[BAWD #96] Debugging Tactics and Privacy Engineering

Dec 18, 2022

Hello, dear friend 👋🏾,

I trust you had a blissful week 🎄. Btw, here’s a friendly reminder that when the weight of another person's exploits brings you to the feet of doubt and comparison, I hope you remember that you both have different upbringings, paths, opportunities, tastes, and destinations.

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Featured Technical Articles ✍🏾👩🏽‍💻

Debugging Tactics by Addy Osmani.
Fixing broken windows: How to deal with legacy systems by Dmitry Vinnik.
How to optimize your code reviews by Safia Abdalla.
Build an open source project using this essential advice by Bolaji Ayodeji.
The next step in ecommerce? Replatform with APIs and micro frontends by Ryan Donovan.
Why business context is important for technical decision-making by Kevin Ball.
A data scientist's guide to open source community analysis by Cali Dolfi.
What are Web-Safe Fonts? by Jessica Agorye.
Privacy engineering: 8 tips to mitigate risks and secure your data by Ayden Férdeline.
The three steps to take after you’ve been laid off by Lena Reinhard.
10 gifts for the developer in your life by Product Hunt.

Featured Productivity Articles ✍🏾🦅

How Experts Figure What to Focus On by James Clear.
Prior Knowledge and Learning New Information: The Rich Get Richer by Althea Need Kaminske.
Screw Finding Your Passion by Mike Manson.
The Day You Decided to Take the Leap by Lawrence Yeo.

Product of the Week ✨

WhattaWatch allows you to find amazing new movies and tv series from any genre and for any streaming service.

Good Tidings 🔊

GitHub just launched their Accelerator program for open-source creators that allows developers to sustainably work in open-source full-time with mentorship, support, and a $20k stipend. The first class of fellows will be in Spring 2023. You can learn more and apply here before December 31st, 2022.
The Lesotho Government is organizing a financial management hackathon open to all Sub-Saharan African countries. Up to five teams will get full sponsorship to physically participate in the hackathon between the 24th - 26th of January 2023. You can learn more and apply here before 21st December 2022.
AI no go kill person 🥲. Last week, I mentioned the Stable Diffusion open-source AI model that generates images from text. Now, the images generated can be turned into a spectrogram and then converted to an audio clip using the fine-tuned version of the stable diffusion model. I tried it with a “Nigerian Afro Beats” text prompt; the results were 🤯. There are bright use cases for this; you can read them here. Here’s the source code of the app, the interface server, and the model.
If you’re a professional who works outside of tech, you may wonder what certain technical jargon means or how tech works. Angie Jones bridges the gap and helps you understand the technical world in this easy-to-follow course.
SantaBen is an annual scholarship started in 2019 to get more young Africans into tech through training, capital, application advisory, and placement support. With over $100k worth of tech scholarships, you can apply to win laptops, solar inverters, and skill training before the end of today.
Here’s a very useful guide you can check out to learn about the development and design practice of building user interfaces with modular components.
Here’s a collection of commonly used texts you can use whenever you need a copy for a design or if you ever get stuck in the middle of development.
If you’re a student (at any level), you can apply to get the GitHub Student Developer Pack and access the best developer tools and courses for FREE.
Here’s a curated list of project-based programming tutorials you can use to learn how to build applications from scratch.
Need support for your learning? Every month, you can get funding for your learning needs (internet subscription, computer device, or courses) from anonymous people who care.
Here's a recommendation of the top five websites to find remote jobs for different fields in tech.
Joe's Jobs curates the best web, product, engineering, design, DevRel, and open-source startup roles.

Dev Term of the Week 💾

Web Cookies are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website in a web browser. Learn more here (text) or here (video).

Book Recommendations 📚

All of Grace by Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner.
The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin.
Building Python Web APIs with FastAPI by Abdulazeez Adeshina.

Featured Tweets and Videos 😍

Here are some tweets I think are cool and some of my favorite videos from YouTube this week.

James Clear @JamesClear

Mastery requires both impatience and patience. The impatience to have a bias toward action, to not waste time, and to work with a sense of urgency each day. The patience to delay gratification, to wait for your actions to accumulate, and to trust the process.

swyx 🤖 @swyx

James Webb Telescope. Figma exit at 50x sales. Turing-passing ChatGPT. Nuclear fusion. This past year has been an awesome reminder to do things not because they are easy, but bc they are hard. If you are able, reject a life of low hanging fruit. Choose to go to the moon.

Ahmad Awais @MrAhmadAwais

API security best practices 👇🧵

Tejas Kumar @TejasKumar_

You ever wonder what “the economy” is and how recessions happen? Let’s talk about this. 👇

⬇️: YouTube's AWESOME secret Easter Egg in JavaScript

⬇️: Getting Started With Deep Learning In Python

⬇️: JavaScript Algorithms Crash Course

⬇️: Africa in the Bible: The Myth of a Cursed Race

Quote of the Week 💙

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better” –Maya Angelou

Shout out to my amazing Patrons: Maya Shavin, Angie Jones, Sarah Drasner, Samson Goddy, and Obinna Odirionye.

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That's all for this letter. See you next time, and stay safe!

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Bolaji Ayodeji's Weekly Digest