A thread on HN about bad code in legacy projects both makes me think how little we've learned as a discipline over the years and, honestly, how little credit we give ourselves for some pretty major
c.f. https://t.co/S5XIDxFUrH
(Parallel evolution of code: I wrote a less-well-specified one at last gig.)
At risk of stating the obvious: this is a relatively novel development.
* a single, common encoding for almost all human languages
* a single, parseable, human-readable data interchange format
* a default protocol for information transport
This is very good for learners.
More from Patrick McKenzie
There are a *lot* of software shops in the world that would far rather have one more technical dependency than they'd like to pay for one of their 20 engineers to become the company's SPOF expert on the joys of e.g. HTTP file uploads, CSV parsing bugs, PDF generation, etc.
Every year at MicroConf I get surprised-not-surprised by the number of people I meet who are running "Does one thing reasonably well, ranks well for it, pulls down a full-time dev salary" out of a fun side project which obviates a frequent 1~5 engineer-day sprint horizontally.
"Who is the prototypical client here?"
A consulting shop delivering a $X00k engagement for an internal system, a SaaS company doing something custom for a large client or internally facing or deeply non-core to their business, etc.
(I feel like many of these businesses are good answers to the "how would you monetize OSS to make it sustainable?" fashion, since they often wrap a core OSS offering in the assorted infrastructure which makes it easily consumable.)
"But don't the customers get subscription fatigue?"
I think subscription fatigue is far more reported by people who are embarrassed to charge money for software than it is experienced by for-profit businesses, who don't seem to have gotten pay-biweekly-for-services fatigue.
On a serious note, it's interesting to observe that you can build a decent business charging $20 - $50 per month for something that any good developer can set up. This is one of those micro-saas sweet spots between "easy for me to build" and "tedious for others to build"
— Jon Yongfook (@yongfook) September 5, 2019
Every year at MicroConf I get surprised-not-surprised by the number of people I meet who are running "Does one thing reasonably well, ranks well for it, pulls down a full-time dev salary" out of a fun side project which obviates a frequent 1~5 engineer-day sprint horizontally.
"Who is the prototypical client here?"
A consulting shop delivering a $X00k engagement for an internal system, a SaaS company doing something custom for a large client or internally facing or deeply non-core to their business, etc.
(I feel like many of these businesses are good answers to the "how would you monetize OSS to make it sustainable?" fashion, since they often wrap a core OSS offering in the assorted infrastructure which makes it easily consumable.)
"But don't the customers get subscription fatigue?"
I think subscription fatigue is far more reported by people who are embarrassed to charge money for software than it is experienced by for-profit businesses, who don't seem to have gotten pay-biweekly-for-services fatigue.
I like this heuristic, and have a few which are similar in intent to it:
Hiring efficiency:
How long does it take, measured from initial expression of interest through offer of employment signed, for a typical candidate cold inbounding to the company?
What is the *theoretical minimum* for *any* candidate?
How long does it take, as a developer newly hired at the company:
* To get a fully credentialed machine issued to you
* To get a fully functional development environment on that machine which could push code to production immediately
* To solo ship one material quanta of work
How long does it take, from first idea floated to "It's on the Internet", to create a piece of marketing collateral.
(For bonus points: break down by ambitiousness / form factor.)
How many people have to say yes to do something which is clearly worth doing which costs $5,000 / $15,000 / $250,000 and has never been done before.
Here's how I'd measure the health of any tech company:
— Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror) October 25, 2018
How long, as measured from the inception of idea to the modified software arriving in the user's hands, does it take to roll out a *1 word copy change* in your primary product?
Hiring efficiency:
How long does it take, measured from initial expression of interest through offer of employment signed, for a typical candidate cold inbounding to the company?
What is the *theoretical minimum* for *any* candidate?
How long does it take, as a developer newly hired at the company:
* To get a fully credentialed machine issued to you
* To get a fully functional development environment on that machine which could push code to production immediately
* To solo ship one material quanta of work
How long does it take, from first idea floated to "It's on the Internet", to create a piece of marketing collateral.
(For bonus points: break down by ambitiousness / form factor.)
How many people have to say yes to do something which is clearly worth doing which costs $5,000 / $15,000 / $250,000 and has never been done before.
More from Tech
"I really want to break into Product Management"
make products.
"If only someone would tell me how I can get a startup to notice me."
Make Products.
"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."
MAKE PRODUCTS.
Courtesy of @edbrisson's wonderful thread on breaking into comics – https://t.co/TgNblNSCBj – here is why the same applies to Product Management, too.
There is no better way of learning the craft of product, or proving your potential to employers, than just doing it.
You do not need anybody's permission. We don't have diplomas, nor doctorates. We can barely agree on a single standard of what a Product Manager is supposed to do.
But – there is at least one blindingly obvious industry consensus – a Product Manager makes Products.
And they don't need to be kept at the exact right temperature, given endless resource, or carefully protected in order to do this.
They find their own way.
make products.
"If only someone would tell me how I can get a startup to notice me."
Make Products.
"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."
MAKE PRODUCTS.
Courtesy of @edbrisson's wonderful thread on breaking into comics – https://t.co/TgNblNSCBj – here is why the same applies to Product Management, too.
"I really want to break into comics"
— Ed Brisson (@edbrisson) December 4, 2018
make comics.
"If only someone would tell me how I can get an editor to notice me."
Make Comics.
"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."
MAKE COMICS.
There is no better way of learning the craft of product, or proving your potential to employers, than just doing it.
You do not need anybody's permission. We don't have diplomas, nor doctorates. We can barely agree on a single standard of what a Product Manager is supposed to do.
But – there is at least one blindingly obvious industry consensus – a Product Manager makes Products.
And they don't need to be kept at the exact right temperature, given endless resource, or carefully protected in order to do this.
They find their own way.
Next.js has taken the web dev world by storm
It’s the @reactjs framework devs rave about praising its power, flexibility, and dev experience
Don't feel like you're missing out!
Here's everything you need to know in 10 tweets
Let’s dive in 🧵
Next.js is a @reactjs framework from @vercel
It couples a great dev experience with an opinionated feature set to make it easy to spin up new performant, dynamic web apps
It's used by many high-profile teams like @hulu, @apple, @Nike, & more
https://t.co/whCdm5ytuk
@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike The team at @vercel, formerly Zeit, originally and launched v1 of the framework on Oct 26, 2016 in the pursuit of universal JavaScript apps
Since then, the team & community has grown expotentially, including contributions from giants like @Google
https://t.co/xPPTOtHoKW
@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike @Google In the #jamstack world, Next.js pulled a hefty 58.6% share of framework adoption in 2020
Compared to other popular @reactjs frameworks like Gatsby, which pulled in 12%
*The Next.js stats likely include some SSR, arguably not Jamstack
https://t.co/acNawfcM4z
@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike @Google The easiest way to get started with a new Next.js app is with Create Next App
Simply run:
yarn create next-app
or
npx create-next-app
You can even start from a git-based template with the -e flag
yarn create next-app -e https://t.co/JMQ87gi1ue
https://t.co/rwKhp7zlys
It’s the @reactjs framework devs rave about praising its power, flexibility, and dev experience
Don't feel like you're missing out!
Here's everything you need to know in 10 tweets
Let’s dive in 🧵

Next.js is a @reactjs framework from @vercel
It couples a great dev experience with an opinionated feature set to make it easy to spin up new performant, dynamic web apps
It's used by many high-profile teams like @hulu, @apple, @Nike, & more
https://t.co/whCdm5ytuk

@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike The team at @vercel, formerly Zeit, originally and launched v1 of the framework on Oct 26, 2016 in the pursuit of universal JavaScript apps
Since then, the team & community has grown expotentially, including contributions from giants like @Google
https://t.co/xPPTOtHoKW

@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike @Google In the #jamstack world, Next.js pulled a hefty 58.6% share of framework adoption in 2020
Compared to other popular @reactjs frameworks like Gatsby, which pulled in 12%
*The Next.js stats likely include some SSR, arguably not Jamstack
https://t.co/acNawfcM4z

@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike @Google The easiest way to get started with a new Next.js app is with Create Next App
Simply run:
yarn create next-app
or
npx create-next-app
You can even start from a git-based template with the -e flag
yarn create next-app -e https://t.co/JMQ87gi1ue
https://t.co/rwKhp7zlys
