RC W1D2 - The aspiring polyglot full stack developer

On learning new things

Prior to RC, my exposure had largely been Python and the back end. In the spirit of learning new things, I wanted to learn other languages and the front end.

I curate my Twitter bookmarks lovingly. As a project idea, I thought it would be useful to build a web app to extend its functionality. Suppose I'm logged on to Twitter on one browser tab, my web app in a different tab piggybacks the existing auth to get (and later manipulate) my bookmarks.

Taking a closer look, I discovered Twitter's API doesn't have a /bookmarks endpoint. I could use Postman to get the necessary tokens and spoof the web request. Perhaps v1 won't be the most user friendly of apps.

This discovery prompted me to commit to learning "how the browser works", which alas I only got as far as a Google search. The shiny object of the day? Compiling Rust into WebAssembly. I've been curious about WebAssembly hearing how it makes web apps run as fast as native apps, say at Figma. Well... I guess this still fits in the theme of 'the front end'.

Content: Design of Go

Carrying on with my practice of padding up my blog posts with other content (and the theme of 'other languages'), enclosed below is Rob Pike's talk on Go at the SPLASH 2012 conference (link to video here, not as detailed but tad easier to follow).


I had a bit of time between my previous role and RC, which I spent looking into Go. I was fascinated to learn various tools we used in production for Python (Bazel to avoid circular dependencies, Jenkins for cross compiles, yapf for formatting, futurize for upgrades, mypy for types) comes built in into Go. Having spent considerable time migrating Python 2 to 3, gofix seems magical.

RC W3D3 - A tool for every trade

Python

I've been spending a fair bit of time learning new programming languages recently, and I'm quite happy to have the progression be Python to Go to Rust. When learning something new, your motivation gets a boost when you can do lots of things and do it fast. From this perspective, it's hard to beat an interpreted language like Python.

Python is the main language at my previous role, and this choice makes sense given how key ML models were to the business model. Having the data science and engineering share the same language helped reduce maintenance and tooling overheads, as well as provide better context in handoffs.

The drawbacks were speed and lack of types. For speed, we had bindings to C++ on the hot path - the need for speed in an auction setting is clear. For types, we gradually introduced type comments with mypy. Why types? It's easy to introduce bugs when refactoring a codebase with limited guard rails; types are like tests that you get for free.

Go

I had the chance to learn a bit of Go just before RC, motivated partly because it's the main language for Bradfield's CS Intensive course. I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of tooling we used for Python comes built-in in Go (brief discussion here). Go also has first class support for concurrency; the language is a popular choice for servers given the need to support multiple clients simultaneously. The syntax was surprisingly easy to pick up coming from Python.

Rust

I wanted to know more about the front end at RC, but curiously got into WebAssembly in the first week. I then found out from Tom how Rust has the best from-scratch support for compiling to WebAssembly. Another reason Rust works better is the smaller runtime - the smallest achievable binary size uncompressed from Go is ~2 MB vs ~2 KB for Rust. I'm not as familiar with the finer details, perhaps a sizeable part of that can be attributed to garbage collection in Go.

In summary, Python for fast prototyping and 'glue code', Go for concurrency and Rust for the low level stuff. Next comes lots and lots of practice.

Content: Disruptive innovation

If you've come across the theory of disruptive innovation, Jill Lepore offers an interesting and persuasive take in the New Yorker.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine

Love how there's a reference to HBO's Silicon Valley.

RC W3D5 - Reflecting on experience

Go

I've been spending the week on reading and writing code. I needed a breather, and made it a touch lighter today with blog posts and Youtube videos.

I found this post by Discord describing how they moved one of their services from Go to Rust. The engineering team discovered latency spikes from garbage collection, how performance issues persisted after tuning, and then decided to make the switch. Jon Gjengset in this video described how in Go, "even though concurrency is very easy, that concurrency is very easy to shoot yourself in the foot with".

Rust

I'm a believer that there's a tool for every trade, and keen to develop the sense where one would choose one tool vs another. I didn't pick this up in my earlier readings, but found out that creating a doubly-linked list in Rust is non-trivial.

Content: Farouk al-Kasim

I re-read my favourite articles before sharing them on here, some really do make me pause to reflect. This is a story of Farouk al-Kasim, who left Iraq months before the Ba'ath party took power and then prevented Norway from squandering its new-found oil wealth (enclosed below).

Content: Tango pour Claude

I remember hearing this and being very, very happy I asked for the name of the piece.

Content: BBoy Cloud

A little random I know, but why not when you have this much style.

Content: Siddharta

Re: self-reflection, I have to include Hermann Hesse's Siddharta. I love how the book highlights the importance of experience. It's tricky choosing just a single quote, but this one ties in well with being at RC to learn (or perhaps, learning through the experience of what works and what doesn't).

Has any samana or any Brahmin ever feared that someone might come and grab him and rob him of his learning and his piety and his profundity? No, for they are his own, and he gives of them only what he wishes to give and to whom he wishes to give. It is the same, exactly the same, with Kamala, and with the joys of love. Red and beautiful are Kamala’s lips, but try to kiss them against Kamala’s will, and you will not get a drop of sweetness from the lips that know how to give so much sweetness! You learn easily, Siddhartha, then learn this too: One can get love by begging, by buying, by receiving it as a gift, by finding it in the street, but one cannot steal it.