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- Issue #704
Issue #704
Essential Reading For Engineering Leaders
Friday 3rd March issue is presented by SerpApi
AI is smarter when it can search the web. How are AI companies doing it? Meet the worst-kept secret in the AI industry: the SerpApi web search API:
👉 Scrape Google and other search engines (including AI overviews, Maps, Shopping, Amazon, and more)
👉 Integrate with a dead-simple GET request that any agent can make.
👉 Used by NVIDIA, Uber, Adobe, and even the United Nations.
Give it a try now; no sign-up needed.
— Wes Kao
tl;dr: I often get readers who ask, “Wes, if I’m not naturally loud, how do I speak up or talk about my accomplishments? How do I gain more visibility, either internally in my company or externally online?”
CareerAdvice
— Lizzie Matusov
tl;dr: Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey at the University of Victoria proposes a “triple debt model” for reasoning about software system health, drawing on recent empirical research on developer cognition, AI-assisted development, and software evolution. The paper is a conceptual framework, not a controlled experiment - it synthesizes findings across multiple studies to argue that technical debt alone is an incomplete lens.
Leadership Management
tl;dr: AI is smarter when it can search the web. How are AI companies doing it? Meet the worst-kept secret in the AI industry: the SerpApi web search API: (1) Scrape Google and other search engines (including AI overviews, Maps, Shopping, Amazon, and more). (2) Integrate with a dead-simple GET request that any agent can make. (3) Used by NVIDIA, Uber, Adobe, and even the United Nations.
Promoted by SerpApi
Tools
— Steve Huynh
tl;dr: “A Bar Raiser is a specially trained interviewer whose job is to ensure that every hire raises the average talent level at Amazon. I had veto power over any candidate. I sat on nearly a thousand interview loops across every level from intern to Principal Engineer.” Steven discusses the patterns that emerged.
Leadership Management Hiring
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
— Terts Diepraam
tl;dr: “I'm making a scripting language called Roto. Like so many programming languages before it, it has the goal of being easy to use and read. Many languages end up making semicolons to delimit or terminate statements optional to that end. I want that too!”
LanguageDesign
tl;dr: Most IaC content focuses on theory. This virtual conference is different. IaCConf brings together engineers sharing what’s actually working in production - from scaling to managing complexity across teams. Real lessons from operators and practical patterns you can apply.
Promoted by Spacelift
Event
tl;dr: “What tips, tricks, approaches are you using to improve your efficiency when using agent harnesses? I personally focus on Claude Code & Codex CLI mostly for single person software development, but I welcome suggestions for other tools and other areas of use. Ideally you share what you tried and what works for you and I try it myself and see whether it improves my workflow. Here are my discoveries (with level of confidence).”
Agents
tl;dr: “Anthropic accidentally leaked a source map file containing the full, unobfuscated TypeScript source code. 1,897 files around 132,000 LOC. What I found is a piece of software that is surprisingly more opinionated and more paranoid than I expected. Here are some of things that I found worth talking about.”
Claude Design
— Martin Fowler
tl;dr: “An Architecture Decision Record (ADR) is a short document that captures and explains a single decision relevant to a product or ecosystem. Documents should be short, just a couple of pages, and contain the decision, the context for making it, and significant ramifications. They should not be modified if the decision is changed, but linked to a superseding decision.”
Documentation
Null Pointer
Simple Request
Hand-drawn by Manu. Archives here.
Most Popular From Last Issue
Nobody Is Coming To Save Your Career - Steve Huynh
Notable Links
Claude Code (Thread): Collection of lesser-known features & workflows.
Hermes: Agent that grows with you.
Openscreen: OS alternative to screen studio.
Open Terminal: A computer you can curl.
Pg_textsearch: Modern ranked text search for Postgres.
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