#619 – March 30, 2025
Great for prototypes but not for production system
"Vibe Coding" vs Reality
11 minutes by Cendyne
This article critiques the emerging "Vibe Coding" trend where programmers rely heavily on LLM agents to generate code with minimal human intervention. While these AI tools show impressive capabilities in creating working prototypes and handling simple tasks, they consistently make elementary mistakes that experienced developers wouldn't tolerate in production environments, including security vulnerabilities and poor code organization. Cendyne argues that despite advances in autonomous coding agents, current LLM limitations around context windows, memory retention, and reliable performance mean that "Vibe Coding" remains unsuitable for professional software development in 2025.
Godspeed is a blazing fast, 100% keyboard driven to-do manager
sponsored by Otto Labs
Every action in Godspeed can be done from the keyboard and will respond instantly. We're so serious about keyboard support that we built "Hardcore mode" to completely disable the mouse. And Godspeed supports all the essentials: labels, smart lists, shared lists, attachments, E2EE, and more.
Sell Yourself Sell Your Work
4 minutes by Colin Wright
In this post Colin emphasizes that technical brilliance alone is insufficient without effective communication of your work. He argues that professionals must "sell" their ideas through clear writing and presentations to ensure others can benefit from their contributions. He concludes that whether in a corporate environment or as an entrepreneur, effectively communicating your value is essential for your work to have impact.
Visual-Focused Algorithms Cheat Sheet
43 minutes by Nick Miljkovic
Nick dive deep into key algorithms that are essential for programmers and technical leaders. He provides a visual-focused overview of important algorithms used in real-world applications, covering various categories including sorting algorithms, searching algorithms, graph algorithms, data compression techniques, machine learning algorithms, and cryptographic algorithms. Each algorithm is explained with its practical applications, time complexity, and illustrated with visual examples to help developers understand when and how to apply these techniques effectively.
Building Resilient Payment Systems
8 minutes by Madeline Zhao, Philippe Aubertin
In this article Madeline describes SSENSE transition from synchronous to asynchronous payment processing to overcome challenges of batch processing delays, high traffic surges, and operational complexities. The new system decouples checkout from payment confirmation, allowing orders to enter a 'pending' state while awaiting PSP responses, and uses robust monitoring and data consistency measures to handle transactions effectively. This approach has enhanced customer experience, improved operational agility, and provided better scalability for SSENSE's growing e-commerce platform.
A USB interface to the "Mother of All Demos" keyset
12 minutes by Ken Shirriff
Douglas Engelbart's groundbreaking 1968 demonstration, now known as "The Mother of All Demos," showcased revolutionary computing concepts including the mouse, hypertext, shared documents, and a graphical interface. In this article Ken explores the history of this demo, noting that while most of Engelbart's innovations became standard, the five-finger keyset he demonstrated failed to gain widespread adoption. Ken built a USB interface for an original Engelbart keyset, and also traced how the famous "Mother of All Demos" name actually originated from 1990s Gulf War terminology before being applied to Engelbart's presentation by writer Steven Levy in 1994.
And the most popular article from the last issue was: