🪪 "Your work feels different when it's made with love and care." - Maggie Kang
Hey friends!
I hope you had a good Pi Day (3/14) yesterday! My week was a long one, but it was nice ending it with some tasty pie with friends and family. Let's learn!
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Web links of the week
What do coders do after AI?
Too Much Color
The Odometer Effect (without JavaScript)
Trash Talk - Understanding Memory Management (video)
Something that interested me this week
The most exciting thing of the week was my round in the MadCSS tournament! It was very fun. I screamed. You'll see.
I also did a video for work about the GitHub Copilot CLI, and then... I got a stye in my eye. It's relevant because I recorded this video about this newsletter's anniversary and had to wear sunglasses because it is not a cute look.
But anyway! Speaking of that! My newsletter's 9th anniversary is coming up in a couple weeks. Every year I offer giveaways from a variety of companies, from credits to swag to gadgets to tickets to coupons! If your org would like to donate a prize, hit reply here and I'll happily slot you in.
Sponsor
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GraphQL and REST APIs out of the box, a smooooth content modelling system that actually makes sense, cache tags, great CLI, layered MCP, and an editor experience your non-technical folks will love (we know that's a low bar, but still). Speaking of the box, it comes with all the buzzwords your content team's going to ask for — SEO, i18n, Visual Editing, plugins, modular content, asset optimization, collaboration, versioning... you get the drill. It's bootstrapped, got a great free tier, fast, plays nicely with all your frameworks, is DX-first, and refreshingly AI-light.
Interview question of the week
Last week, I had you swap characters to get an alternating string. Yayayay David, Ten, Paul, Micah, Amine, Christian, AJ, Matt, Donato, Toni, and the cool kids in the Ruby Users Forum!
This week's question:
You're given a 2D grid representing a city where each cell is either empty (0), a fire station (1), or a building (2). Fire stations can serve buildings based on horizontal + vertical moves only. Return a 2D grid where each cell shows the minimum distance to the nearest fire station.
Examples:
> fireStationCoverage([
[2, 0, 1],
[0, 2, 0],
[1, 0, 2]
])
> [[2, 1, 0],
[1, 2, 1],
[0, 1, 2]]
> fireStationCoverage([
[1, 0, 0, 1],
[0, 0, 0, 0],
[0, 0, 0, 0],
[1, 0, 0, 1]
])
> [[0, 1, 2, 0],
[1, 2, 2, 1],
[1, 2, 2, 1],
[0, 1, 2, 0]]
(you can submit your answers by replying to this email with a link to your solution, or share on Bluesky, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Mastodon)
Cool things from around the internet
Keyboard with Black Big Legend Keycaps
Does culture make emotion?
On Neutrinos | Physics Girl | Physics (video)
David Altrath photography diary
Joke
Did you know vending machines kill more humans than sharks?
Maybe it's because sharks rarely use vending machines.
That's all for now, folks! Have a great week. Be safe, make good choices, and clean your face!
Special thanks to Ben, Kinetic Labs, and Marta for supporting my Patreon and this newsletter!
cassidoo
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