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Engineering Insights & Guides

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

11,784 articles
Engineering — Building A Static-First MadLib Generator With Portable Text And Netlify On-Demand Builder Functions — Smashing Magazine

Building A Static-First MadLib Generator With Portable Text And Netlify On-Demand Builder Functions — Smashing Magazine

Creating an interactive experience with fiction can be a chore with traditional content management tools. Let’s make it the domain of just one content creator in which the user will fill out a form before reading the story. In this article, Bryan Robinson will be building an interactive fiction experience in which a user can insert words that match parts of speech given by the content creator. Let

BRBryan RobinsonBryan Robinson·October 8, 2021Engineering
Databases — OpenStreetMap service by CYBERTEC

OpenStreetMap service by CYBERTEC

Importing OpenStreetMap data into PostGIS is time-consuming. Download OpenStreetMap offers two dataset types periodically served as sql dumps.

FNFlorian NadlerFlorian Nadler·October 7, 2021Databases
Security — GitHub Advisory Database now powers npm audit

GitHub Advisory Database now powers npm audit

Today, we’re adding a proxy on top of the GitHub Advisory Database that speaks the `npm audit` protocol. This means that every version of the npm CLI that supports security audits is now talking directly to the GitHub Advisory Database.

ETEdward ThomsonEdward Thomson·October 7, 2021Security
SRE & Ops — Infrastructure Observability for Changing the Spend Curve

Infrastructure Observability for Changing the Spend Curve

Slack is an integral part of where work happens for teams across the world, and our work in the Core Development Engineering department supports engineers throughout Slack that develop, build, test, and release high-quality services to Slack’s customers. In this article, we share how teams at Slack evolved our internal tooling and made infrastructure bets.…

FCFrank Chen·October 7, 2021SRE & Ops
AI & ML — Freebie: COVID-19 Icon Set (56 Icons, AI, EPS, SVG, PNG) — Smashing Magazine

Freebie: COVID-19 Icon Set (56 Icons, AI, EPS, SVG, PNG) — Smashing Magazine

Every once in a while, we publish [freebies](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/freebies/) related to different occasions and themes. We hope that with this icon set, every designer will be able to find their own use case and contribute to saving lives. Free for personal and commercial use. [Get the free icon pack](https://smashingmagazine.com/provide/smashing-freebie-coronavirus-covid19.zi

ATAnton TyschenkoAnton Tyschenko·October 7, 2021AI & ML
Frontend — A Guide To CSS Debugging — Smashing Magazine

A Guide To CSS Debugging — Smashing Magazine

Debugging in CSS means figuring out what might be the problem when you have unexpected layout results. Today, Stephanie Eckles will look at a few categories bugs often fit into, see how you can evaluate the situation, and explore techniques that help prevent these bugs.

SEStephanie EcklesStephanie Eckles·October 6, 2021Frontend
Engineering — Branching Strategies in Git

Branching Strategies in Git

In this article I'm going to talk about branching strategies and different types of Git branches. I’m also going to introduce you to two common branching workflows: Git Flow and GitHub Flow.

TGTobias GüntherTobias Günther·October 5, 2021Engineering
Networking — More details about the October 4 outage

More details about the October 4 outage

Now that our platforms are up and running as usual after yesterday’s outage, I thought it would be worth sharing a little more detail on what happened and why — and most importantly, how we’re learning from it. This outage was triggered by the system that manages our global backbone network capacity. The backbone is […]

MEMeta Engineering·October 5, 2021Networking
Architecture — Local Testing A Serverless API (API Gateway And Lambda) — Smashing Magazine

Local Testing A Serverless API (API Gateway And Lambda) — Smashing Magazine

Have you ever struggled with testing cloud services locally? Specifically, have you ever struggled with locally testing an API that uses API Gateway and Lambda, with the Serverless framework, on AWS? In this article, Tom Hudson shares a quick overview of how easy it is to quickly set up your project to test locally before deploying to AWS.

TTomhudson·October 5, 2021Architecture