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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.

11,782 articles
Engineering — The Teams Dashboard: Finding a Product Voice

The Teams Dashboard: Finding a Product Voice

Users love products whose voices they recognize. Here’s how we created a voice for the Teams Dashboard, and how we’re working to make our user’s experience more intentional and consistent.

ABAlice BracchiAlice Bracchi·March 5, 2021Engineering
Engineering — Release Radar

Release Radar

The open source community is always hard at work. February’s projects were super hard to pick since there are so many amazing releases. These are exciting new releases from some…

MDMichelle DukeMichelle Duke·March 5, 2021Engineering
Performance — UI Design Testing Tools I Use All The Time — Smashing Magazine

UI Design Testing Tools I Use All The Time — Smashing Magazine

With so many great tools available, there really shouldn’t be any excuse for not testing with users these days. It is fast, easy and cheap. But we don’t even need to limit ourselves to testing. These tools also make user research and visualization easier than ever before, making them ideal all the way from discovery through prototype to post-launch optimization. Our lives as UI designers have neve

PBPaul BoagPaul Boag·March 5, 2021Performance
Languages — Conntrack turns a blind eye to dropped SYNs

Conntrack turns a blind eye to dropped SYNs

We have been dealing with conntrack, the connection tracking layer in the Linux kernel, for years. And yet, despite the collected know-how, questions about its inner workings occasionally come up. When they do, it is hard to resist the temptation to go digging for answers.

CCloudflare·March 4, 2021Languages
Performance — Search Files Using the Dropbox API

Search Files Using the Dropbox API

There’s a new version of the search endpoint available in the Dropbox API. The new version is faster, supports more file types, and has many useful features.

YJYi Jiang·March 4, 2021Performance
SRE & Ops — GitHub Availability Report: February 2021

GitHub Availability Report: February 2021

Introduction In February, we experienced no incidents resulting in service downtime to our core services. This month’s GitHub Availability Report will provide initial details around an incident from March 1…

KBKeith BallingerKeith Ballinger·March 3, 2021SRE & Ops
Frontend — The Importance of Learning CSS

The Importance of Learning CSS

I know so many super-talented developers who share the same achilles heel: CSS. Instead of trying to “outrun” CSS, this article explores why leaning in and going deeper can be a tremendous boon for your development life and your career.

JWJosh W. Comeau·March 3, 2021Frontend
SRE & Ops — Boosting the performance of virtual machines with Jump-Start

Boosting the performance of virtual machines with Jump-Start

What the research is: Jump-Start is a new approach for improving the performance of virtual machines at scale. Virtual machines are a modern and popular design to implement programming languages used to build applications in general, including large-scale websites like Facebook and Instagram. However, virtual machines incur well-known performance overhead in terms of the amount […]

MEMeta Engineering·March 3, 2021SRE & Ops
Frontend — Creating An Outside Focus And Click Handler React Component — Smashing Magazine

Creating An Outside Focus And Click Handler React Component — Smashing Magazine

In this article, we’ll look at how to create an outside focus and click handler with React. You’ll learn how to recreate an open-source React component (react-foco) from scratch in doing so. To get the most out of this article, you’ll need a basic understanding of JavaScript classes, DOM event delegation and React. By the end of the article, you’ll know how you can use JavaScript class instance pr

AVArihant VermaArihant Verma·March 3, 2021Frontend
Engineering — How to execute an object file: Part 1

How to execute an object file: Part 1

Ever wondered if it is possible to execute an object file without linking? Or use any object file as a library? Follow along to learn how to decompose an object file and import code from it along the way.

IIgnatIgnat·March 2, 2021Engineering
Security — Fuzzing sockets: Apache HTTP, Part 1: Mutations

Fuzzing sockets: Apache HTTP, Part 1: Mutations

In this first episode, I’ll do a brief introduction on how Apache HTTP works, and I’ll give you some insights into custom mutators and how they can be applied to the HTTP protocol effectively.

AMAntonio MoralesAntonio Morales·March 2, 2021Security
Engineering — The Teams Dashboard: Behind the Scenes

The Teams Dashboard: Behind the Scenes

When we launched Cloudflare for Teams almost ten years later, the vision was very much the same — build a secure and powerful Zero Trust solution that is ridiculously easy to use.

AAbeAbe·March 1, 2021Engineering