According to the HTTP Archive, the top 1.000 websites download 5 times more JavaScript today than seven years ago – HTML grew 2x and CSS 3x. Combining that with the fact that the mobile web is more present than ever, the result is that the main bottleneck for the websites we create and consume is the CPU.
Input lag: 1977-2017 is an essay about the time it takes several computers to display a character from a keypress. A lot of newer computers take 3 to 5 times more than 30 to 40 years old computers.
Google Maps’ Moat, by Justin O’Beirne. On the competitive advantage that Google Maps has over Apple Maps – equally interesting for map nerds and business people.
Saturday occupation: eating spicy cheese made of cow milk and paprika.
Mars soundtrack (the National Geographic tv-show) is fantastic. Nick Cave is just the perfect voice to convey that feeling of exploration and fear. Moon, Interstellar, The Martian, etc; it seems sci-fi movies got an appreciation for soundtracks that have a major role in the film – and I enjoy that.
As much as I like Cave’s main theme for Mars, after a few episodes, I was in the need of something like Dylan’s Shelter from the Storm. Exploration needs joy and celebration.
Running in Circles is Basecamp’s view of agile product management. They acknowledge the value of working in cycles, but add three pieces: having the time to focus, being able to modify the original plan, and tackle the core unknowns of the feature first.
The first two are enablers that are provided to the makers by management. The last part is how the maker make the most of those powers. Together, they form a process that is nicely captured with the uphill / downhill metaphor. Uphill you are discovering the unknowns and making decisions about what goes in, downhill everything is clear and you are implementing it at warp factor 10:
10 years of mobile by Luke Wroblewski packs a lot of knowledge in one hour and a half. If I could only watch one talk about mobile, I’d make it this.
I came across Module Counts, which tracks the number of published modules for major language package managers. At this point, npm has 600k packages published, which is 3 to 4 times what any other package manager has. I’m not aware of download statistic across different package managers, but npm has surpassed the 2 billions downloads a week mark.
This puts me in the perfect mood before going for a walk in this sunny and cold Saturday.
Software architecture failing: tech writing is biased towards what the big ones do, which usually doesn’t fit most other contexts – but, who got fired for choosing IBM, right? Although I feel connected to this rant at an emotional level, I do think it’s necessary to elaborate more and make a positive contribution: help to create and spread that alternate history of software development. How do you do it? Hat tip: Fran.