Based on the most recent SQL ConstantCare stats, what versions of SQL are in the wild? As of December 2019, not a whole lot of 2019, and even 2017 is in a minority (15%). Big boxes (>33 cores) are also notably absent (5%). As someone used to working with 2017 (soon 2019) on some really big boxes, I wonder where my big-box brethren are.
Liz Fong-Jones with an impassioned plea to write less code, and instead see if you can first start by composing, or engineering a solution.
Taking composition to an extreme, this thought-provoking write-up of Déjà Vu covers academic work that attempts to make building web apps an exercise in selecting the right legos:
Charticulator is an open source visualization generator - the learning curve is a little steep, but the gallery ably demonstrates the breadth of visualizations possible.
Monzo's progression framework is an excellent engineering ladder to draw inspiration from (plus a bunch of other roles). Backed by a GatsbyJS app over markdown files if you want to make it your own.
This board contains a bunch of items that either increased momentum, or failed but taught the team something new. Love the framing, and think there are a lot of really interesting ideas (on both sides!). The ideas were sourced from a workshop involving product managers from various organizations.
State of the art privacy protection in web browsers is getting pretty sophisticated. This article on Fingerprinting and privacy budgets from Brave has me in two minds - I care deeply about privacy, but as an operator occasionally tasked with separating bots from real users, I can imagine some of these techniques making that task a little (lot) harder.
If you like reading SaaS S-1 breakdowns (who doesn't?), you should follow Alex Clayton's blog: