Welcome to my PinkLetter. A short, weekly, technology-agnostic, and pink newsletter where we cultivate timeless skills about web development.
My Ramblings This Week
How’s your day?
I just screwed up a production deploy. Literally. Five minutes ago.
But there are a few of reasons why it will not to ruin my day.
Ready to react: I noticed the problem and rolled back in a couple of minutes.
Awesome teammates: I told everybody I screwed up, I have a plan for the next deploy, and I’ll do better. And I already got encouragement.
Serial mono-tasking: I differentiate my bets every day: the deploy is not the only task on my list today—it’s unlikely I’ll fuck every single one up.
Elsewhere on the Web
Pushing through Friction by Dan Na
As a senior-level engineering leader, experience tells you things could be better. You see the gaps. If only the company adopted policy A or dumped technology B, everyone would benefit. But there’s so much inertia. The company has always used B. You are frustrated. Can you actually make a difference?
Why Electron apps are fine by Niels Leenheer
It is not difficult to find some incredibly shitty takes on Electron, and every time it boils down to: It’s slow. Downloads are huge, and it uses a lot of memory. Electron apps are just websites. Developers that are using Electron are taking the lazy or easy approach to cross-platform development. Native apps are just better in every single way.
Why Do We Work Too Much? by Cal Newport
Our tendency to work twenty per cent too much is neither arbitrary nor sinister: it’s a side effect of the haphazard nature in which we allow our efforts to unfold. By thinking more intentionally about how work is identified, how it is prioritized, and how it is ultimately assigned, we can avoid some of the traps set by pure self-regulation.