#631 – June 22, 2025
Coding is just a small part of development work
Now might be the best time to learn software development
9 minutes by Nathan Figueroa
Nathan argues that despite AI's coding capabilities, now is actually the best time to learn software development. He contends that developers have valuable institutional knowledge that forms a "moat" protecting businesses, and that AI serves as a powerful tool for developers rather than a replacement. Coding is just a small part of development work, with most challenges being social and problem defition.
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The fastest way to detect a vowel in a string
11 minutes by Austin Z. Henley
Austin conducted a comprehensive analysis of 11 different methods for detecting vowels in strings, ranging from simple loops to regex and even a prime number-based approach. Through benchmarking, he found that for very short strings, a simple loop with an "in" check is fastest, but regex methods dominate for longer strings, surprisingly outperforming most other approaches.
Snorting the agi with Claude Code
9 minutes by Kade Killary
One of the hardest challenges with new tools is re-training your brain for the new possibilities. Heretofore, on-boarding onto a new codebase was always an ardruous endeavor. You read the docs, pair with a teammate, grep to hell and back and slowly start to gain your sea legs. However, these new tools open up a whole new world of wacky ideas.
Games to Master Database Skills
7 minutes by Hristo Bogoev
The article describes five SQL learning games that make database education engaging by incorporating game elements instead of traditional textbooks. Instead of grinding through another dry tutorial, you can learn SQL by solving crimes, escaping islands, or competing with other programmers.
Lessons From 9 More Years of Tricky Bugs
7 minutes by Henrik Warne
Henrik shares lessons learned from tracking tricky software bugs since 2002, categorizing them into coding, testing, and debugging issues. Key coding pitfalls include handling empty cases, date-related logic, data format changes, and aliased dictionaries, while testing insights emphasize exploratory testing and environment differences. The debugging section highlights the importance of good logging, colleague collaboration, and proper alerting.
And the most popular article from the last issue was: