> But even then, I'm afraid I am not producing the software to the highest standards of the industry since we don't have any rigorous cross-checking,
I wouldn't worry about this too much. As long as what you're doing seems to vaguely match whatever information about best practices you can find online, you're probably good. As long as you're not inventing your own security tech, using floating point values for financial data or reusing feature flags in a high frequency trading scenario, any bad decisions made along the way probably won't be catastrophic and are more likely to be learning experiences.
More eyes on code is a good thing, but can go too far where a person is cargo culting their beliefs and subjective experience as objective things, leading you to learn the wrong stuff, or at least to a degree where you have an irrational attachment to some practices (e.g. some people always lean towards EAV in DB design, even though that practice has a time and place, same for microservices vs monoliths vs modular monoliths etc.).
> ...and might be missing out on a lot of learning.
This is probably what you should focus on. See if you can attend industry events, watch some talks done by people who've been in the industry for a long time, there's actually lots of nice stuff on YouTube that's not just advertisement for the latest technology or practice. Here's some people whose content I enjoy:
Dylan Beattie
Venkat Subramaniam
Kevlin Henney
Maybe look at some of the better received books. Here's a starting point:
A Philosophy of Software Design
Algorithms
Building Secure & Reliable Systems
Clean Architecture A Craftsman Guide to Software Structure and Design
Clean Code
Code Complete
Design Patterns Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
Next-Level Database Techniques For Developers
Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
Peopleware
SQL Antipatterns
The Clean Coder
The Mythical Man Month
The Pragmatic Programmer
Working Effectively With Legacy Code
Again, take none of that as gospel, but maybe give them a passing glance.
Also, props to whoever mentioned learning by doing in a low stakes environment (side projects) and online communities!
The Miyawaki method shows success when a few principles are followed:
-Planting naturally-occurring communities of plants, not monocultures (bonus points for including microfauna and soil microbes)
-Planting locations are semi-randomized, with room for plants to expand and reseed.
-Stands of trees are protected/watered for first 3-5 years.
-Local communities are engaged and have a vested interest in protecting/maintaining stands of trees for the first few years.
This reminds me of Footnoted*, [1] a site that surfaces useful info that companies hide in footnotes, bury on a Friday afternoon dump, etc. I think there's a weekly newsletter that comes out after the Friday news dump has been picked through.
IMO folks are better off deploying their own version where they can adjust a few knobs (e.g. split chunk size) to get better results, given that PDF Q&A is such a commodity application.
I am a professional technical writer. When I started out, I desperately looked for tips and tricks. Internet was (and is) full of tips but I could not find a tech-writing bibliography.
I will soon publish a bibliography of books and guides regarding technical writing. I promise to paste a link here when I am finished, which I believe I will be in a day or two.
Hi HN, we are Bruno and Guilherme of Jestor (https://jestor.com/). We make a no-code tool for COOs that need to scale complex offline operations such as hospitals, hotels and kitchens.
At our previous company, a software development business, most of our clients asked us to build in-house tools like an "easy to use Salesforce" or a "lighter SAP" that would reflect their internal processes. They were tired of paying high prices for 20-year-old enterprise software that was slow and expensive to adapt to their operations. They would usually also say something along the lines of: "I don't want to depend on you guys, I need something that my operations team can adapt themselves". All of them were using some combination of spreadsheets and SAP/Salesforce, and were not happy. We decided to develop software to empower them to build their own tools for operations, thus killing our previous business.
We achieve this by providing essential functionality without code, and enabling more customized behaviors to be quickly implemented with basic scripting ("low-code"). We give operations teams a way of using relational databases, setting up permissioning rules, and creating dashboards, forms, tasks and automations. Low-code allows for customized behaviors and integrations such as customized UIs, which allows for applications to be run on top of our platform. Proptech companies are using Jestor to manage room cleaning operations (cleaners have a Jestor app on their phones and receive information about where they need to clean), and foodtech companies are using it for managing warehouses and logistics.
Most of our clients have field operations, like when a doctor visits a patient in their home, so everything we build is designed thinking of mobile use. For example, you can create no-code automations straight from your phone. Another thing that's really important is the ability to connect any data in your company, so you can choose to integrate data from multiple teams in Jestor.
We never liked the pay-per-seats pricing model, so in Jestor, so we only charge based on usage. We believe it's much fairer to pay according to the value we generate for the user, instead of their "team size". Also, the more people using Jestor the better it gets. We're very pumped to be here and looking forward to hear what you think! Please leave us your feedback, including criticism so we can improve!
> Subpoenas are the only mechanism by which prosecutors are able to test the waters to confirm/deny whether they can demand production of this data
I think many people fail to appreciate the importance of setting a precedent in the courts. Maybe this is because our legislators have been shirking responsibility for decades and pushing what should be their work off onto the executive and judicial branches, but regardless this is where we are today: If a demand like this is not challenged in court then nobody knows whether it's legal or not. *This is the process by which we learn whether Signal's implementation is allowed in our country.* It may seem clear to you what the right answer should be, but until its tested it's not clear to our government.
>There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices
It seems like an opportunity more than a crisis to me.
There are tons of potential applications for "free" electricity.
* Storage heating/cooling that's basically free
* Manufacturing carbon neutral jet fuel
* Cheaper aluminium production
It could also lead to onshoring of certain industries which previously moved to locales with access to cheap electricity. This would make supply chains more robust.
Some people are gonna get rich off this - partly because more people view it as a threat than an opportunity.
I wouldn't worry about this too much. As long as what you're doing seems to vaguely match whatever information about best practices you can find online, you're probably good. As long as you're not inventing your own security tech, using floating point values for financial data or reusing feature flags in a high frequency trading scenario, any bad decisions made along the way probably won't be catastrophic and are more likely to be learning experiences.
More eyes on code is a good thing, but can go too far where a person is cargo culting their beliefs and subjective experience as objective things, leading you to learn the wrong stuff, or at least to a degree where you have an irrational attachment to some practices (e.g. some people always lean towards EAV in DB design, even though that practice has a time and place, same for microservices vs monoliths vs modular monoliths etc.).
> ...and might be missing out on a lot of learning.
This is probably what you should focus on. See if you can attend industry events, watch some talks done by people who've been in the industry for a long time, there's actually lots of nice stuff on YouTube that's not just advertisement for the latest technology or practice. Here's some people whose content I enjoy:
Maybe look at some of the better received books. Here's a starting point: Again, take none of that as gospel, but maybe give them a passing glance.Also, props to whoever mentioned learning by doing in a low stakes environment (side projects) and online communities!