Alex Silcock

Engineering lead at @FlutterEnt, wrangling Java, Node.js, Kafka, Docker, K8s, and AWS. Elsewhere: @[email protected]

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@Abhishek_IN8 @anirudhology @straceX Usually you'll need more than one instance of the application in order to handle so much traffic. As such, no one instance of the application will be able to decide which is the winning user unless another single shared component is used.

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@SunlitUplandsUK @fesshole Pubs have managed to create a full menu of basically hops and water! The enjoyment is in the nuance

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@yishan Windows has quite a few instances of this, like pressing Win+R for Run, Win+1 for the first app on your taskbar - you can operate on muscle memory so can work much more quickly. Mac OS I'm not so sure but would like to find out!

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@yishan Modal UIs are great for productivity for this reason. If you know that at any time you can press a particular combination of keys and get to a particular screen/form/view/whatever, you don't have to pause, think, then act - you just act, and stay in your flow.

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@YoelNisanov @0xlelouch_ Would you really only expect this from principal level or above? To me, this is what I expect from a solid senior engineer. This is basic problem-solving that engineers apply every day when building software, applied to running it. Not doing this shows a lack of understanding.

[solst/ICE of Astarte @IceSolst]

8 years ago saw a dev with GitHub in dark mode. He said it was through a chrome extension (this was before native support).

Slowly made the realization that a random extension dev could’ve had access to all our code, just so a dev can change theme colors.

Even today, when GitHub natively supports dark mode, there’s a few extensions with thousands of users for some reason (probably old and never removed).

That’s one specific example, there’s extensions that have permissions to inject js on ALL websites you visit. Owned by a random dev that can decide to sell their extension at any time.

Earlier this year @tuckner found a chrome extension marketplace. He was able to buy an extension and, as a PoC, took over my browser (by injecting an arbitrary redirect), read more about it here: https://t.co/JJJWONQ76g

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@peadarmor @squinteratn @JeffreyPeel @Ryanair They provide a straightforward offering, and if you follow their rules you'll get it. If you don't follow their rules then you'll pay fees which subsidise other passengers. I have no problem with business doing this as long as they aren't deceptive, which Ryanair aren't.

[eric zakariasson @ericzakariasson]

turns out, senior engineers accept more agent output than juniors. this is because:

- they write higher-signal prompts with tighter spec and minimal ambiguity
- they decompose work into agent-compatible units
- they have stronger priors for correctness, making review faster and more accurate
- juniors generate plenty but lack the verification heuristics to confidently greenlight output

shows that coding agents amplify existing engineering skill, not replace it

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@BeepSterr @Kittiesandwaffl @nebita Nice, I've never noticed any editing functions in OBS, but I've only used it a little so probably just missed them. What sorts of things can you do - can you trim recorded clips for example?

[Vic 🌮 @VicVijayakumar]

Once upon a time I started at a certain tech company. In the first week, I was like wow the build takes 45 minutes? And everyone was like of course it does why would it take any less time than that ya dolt? The next day my build was projected to complete in 6 hours because it used a merge queue and was behind 7 other builds. Everyone were like yes obviously, that makes sense. Felt like I was taking crazy pills for being the only person who thought this was absurd. I thought they were playing a prank on me.

The story of how I made it my mission to fix it is less important than the takeaway -

Resist the cultural normalization of dysfunction - when inefficiency or pain points become so routine that everyone stops questioning them.

I was the outsider seeing clearly that the existing process was absurd, but the team had been conditioned to accept it as “just how things are.”

Don’t let familiarity make you complacent. If something feels broken, it probably is.

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@RenNotFun @vstonks1000000 @Kittiesandwaffl @nebita You can absolutely do it just using free software. I'd also be interested to learn if there was a single piece of software that was specialised towards not just screen recording but also simple editing and polishing without having the full complexity of a video editor

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@Kittiesandwaffl @nebita Who is? I think the key here is that Screen Studio does different things to plain screen recording (via your OS, OBS, etc.). You probably wouldn't pay for SS if you didn't want the editing functionality too

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@nebita @ogloom_ttv @Kittiesandwaffl Again, I don't think it's necessarily about computer literacy, you could have the literacy and ability but not the time or will to spend effort setting up plugins to make something that looks good for a marketing video etc.

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@vstonks1000000 @Kittiesandwaffl @nebita I'm sure you're right that there's a guide on how to set it up yourself - those who don't want to can pay the money. When I've made screen recordings in the past I've used OBS and edited with DaVinci Resolve, I've never used Screen Studio. Gotta decide what's right for yourself

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@ogloom_ttv @Kittiesandwaffl @nebita I think it's more for somebody with a "time is money" mindset who doesn't necessarily want or need that level of control, they just want something that looks professional and "good enough". Same logic as using Squarespace for your website. Need to weigh up value of build vs buy.

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@coopoots @Kittiesandwaffl @nebita https://t.co/ycm46af1fR

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@vstonks1000000 @Kittiesandwaffl @nebita There are some people for whom the time+effort vs money trade-off makes sense - making demo videos might be one of a huge list of things they have to do. I don't think these people are necessarily stupid or lazy. Ideally you should spend your time working on your business USP.

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@vstonks1000000 @Kittiesandwaffl @nebita There are some people for whom the time+effort vs money trade-off makes sense - making demo videos might be one of a huge list of things they have to do. I don't think these people are necessarily stupid or lazy. Ideally you should spend your time working on your business USP.

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@Kittiesandwaffl @nebita Just spend 30 seconds on the landing page for Screen Studio

It zooms on your cursor, zooms the window you're recording, can add shadows, add click sounds, animate movements, and has a timeline UI for editing these effects after recording

Neither OBS or Cmd-Shift-5 does this

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@CordasFilip @alibey_10 I'm trying to remember best practice for class components - you'd only get this behaviour if you implemented shouldComponentUpdate, right?

[Alex Silcock @ultrafez]

@david_bardet @m_franceschetti I don't know it well enough to know whether it needs an online mode. I did see someone saying you could set different temperatures during the night - maybe you schedule on your phone, and the cloud service tells the bed what to do?

Still, some poor design decisions were made.