Young Reacts #249
A top-priority project that my org has been working on for the past six months will now be launching internally this week. I dubbed it “the most expensive prototype I worked on” since it started from a literal back-of-the-napkin drawing. We will get a lot of feedback, which I am both looking forward to and dreading simultaneously.
Software Engineering ⚙️
A (more) Modern CSS Reset
I’ve used a few open-sourced CSS resets before but haven’t spent time reading about what they do. I appreciated that this article concisely explains what each part does with links for further reading. I learned that the resets are opinionated and should be customized for my projects.
Lessons From Debugging
I couldn’t agree more with this quote in the article.
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? -Kernighan, The Elements of Programming Style (1974)
On Hate Scaling Laws For Data-Swamps
A group of researchers found that models training on larger data sets have more societal biases, possibly due to the worse data quality. The conventional wisdom of “the more data, the better” can’t hold if the data quality degrades.
People ❤️
When Should I Write an Architecture Decision Record
Whenever you wonder if you should write an ADR, the answer is yes (unless a decision is not reached yet). Even for decisions made in the past, explaining the decision now will benefit your colleagues in the future.
Snake on the wall!
Some problems (flaky alerts, slow build time, etc) do not have an easy, objective way to quantify the pain. But collecting anecdotes (essentially a diary study) is a powerful way to tell a compelling story.
Business 💰
ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak
Multi-modal ChatGPT will be rolling out to select customers in the next two weeks. As generative AI gains more ways to interact with the real world, some are now imagining new form factors for AI (Jony Ive + OpenAI, AI device at Paris Fashion Week).
Spotify’s AI Voice Translation Pilot Means Your Favorite Podcasters Might Be Heard in Your Native Language
This is a futuristic application of generative AI, but I am unsure how successful this project will be. I believe that people would want to listen to the perspectives of those from similar backgrounds, just like how only a few Netflix content cross borders.