#488 The silent majority

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The silent majority

In software development, the silent majority are the engineers who write the code, debug the programs, and solve the complex issues behind the scenes. They do not participate in controversial discussions about Visual Basic or Pascal — they just do their work in those languages without even knowing that there’s so much controversy surrounding their language of choice.

Git's database internals

This blog series will examine Git’s internals to help make your engineering system more efficient. Part I discusses how Git stores its data in packfiles using custom compression techniques.

Scrum Has Failed the Developers

Scrum (and Agile as a whole) promised to liberate the developers. It was supposed to be a new way of working that would break with the traditional approaches to delivery. It was an acknowledgement that software development isn’t the same as building a house or a car. Which calls for a different approach altogether.

Sharding & IDs at Instagram

With more than 25 photos and 90 likes every second, we store a lot of data here at Instagram. To make sure all of our important data fits into memory and is available quickly for our users, we’ve begun to shard our data — in other words, place the data in many smaller buckets, each holding a part of the data.

Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven

There’s nothing wrong with a fondness for data. The trouble begins when you begin to favor bad arguments that involve data over good arguments that don’t, or insist that metrics be introduced in realms where data can’t realistically be the foundation of a good argument.

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