#363 – April 12, 2020
Between 1998 and 2003, searching for something on Google was magical. I remember inputting a vague notion like "oil mother's milk," and being directed to an interview with Thomas Gold, an astrophysicist who postulated that hydrocarbon deposits refilled themselves because of geological pressure.
How to Use a Differential Analyzer (to Murder People)
A differential analyzer is a mechanical, analog computer that can solve differential equations. Differential analyzers aren’t used anymore because even a cheap laptop can solve the same equations much faster—and can do it in the background while you stream the new season of Westworld on HBO. Before the invention of digital computers though, differential analyzers allowed mathematicians to make calculations that would not have been practical otherwise.
Sad state of cross platform GUI frameworks
Say you have an idea for an exciting new app that will rock the world and solve the painful problem that you care about. A vast majority of developers will attack the problem with some Javascript and write a web application, whether there should be any Javascript in it or not.
Deploys require a careful balance of speed and reliability. At Slack, we value quick iteration, fast feedback loops, and responsiveness to customer feedback. We also have hundreds of engineers who are trying to be as productive as possible.
A humble guide to database schema design
Having a good database schema design is crucial for building applications that will need to scale in traffic and complexity. If you happen to do a bad design choice you will see that it takes a lot of effort to stop the pattern from propagating to your backends’ services and controllers, and finally to your frontend.