Ouch, some of these tabs are old. Unifying theme: none.
Corroding Style Sheets · Liking the look of Stylus. All these tantalizing alternatives when what we really want is to take the ship up and nuke CSS from orbit.
Wisdom · From CACM, The Tail at Scale by Jeff Dean and Luiz André Barroso. Maybe the deepest thinking about large-system performance characteristics you’re apt to read in any given year.
Git Joy · Both good: LearnGitBranching and Git Koans.
Emacs Joy · Multiple-cursor madness. “And, it’s fun!” Eek.
Mongo Joy · Specifically, High Availability with MongoDB for Fun and Profit. I haven’t built a high-volume site in some years, and while I’ve not missed it that much, I would like a chance to play with some of the new database tech. I’m relaying this not because I think Mongo Is The One, but just because the whole postrelational space continues to be super-interesting.
Web Joy · I don’t know if the Paul Ford who wrote this is that Paul Ford, but Meet the Web’s Operating System: HTTP is a fine piece of work. Everyone knows that HTTP is at the center of everything and it’s still, by any sane measure, underappreciated.
In the center of that HTTP-powered ecosystem lives Pamela Fox, currently in the trenches at Coursera, who is for my money one of the most interesting writers at the Web coalface. Server-side HTML vs. JS Widgets vs. Single-Page Web Apps is well-described by its title, and who doesn’t care about that stuff? Recommended.
Contributions
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: John Cowan (May 06 2013, at 22:14)
From The Tail At Scale:
"Systems that respond to user actions quickly (within 100ms) feel more fluid and natural to users than those that take longer."
Too fluid to be natural, in many cases. I have Google instant search turned off, because using it feels like talking with someone who responds to your sentences before you've finished them, or even half begun them. Sometimes they do indeed know what you meant, often they don't: in either case, it's irritating. Conversational participants should wait their turns, dammit.
That said, reducing latency *variability* is a different thing from, and much better than, just reducing latency.
From Catch-22:
" [...] Didn't you whisper to Yossarian that we couldn't punish you?"
"Oh, no, sir. I whispered to him that you couldn't find me guilty—"
"I may be stupid," interrupted the colonel, "but the distinction escapes me. I guess I am pretty stupid, because the distinction escapes me."
"W—"
"You're a windy son of a bitch, aren't you? Nobody asked you for clarification and you're giving me clarification. I was making a statement, not asking for clarification. [...]"
[link]
From: Lucian (May 07 2013, at 02:11)
I would suggest you don't try to use MongoDB in a high-availability mode (or at all if you can help it). It's quite buggy, lacks useful features and isn't in fact Consistent (even though its design might suggest it is). It's just a bad database with too much marketing :(
There are a few decent-looking Consistent databases out there (HBase, Couchbase, RethinkDB, Hyperdex) and several decent Eventually Consistent databases (Cassandra, Riak, Dynamo).
[link]
From: Dave Walker (May 07 2013, at 04:07)
On the "web joy" front, I recommend Michal Zalewski's "The Tangled Web". It's a real page-turner.
The funny thing is, back when I first encountered http, I waited with expectation of a companion "thick / stateful" version of it, to avoid all the connection making / breaking / header repetition etc (never mind cookies, when they came along); it's been a long wait, but I think SPDY might finally be it...
[link]
From: ben (May 07 2013, at 14:13)
The first mention leapt out at me and screamed, so I scratched an itch:
CSS is not an amoral monster.
[link]
From: Mark (May 07 2013, at 15:57)
A quick Google search for the exact phrase "so resolutely nonprescriptive" finds only Paul Ford's Wired article and spam copies of it. I do not know of any other Paul Ford who could accomplish such a linguistic feat.
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