twitter posts DHH writes down his thoughts in this article.
weeklyfoo #16 / 2024-01-22apple
My sales pitch for TypeScript
If you’re still not convinced about TypeScript. Dr. Axel Rauschmayer has a great sales pitch for TypeScript.
weeklyfoo #76 / 2025-03-17typescript
Notes for new hires
Numbers To Know For Managing (Software Teams)
This is a collection of very true topics, written in a very entertaining way.
weeklyfoo #40 / 2024-07-08management
Optimizing Javascript for fun and for profit
Some good hints that can bring a lot of performance benefits.
weeklyfoo #25 / 2024-03-25javascriptperformance
Passkeys - under the hood
Please, don’t force me to log in
Protecting your time from predators in large tech companies
If you’re a competent software engineer at a large tech company, your time is in very high demand. Lots of people will want you to do things. You should be very selective about how you handle these requests, and definitely avoid saying yes to everyone.
weeklyfoo #69 / 2025-01-27engineering
Random Thoughts 15 years into Software Engineering
React Like a Pro
Refactoring has a price. Not refactoring has a cost. Either way, you pay.
Next time you thing about refactoring your code base remember this
weeklyfoo #4 / 2023-10-30refactoring
Sam Altman: Productivity
I love to learn how others get more productive. Here’s one by Sam Altman.
weeklyfoo #6 / 2023-11-12productivity
Senior Engineer Fatigue
As you move deeper into your engineering career, a peculiar phenomenon starts to set in — a phase I like to call the onset of Senior Wisdom.
weeklyfoo #38 / 2024-06-24productivity
Software Design is Knowledge Building
I think every software engineer knows a similar story. Very well written and on point!
weeklyfoo #66 / 2025-01-06engineering
Software development topics I've changed my mind on after 6 years in the industry
Some important learnings from my 20 years of engineering life
Some of My Favorite Things – Postgres Queries
Speaking for Hackers
How to keep a roomful of programmers entertained when your competition is the internet. Awesome guide how to do public speaking the right way.
weeklyfoo #18 / 2024-02-05talks
Stars and Guardians
Stealing credentials via polymorphic Chrome Extension
A few days ago, I came across new research explaining a novel cybersecurity attack via polymorphic Chrome Extension. After watching the demo video, I was curious to understand how exactly it could be implemented and decided to spend some time recreating it.
weeklyfoo #81 / 2025-04-21security
Text Manipulation Kung Fu for the Aspiring Black Belt
The “errors” that mean you’re doing it right
Some things appear to be mistakes, but in fact should be celebrated as the expected outcomes of great decisions.
weeklyfoo #17 / 2024-01-28errorsdev
The 14 pains of building your own billing system
You want to build your own billing, because it’s basically just a spreadsheet? Read this article ;)
weeklyfoo #22 / 2024-03-04billing
The Architecture Behind A One-Person Tech Startup
The Best Programmers I Know
I have met a lot of developers in my life. Lately, I asked myself: What does it take to be one of the best? What do they all have in common?
weeklyfoo #80 / 2025-04-14engineering
The Pragmatic Engineer in 2023
The articles you enjoyed most this year, my personal favorites, and a recap of an unusually turbulent year in tech.
weeklyfoo #12 / 2023-12-242023
The Senior Shortcut
Simple tasks can be solved by AI, so there’s no need to hire Junior devs anymore. w00t
weeklyfoo #55 / 2024-10-21leadershipengineering
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
The Three Cs: 🤝 Concatenate, 🗜️ Compress, 🗳️ Cache
The Ultimate Guide for Making the Best Career Choices in Tech
First time read about the Hierarchy of Career Priorities. Nothing totally new to me, but nice to see it put into a framework.
weeklyfoo #15 / 2024-01-14career
There are a lot of ways to break up long tasks in JavaScript.
It’s very common to intentionally break up long, expensive tasks over multiple ticks of the event loop. But there are sure are a lot of approaches to choose from. Let’s explore them.
weeklyfoo #71 / 2025-02-10javascript
Things I wish someone would have told me about configuring VSCode
Three Laws of Software Complexity (or: why software engineers are always grumpy)
Traits I Value
Unsafe Pricing at Any Scale
Especially the part about blocking AI bots is a mandatory read!
weeklyfoo #39 / 2024-07-01serverless
Vim for React Developers
A bite-sized course to get you quickly productive with Vim.
weeklyfoo #52 / 2024-09-30vimnvimcheatsheet
Visualizing algorithms for rate limiting
Solid written blog post about rate limiting including examples and playgrounds.
weeklyfoo #34 / 2024-05-27rate-limiting
Was Javascript really made in 10 days?
We have used too many levels of abstractions and now the future looks bleak
We need more zero config tools
We've Been Lied To About Work
My big, depressing, and optimistic theory for why it’s so hard to find and keep a job that makes you happy
weeklyfoo #48 / 2024-09-02career
Web Almanac
Weird things engineers believe about Web development
It’s the first time I read this post, didn’t know of the version from 2022. And wow, this blog post is really good.
weeklyfoo #15 / 2024-01-14webdev
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
Why I still self host my servers (and what I've recently learned)
Why I’m skeptical of rewriting JavaScript tools in “faster” languages
Writes and Write-Nots
I’m usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won’t be many people who can write.
weeklyfoo #57 / 2024-11-04engineering
Yes, good DevEx increases productivity. Here is the data.
Short read with lots of prooven insights about dev productivity.
weeklyfoo #17 / 2024-01-28githubproductivity
You can’t do that because I hate you.
You don't need JavaScript for that
Super nice article, there’s also a native element for a color picker.
weeklyfoo #11 / 2023-12-17javascripthtmlcss
You should keep a developer’s journal
A developer’s journal is a place to define the problem you’re solving and record what you tried and what worked.
weeklyfoo #36 / 2024-06-10productivity
Zod v3.24.0
This is the first version of Zod to implement the Standard Schema spec.
weeklyfoo #65 / 2024-12-30zodschema