Techreport blog

Engineering Insights & Guides

The best problem-solving writing in software engineering — databases, performance, security, frontend and distributed systems, in one feed.

11,851 articles
Design & UX — Building A UX ROI Case That Survives The Boardroom

Building A UX ROI Case That Survives The Boardroom

Strong UX ideas do not secure investment on their own. Through a worked example, Alex Williams breaks down how to define business value, calculate costs, test causality, and build a credible case for the return on a design initiative. - UX - Design - Business

SMSmashing Magazine·September 11, 2026Design & UX
AI & ML — The Death Of The Button: Why The Best Interface Is No Interface

The Death Of The Button: Why The Best Interface Is No Interface

TThe web is evolving beyond menus, forms, and endless clicks toward experiences shaped around human intent. For UX designers, understanding this shift means re-evaluating their role, moving from designing visible interfaces to guiding transparent, intent-driven AI experiences.

SMSmashing Magazine·September 9, 2026AI & ML
Engineering — How well do agents use test/verification techniques?

How well do agents use test/verification techniques?

We previously noted that, while it's easier than ever to hit a particular quality bar by having coding agents use effective test techniques, software quality seems to be getting worse , indicating that whatever defaults developers are using may not work very well. Here, we test if simple instructions to agents to use particular techniques or libraries improve implementation correctness, as a kind

DLDan Luu·September 7, 2026Engineering
SRE & Ops — ZGateway: Learnings from Putting a Proxy in Front of ZippyDB

ZGateway: Learnings from Putting a Proxy in Front of ZippyDB

We’re introducing ZGateway, the proxy we are using to unify traffic through ZippyDB, Meta’s most widely-used key value store. As a bonus, it also enables admission control, load balancing, cross-region resilience, and richer operations. ZippyDB is the most widely used key value store at Meta, backing product metadata, counters, and configuration, and can serve billions […]

CWChris Wiltz·September 3, 2026SRE & Ops