Last week was a bit of a highlight for me at work. First, my project got a shoutout from an engineering all-hands as a project that was executed exemplarily. Second, I’ve received mid-year feedback from my manager, which had me meet or exceed expectations across our competency model. I am still new and have more to contribute and prove, but it feels great to be recognized for my work.
Software Engineering ⚙️
htmx
This frontend framework enhances HTML to add additional functionality, such as making HTTP requests from buttons (<button hx-post=”/clicked” hx-swap=” outerHTML”/>). It relies on the server to provide the state management, so I would only use this for simple web applications.
Android - Personalize your app’s UI with grammatical gender
Since Korean and English are not gendered, I never considered that some languages require localization in masculine and feminine-inflected forms. Now I wonder which form to use if you don’t know the gender of your user. I will consider this as we revamp the localization infrastructure at work.
Deno - Jupyter notebook integration
Even without Deno, it was possible to use Jupyter with Javascript. However, Deno makes it vastly easier to use existing Javascript libraries.
People ❤️
I’m No Longer a Manager (And that’s a good thing)
As my team has an opening for a manager, I briefly considered the role. My last experience at Square taught me that I love talking to people, but I loathe writing about people (for review cycles, disciplinary actions, etc.). Thus, I said no to the role. As the article's author did, knowing what brings you joy at work is essential. For me, it was having the flexibility over my time.
Capturing your design system decisions
It sounds obvious now, but I never considered using architecture decision records for non-technical decisions. It frees me up to document a lot more of my decisions.
Business 💰
Thoughtworks Technology Radar
Thoughtworks published another iteration of their quarterly technology radar, an opinionated guide to technology. The prominence of AI stood out to me the most. The radar had tools to automate localization, summarize user research, and many hosted LLM services to power your apps.
Summary of the 2023 WGA MBA
Writers Guild of America finally ended their strike after reaching a tentative agreement last week. As part of the agreement, studios have agreed to confidentially share their viewership data to calculate payouts, which surprised me.