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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.

11,845 articles
AI & ML — How To Create An Engaging And Useful Chatbot — Smashing Magazine

How To Create An Engaging And Useful Chatbot — Smashing Magazine

What makes a good chatbot experience? Most people think of witty responses and machine learning, but the basis of a chatbot UX is actually rooted in content strategy. In this article Marli Mesibov will answer those questions and identify what you as a content designer can do to make your chatbot successful. A poor chatbot simply says “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” on repeat (or worse “error”.) A

MMMarli MesibovMarli Mesibov·January 28, 2021AI & ML
Frontend — The Holy Grail Layout with CSS Grid

The Holy Grail Layout with CSS Grid

How to build a very common layout with CSS grid. Header on the top, footer on the bottom. Two columns, sidebar and main content. This one has navigation above the main content but within that same column.

CCChris Coyier·January 27, 2021Frontend
SRE & Ops — Monorepo

Monorepo

I'm not exactly a large-scale DevOps guy, but I can tell ya we've been moving back toward a monorepo at CodePen and it's rife with advantages over a system

CCChris Coyier·January 26, 2021SRE & Ops
Performance — Postgres scaling advice

Postgres scaling advice

This article covers scaling advices for PostgreSQL and explains why it may be a good idea to keep it simple on the database side.

CPCYBERTEC PostgreSQL·January 26, 2021Performance
Career & Teams — Maximizing Developer Effectiveness

Maximizing Developer Effectiveness

Technology is constantly becoming smarter and more powerful. I often observe that as these technologies are introduced an organization’s productivity instead of improving has reduced. This is because the technology has increased complexities and cognitive overhead to the developer, reducing their effectiveness. In this article, the first of a series, I introduce a framework for maximizing develope

TCTim Cochran·January 26, 2021Career & Teams
SRE & Ops — How machine learning powers Facebook’s News Feed ranking algorithm

How machine learning powers Facebook’s News Feed ranking algorithm

Designing a personalized ranking system for more than 2 billion people (all with different interests) and a plethora of content to select from presents significant, complex challenges. This is something we tackle every day with News Feed ranking. Without machine learning (ML), people’s News Feeds could be flooded with content they don’t find as relevant […]

MEMeta Engineering·January 26, 2021SRE & Ops
Frontend — From Design To Developer-Friendly React Code In Minutes With Anima — Smashing Magazine

From Design To Developer-Friendly React Code In Minutes With Anima — Smashing Magazine

The promise of seamless design to code translation goes back to the early WYSIWYG page builders. Despite the admirable goal, their biggest flaw was the code that they generated. Skepticism remains to this day and whenever this idea reappears, the biggest concerns are always related to the quality and maintainability of the code. In this article, Miroslav Bekyarov will show you how to turn our stat

MBMiroslav BekyarovMiroslav Bekyarov·January 26, 2021Frontend