oandre.gal

Category: English

  • Code simplicity

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    1 minute

    A review of Max Kanat-Alexander’s Code Simplicity book.

  • The power of introverts

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    1 minute

  • Turns out algorithms are racists

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    1 minute

    «Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.» — Melvin Kranzberg’s six laws of technology One of the things I was very into a decade ago was studying the intertwine between technology, culture, and society. From those years, I developed a sensitivity about my role as an engineer, or as an enabler of…

  • Psychological safety

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    1 minute

  • Born for it

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    1 minute

    Born for it, on how the image of software developers came about.

  • Code and decision trees

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    1 minute

    An example on how changing the language for thinking may help us to simplify our programs.

  • A new middle class

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    1 minute

    In this paper, we make the case that the high-productivity digital firms are starting to generate a new middle class. It’s a virtuous circle. Consumers flock to those firms because they offer lower prices and better service. Workers migrate there from low-productivity firms because the high-productivity firms offer better wages for the same occupations—and, often,…

  • The Google repository

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    2 minutes

    I’ve been reading how Google organizes its codebase: they maintain a hyper-large repository containing everything, since the beginning of the company. I guess you may find Gmail, Photos, or AdWords there. You won’t find Android or Chrome, though – these are open source projects. The repository is 86Tb of data, 1 billion of files, and 35 billion…

  • Crafting interpreters

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    1 minute

  • How comparing things is faster and simpler with immutability

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    3 minutes

    The third post of the series about the differences between values and references is focused on a practical example, the same trick that is at the core of React and Redux performance.

  • How equality and copy operations work

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    6 minutes

    This is the second post of a series about how fundamental operations work depending on the nature of data they work with. JavaScript is used as example.

  • Value and reference data types

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    4 minutes

    The introductory post of a series about how fundamental operations behave depending on the nature of the data they work with. JavaScript will be used as an example.

  • CSS Grid from Galifornia

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    1 minute

    One of the bigger milestones in Q1 2017 was the landing of the new CSS Grid standard in all major browsers. Personally, the cool thing about this is that support for WebKit and blink (namely, Safari and Chrome browser) was led and developed by IGALIA with a team of people (Manuel, Javier, and Sergio) from Galiza. I…

  • A week of FP and JS

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    1 minute

    Just this week, two of my colleagues at Automattic have written about Functional Programming concepts. Check Grzegorz’s A journey to Functional JavaScript and Miguel’s Functors and monads: an introduction.

  • sum-csv

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    2 minutes

    Reflections on a little thing I made, to learn how to better create the bigger ones.

  • A more expressive vocabulary for programming

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    1 minute

    map and friends are more precise, sophisticated ways to talk about consistent patterns in data manipulation. Using them over for is analogous to using the word “cake” instead of “the kind of food that you make by whipping egg whites and maybe adding sugar”. Interestingly, you can eventually add new layers of category on top of established layers:…

  • Simple made easy

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    1 minute

    Precise words make communication more efficient. Arguably, software development is about managing conceptual complexity. Simple made easy, by Rich Hickey is a talk that tackles those two topics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSwPOpOKr3w Two takeaways from this talk: The differences between simple and easy. Simplicity is an objective measure, and its units are the level of interleaving (of concepts).…

  • Saturday’s occupations

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    1 minute

    Saturday’s occupations.

  • La La Land

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    1 minute

    Now, this is a musical that I like. Entertaining, moving, and complex. I wouldn’t say musicals are my kind of films. My personal favorite is Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which is typical Burton. I didn’t like Les Misérables and haven’t watched Moulin Rouge. That’s my track record. Yet, this film is energizing, jazz everywhere, a…

  • To the hackers that grew older

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    2 minutes

    A rant about the need to create more community-centered software, instead of focusing too much on the individual.

  • My office i4

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    2 minutes

    I’ve been working from home for more than 3 years now, and my setup has gone through several iterations – the current one is i4. After joining Automattic, I was encouraged to think about my office setup. The company sponsors the kind of high-quality office perks that you’ll expect in companies at this level, and…

  • git time machine

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    1 minute

    I really like this interface for navigating the git log. If only I could select a stretch of time and make zoom – that’d be spectacular.  

  • Howdy Automattic

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    1 minute

    This is part of the invitation I was sent to join Automattic. I accepted. Today marks my first day as an automattician, and I am excited to become part of this family. My day-to-day will be filled with the joys and woes of programming but under Automattic’s creed, I feel safe, motivated and happy to…