Everybody does code reviews nowadays (I hope!). Research shows that it increases quality... blah, blah, blah.
But, how many times did you think about how much does it cost? Because you know ... Code Review isn't free. Code Review takes time. A developer publishes a PR, and then... what? Is there anyone readily available to review it? Other devs are busy doing their own stuff. Should the developer interrupt someone to get a fast review? Or just context switch to something else for now? I'm sure the research was not investigating this part.
Before most readers close this page enraged, shouting “Obviously, Code Review is good, you fool! It's totally worth it!” Yes, Code Review is worth it! I didn't say it isn't. I only said that it does have productivity cost and you should not ignore it. Please, while you are aware of the benefits you're getting, also acknowledge the costs you made to gain them.
I'm not just trying to be controversial and/or annoying. My point is: if you want to be good at something, you have to be mindful of both of them: benefits and costs, to maximize the former, while minimizing the later! Most of my guidelines below are going to be about minimizing the cost of Code Reviews.
This is going to be a quick overview of how I tend to write my application code. It might be a bit Rust-centric, but I apply similar methods in all programming languages I use.
I think it's an important subject and during past online discussions about learning Rust and writing code “the Rust-way”, I was asked multiple times how do I do it. I don't really have a lot of time to write something longer and better structured, so please excuse anything that is confusing. You get what you pay for.
Also, I don't want to suggest this is some sacred, best way or anything like that. I think this is what I'm typically doing. A result of years of professional and Open Source work and experiences I gained during that time. I'm always happy to learn and get to know other points of view, so I'm happy to hear any feedback.
Or: Why there's no inflation and things are weird.
TL;DR: Global economy is much closer to a game of Monopoly than most people realize. We're at this phase when it's clear who owns all the hotels, and the only thing that allows other players to keep playing is taking on more and more debt. This big Monopoly game always ends up like this, and is being restarted. That's the economic “supercycle”.
All models are wrong, but some are useful
I really enjoy simplifying complex system into useful mental models. This is a short compilation of what and how I think about the macroeconomy. I'm not saying it's right, but it's mine and I wanted to share it. I'll be happy to hear where it is inaccurate or simply wrong. Also, I'm aware that what I say here is probably not very novel.
I really like the Urbit project. I don't know how long I've been following it now. It was definitely earlier than 2016 when I discovered it, probably even 2014.
I think #Urbit is fundamentally trying to address the right set of problems in a comprehensive, holistic way. The fact that the Internet is broken for anything but centralized silos. I am deeply enthusiastic and cheering for Urbit. I do want it to succeed!
But in this post, I'm going to focus on an honest critique. I've actually read a lot of interesting critique of Urbit over the years – all that I could get my hands on. Mine is going to be less ambitious, and mostly down to earth and pragmatic. I hope it won't come out to harsh.
Test runners/frameworks caused me a lot of grief over the years. It's part of the reason why really appreciate how standard #Rust test runner works. As usual with Rust, core developers, and the community at very least avoided the most common misfeatures and made the right thing to be the easiest and most natural thing to do.
This is a part of #altswe series, where I describe ideas for an alternative approach to software engineering.
I've been a part of teams between 3 and around 20 software engineers; in companies between 3 and thousands of employees. I have used corporate messengers, IRC, Hangouts, Slack and many other IM tools. After all of that, I think they are generally counterproductive.
This is an introduction page for the #altswe series, where I describe ideas for an alternative approach to software engineering.
I've been fortunate to work on software with a lot of smart and hard-working people, in a lot of cool places. And while the companies I worked for were often very different: their business, products, size, growth, etc., the way software engineering was organized, was actually very similar.
I feel like generally, we just keep doing things “as we did them at my previous company”, and very rarely anything truly different is being considered.
I'm a natural contrarian, and I'm always on the lookout for alternative approaches. I just couldn't help myself but to develop a list of things that I really wish I could have an opportunity to try one day.
If I am ever in charge of a team or a company, I'd like to try some or even all of them, and see how well (or bad) they work.
For now, I am just gathering them here, under the #altswe tag. The ones without a link, are yet to be written.
Abstract: I have ventured on the quest of discovering the best way to index a blockchain. Surprisingly little has been written about it, considering that it is a common task for any organization handling blockchain-based interactions. It seems that, it is an area dominated by in-house solutions, with very little knowledge sharing. In this post, I go over the problem, ideas, discoveries, and experiences. I also describe a Bitcoin Indexer implementation that I have worked on while researching the subject: rust-bitcoin-indexer.
I expect the reader to be familiar with at least the basics of Bitcoin.
Please note that this is not scientific research and only a spare-time project. Feel free to contact me with comments: pointing out any mistakes and ideas for improvements.
or: A token (even smart one) needs a blockchain, like a fish needs a bicycle.
Image above: Tokenizing assets on a Blockchain
Abstract
In this post, I explain why I believe Blockchains are just coincidentally associated with “token economy” and smart contracts, and how in essence they are not their enablers, but actually a hindrance. Then I propose an alternative: a concept of an open, federated smart contract system, that maintains all the benefits traditionally associated with blockchain platforms like Ethereum and can practically support a global scale token-economy, without all the problems inherent to blockchain-based systems.
