#621 – April 13, 2025
The code that made the software giant
Microsoft's original source code
9 minutes by Bill Gates
Before there was Office or Windows 95 or Xbox or AI, there was Altair BASIC. In this post Bill Gates describes the process of how Paul Allen and he wrote the code that would become the first product of their new company.
WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2025 – July 9–11, Berlin
sponsored by WeAreDevelopers
The world’s leading event for developers is back! Join 15,000+ developers and 500+ speakers this summer in Berlin to explore the full spectrum of software development—from AI, Cybersecurity, and Cloud to DevOps, Web, Mobile, and .NET. Hear from inspiring speakers from Microsoft, GitHub, and many more global tech innovators. Use code "WWC25_PROGRAMMING_DGST" for 10% off your Congress Pass.
The Best Programmers I Know
10 minutes by Matthias Endler
Matthias brings a comprehensive guide outlining traits of top-tier developers, including reading documentation directly from the source, breaking down complex problems, continuously learning, and writing clear code. He emphasizes that exceptional engineers read error messages carefully, help others willingly, communicate effectively through writing, and maintain simplicity in their solutions while building a reputation through impactful work.
Making Makefiles for fun and profit
23 minutes by Darko Mesaroš
Make is a 48-year-old build automation tool that remains incredibly useful for modern development workflows despite its cryptic syntax. Darko dives deep into explaining how Makefiles work through practical examples, showing their application in Terraform automation, local development environments, and static website deployments. Even without becoming a Make expert, developers can use tools like Amazon Q Developer CLI to generate Makefiles that automate repetitive tasks and standardize workflows.
Engineers who won’t commit
5 minutes by Sean Goedecke
Engineers who remain non-committal in technical discussions may think they're being cautious, but this approach can be counterproductive when you're the most experienced person in the room. Sean argues that taking a position, even with only moderate confidence, is necessary to prevent less-informed team members from making poor decisions. While the fear of being wrong often motivates this reluctance to commit, managers typically respect engineers who make educated guesses rather than forcing leadership to decide technical matters themselves. However, this advice only applies in healthy work environments where reasonable mistakes aren't unfairly punished.
Improving Pinterest Search Relevance Using Large Language Models
7 minutes by Han Wang et al.
Pinterest improved its search relevance system using a large language model (LLM) that evaluates how well pins match user queries. In this blog, authors go through the technical design and share some offline and online results for their LLM-based search relevance pipeline.
And the most popular article from the last issue was: