Hello, and welcome to a new issue of my Links lists! I hope you will enjoy today's selection.
Code
Doing the basic things right
A useful post on the importance of doing the basic things of a software project right. The list includes:
- having an up-to-date readme;
- have some devs' and users' docs;
- at all times, the main branch should have all tests passing;
- there should be a single command for building and testing;
- zero tolerance for flaky tests.
Speaking from experience, you'd be surprised by how many systems actually fail to respect the last point…
New CSS feature: display: contents
CSS keeps getting more powerful — and complex — with each passing year. The next link is a very well-written article about a new feature: display: contents, which can allow you to "flatten" the DOM layout and pretend you are removing a parent node, while keeping the children.
The article goes into a lot of detail about this new feature, and has many examples to help you understand where this can be useful.
Centering stuff with CSS
This would be a fun read, if I didn't have the displeasure of having to deal with all these tiny details more than once in my life. At least the list of examples, which includes things like Windows, GitHub, Slack, Google Maps, Airbnb, YouTube, et al. makes me realize I'm not the only one who has problems with this.
The cost of function calls in modern CPython
A deep dive into the CPython interpreter, discussing how expensive function calls really are in modern versions. Very interesting if you enjoy language implementations.
Bonus: the author has a lot of other very interesting articles about CPython internals.
Another crazy interview - real this time
When a candidate applies to your job posting with this message:
I am the best Node/React developer in San Francisco by far.
…what could go wrong?
Non-programming
Colombo: Skylines
City planners in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, have created a faithful replica of the city inside the videogame Cities: Skylines. They are using it to help promote improvements in the public transportation system. It is an original approach, and they have an interesting explanation of their methodology and reasons.
Creating a working replica of a Mac Plus
A crazy recreation of a Macintosh Plus, starting with creating a perfect model of the original, 3D printing the enclosure, spray-painting it, assembling a screen, building a floppy drive, and using Mini vMac emulator to build something that is a perfect replica of the original. This is either a labor of love, or of insanity, but it's very fun to read and watch. 🙂
