[BAWD #123] Make Use of Everything You Know

Jun 24, 2024

Hello 👋🏾,

I trust you had a blissful past few days and are keen for the week ahead. I missed writing to you and I’m glad I could get this new letter across to you today! Btw, here’s a friendly reminder for you to please put a public email somewhere on any of your profiles/professional media (at least one for the public to reach out to). You miss out on important opportunities when your email is not easily accessible.

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Nerd Memes of the Week 🥲

Featured Technical Articles ✍🏾👩🏽‍💻

The Gap by Ahmad Shadeed.
Avoiding Beginner Mistakes Hampering You to Scale Backend by Riken Shah.
Data Fetching Patterns in Single-Page Applications by Juntao QIU.
How to Build an Audio Chatbot with Nextjs, OpenAI, and ElevenLabs by Bolaji Ayodeji.
How to Become a Good Backend Engineer by Hussein Nasser.
Pulling off zero-downtime PostgreSQL migrations with Bucardo and Terraform by Shalvah.
The Rise of the AI Engineer by Swyx and Alessio.
Find the last matched element - the bad, the good, and the better by Maya Shavin.
The Overlapping Principles of Prompt Engineering and Software Development by Jacky Liang.
The “const” Deception by Josh Comeau.
4 Levels of Measurement: Nominal, Ordinal, Interval & Ratio by Emily Stevens.
How to Create an Automated Profile README using Nodejs and GitHub Actions by Bolaji Ayodeji.
The 10 Commandments of Navigating Code Reviews by Angie Jones.
From ESLint and Prettier to Biome by Kitty Giraudel.
How Obinna Odirionye is building the future of the Internet by BI Africa.

Featured Productivity Articles ✍🏾🦅

The Release Ratio: How to Make Use of Everything You Know by Lawrence Yeo.
The Complete Guide to Goal Setting (Backed by Science) by Mike Manson.
How Innovative Ideas Arise by James Clear.
Hard work vs. Long work by Seth Godin.

Product of the Week ✨

Our World in Data provides research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems with efforts from thousands of researchers around the world who dedicate their lives to it.

Good Tidings 🔊

Here’s an opportunity to showcase your OSS project on GitHub’s Open Source Friday live stream event, where they dive into engaging discussions with maintainers from some of GitHub's most popular projects.
I spent some time building transactional email templates for a cool devtool startup a few weeks back and this caniemail tool came in handy to check which HTML or CSS feature will work in different email clients (screams in Gmail). The tool is like caniuse.com but for email.
“Learning how to learn effectively is super important, especially as a software developer; learning new things is practically the whole gig! If you can learn to quickly pick up new languages/frameworks/tools, you'll be able to be way more productive than the average developer.” In this article, you will learn more about learning and how to pick up new skills.
Resend just open-sourced their entire strategy on how they approach engineering, design, support, and marketing in this handbook.
Research shows that to have a fulfilling career, you should do something you’re good at that makes the world better. For years, some researchers at Oxford have studied this phenomenon, and the 80,000 Hours project has put them all into this Career Guide that explains how to find a fulfilling career and why you shouldn’t always “follow your passion or gut.”
Google Open Source has shared its internal open-source documentation so maintainers can learn from it. The doc covers how Googlers release code that they've written and how they bring open-source code into the company.
Here are some free and open educational resources from the world’s leading experts on sustainable development, with the mandate to enrich the field of sustainable development and advance the SDGs Agenda 2030.
Here’s an interesting computer networking fundamentals course for Developers, DevOps, and Platform Engineers.
If you're wondering why the dancing cat below is here, I stumbled on this GIF in the past weeks and I so loved it 🥲. I thought to share it with you; maybe you can pick up some new moves :).

Lists and Collections 🗂️

You can take over 2,500 MIT courses from various fields online for free through MIT OpenCourseWare.
Here’s a curated list of project-based programming tutorials you can use to learn how to build applications from scratch.
Here’s a complete computer science study plan you can use to become a software engineer.
Here is a collection of universities, companies, and organizations that offer free online courses with certificates.
Here’s a collection of the best promotional deals for developers to level up your skills, workspace gadgets, etc.
If you’re looking to get started with technical writing, you should check this for a curated list of articles, books, videos, tools, podcasts, etc.
For managers, here’s a collection of engineering leadership resources that you’d find helpful.
Are you looking to network with other student community leaders and professionals or level up your skills and give back to your community? You can join the GitHub Campus Experts program now and expand your connections!
Here's a recommendation of the top websites to find remote jobs for different software engineering and product fields in tech.
Here’s a curated list of interview questions for different programming languages, frameworks, and technologies.

Book Recommendations 📚

All of Grace by Charles Spurgeon.
Fluent React by Tejas Kumar.
Developer Experience (DX) by Addy Osmani.
Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner.
Building Python Web APIs with FastAPI by Abdulazeez Adeshina.

Featured Tweets and Videos 😍

Here are some cool tweets and my favorite videos from YouTube these past weeks.

⬇️: Harvard CS50 – Full Computer Science University Course

⬇️: British Students Join Korean Navy: Boot Camp Day 1

⬇️: I Read 2,216 Resumes. Here’s How You Stand Out

⬇️: [AUDIO] The Power of Forgiveness

Quote of the Week 💙

“Sugar is sweeter than salt but not in a soup. You're very important but may be in the wrong place.” —Anonymous.

Sponsors and Patrons 💫

Shout out to my amazing supporters: Angie Jones and Obinna Odirionye. Their support enables me to keep writing these letters, teaching, curating resources, and supporting others. Thank you!

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Bolaji Ayodeji's Weekly Digest