Douglas Tsui

Ruby Concurrency vs. Virtual Threads on JRuby

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Observation: 9/10 SWE's quit at “reading the docs”. Cut through the BS with this easy trick: Take action and build. Writing code is 100x easier than the docs make it sound. “Reading the docs” gave me crazy imposter syndrome: -Git -WPF -Kafka -OAuth -Angular -GraphQL -RabbitMQ -Kubernetes In ALL cases, I conquered my fears by building. Except for WPF. I gave up on that. And Kafka, that's for another day. Forcing yourself to build/code/deploy melts analysis paralysis. Then you'll say "oh that was pretty easy". Trust me, we aren't building rockets. Practice AND Study build true mastery.

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NEW: Internal Threads Internal threads allow you to spin up conversations in Slack from Pylon. It's great when you want to start a conversation with someone, but they primarily use Slack (e.g. engineers, product people or anyone who isn't living out of the support system). Common internal threads we are creating at Pylon: 1/ #bugs to report a potential bug 2/ #project channels to ask a team a question about a specific feature 3/ #feedback to report product feedback to the team It's been one of the most game-changing features we've released and we're so excited to share it with everyone. Enjoy!

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"You can have a great strategy for the next billion-dollar developer product, but the battle is won in the trenches of daily iterations." I love this clip from Lee Robinson (VP Product, Vercel). Lee helped scale Vercel to 1M+ developers and has some of the clearest thinking of developer marketing that I've read. We talked about: - Getting into the developer's mindset - 3 pillars of a great developer experience - Why developers don't trust your marketing A few quotes from Lee: "Most developers don't adopt a tool the first time they hear about it. It's probably the 10th time." "Great documentation is great writing. The tech industry is plagued with jargon and fluff. It would be much cleaner if people wrote more like how they talk." "The battle is won in the trenches. It could be a two-paragraph docs change or a small UX improvement. For every developer that complains, 100 more won't say anything." 📌 Watch now: https://lnkd.in/g-g-u3E5 Also available on: Apple: https://lnkd.in/grhhYVyh Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gGyvBKmX Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gGkkYG4M

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Making progress on my sprint for Maria Gabriela Ochoa Perez Waechter's YIBL-BAM. On to STRY0006--adding a top level (L1) navigation link to create a new contact. I jumped back into the core UI and dug up tables and got it working, but it turned out it is much easier with a nice UI in the Experience's advanced settings. Typical for me! On STRY0007, I was adding a pre-configured list filter to show me contacts to whom I have not yet out, reached (???). This is the main list of lists you see in the left hand nav and it's very common to want to change these. In the old UI it was a right click and a couple of records, but this one had me scratching my head even though I had done it before. I found my way back to the UX List table, which has more checkboxes than almost any form I have ever seen (Literally 1 Million Checkboxes https://lnkd.in/g9Nv7ivi), but hey, I'm not here to judge. Is there an easier way? Probably, but I couldn't find it so I don't care about an "easier" way, just as long as there is "a" way. Thanks MGOPW! #ServiceNow #ServiceNowDev #YIBL #BuildAlongMonth #UIBuilder https://lnkd.in/g65v22J8 https://lnkd.in/gKM3pi-i

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When you build design systems for a living, sometimes you get the satisfaction of seeing other engineers building better UIs with maybe a bit more of their sanity left intact. Other times, your CEO goes goblin mode and makes Windows XP and vaporwave skins using your theming system. 😂

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Question for engineering leaders (managers, directors, VP's, etc): I'm curious about the current landscape of developer productivity analysis + management tools - things like LinearB and Jellyfish. Which tool, if any, are you using? Any opinions/pros/cons on the tool you're using (or the entire domain overall)?

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Let’s talk about product managers. Are they truly worth their weight in gold? Gagan Biyani shared a fascinating perspective: "If you’re an engineering-driven company like Stripe, where engineers are building products for other engineers, you might not feel the need for a product manager. After all, the builders are also the users. But even in those cases, a good PM can still add value—it just depends on the context." This got me thinking: PMs aren’t always the heroes in every setup. Sometimes, the role feels less critical; other times, it’s indispensable. It all depends on the team, the product, and the company culture. What about you? Have you worked in a place where PMs were crucial—or maybe not needed at all? I’d love to hear your take!

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Clean Code: Principles for Better Software Development 🧑‍💻 Avoid Technical Debt: Learn how clean code helps prevent long-term maintenance challenges and boosts developer productivity. 📝 Clean Code Principles: Discover key concepts like the Boy Scout Rule, DRY, KISS, and meaningful naming conventions for better code quality. 🚀 Pragmatic Coding: Balance idealism and real-world constraints by writing code that's easy to read, understand, and maintain. 🧪 TDD and Testing: Follow the F.I.R.S.T. principles for fast, independent, and reliable tests to ensure quality from the start. 💡 Insights from Experts: Draw inspiration from Robert C. Martin, Martin Fowler, and Hernán Wilkinson on writing clean, effective software.

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James Stanier has a good argument for why deadline-driven development is so… difficult → https://lnkd.in/gz3rvj2s “Given that non-technical people don’t understand why software is hard, dates become the stick that they beat you with when you don’t deliver on time. Don’t ask me why, it’s just human behavior. I’m sure you’ve done it when roadworks have taken longer than were specified on the sign, or if a delivery of a package was late. Dates mean something to people, so handle them with care. In fact, perhaps we could do something entirely different instead.” What’s the “something different”? “So, instead, you should take a forecasting approach that follows the uncertainty curve that we outlined above. You start wide, and you taper in. At the beginning of a given project, you might even just have the year that you’re aiming to ship. Then, as you progress, you can start to narrow it down to a quarter, then a month, and finally a specific date.” This is why I will always advocate for time horizon roadmaps → https://lnkd.in/gN8VSYZc

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This is a cool project, and another example of the emerging "replace stateful storage with S3" trend. I do wonder at what point someone will package this sort of thing up into a FUSE filesystem to make it generally usable across existing services. Or maybe every service has unique enough needs that it's better to handle it custom each time. https://lnkd.in/etcVBfVf

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Kicking off the month with fresh features! We’ve rolled out some exciting updates in Typo:  ➡️ Managed Automated Alerts on emails, Slack  ➡️ Developer Performance Summary Across Sprints  ➡️ New Help Docs  ➡️ Speed Enhancements Check them out  ⤵️

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Stop building from scratch every time you add a new feature. Break free from developer bias and speed up product development. It’s great to leverage your team’s experience and preferred tools. There’s a more effective approach that provides flexibility and speed—divide your software into two parts: The Base Layer: The stable core engine that remains unchanged. Think of it like a messaging system that powers chats, fetches weather data, or updates the latest cricket scores. The UI Layer: A flexible front-end you can iterate on rapidly. Add new screens, test them quickly in real-world conditions, and adapt on the fly. This is the reason Facebook introduced GraphQL—so teams could deliver UI changes at high speed and validate them directly in the market. Your product’s market success depends on delivering the right features at the right time. Yet many teams repeatedly rewrite their core whenever they add new features, often due to misalignment between product and engineering teams. When engineers drive decisions based on a clear understanding of the underlying infrastructure, startups can scale quickly. We are working on Nine API, a platform designed to help startups deliver products in record time. Join our journey, and let’s build better, faster.

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Why do engineering teams get bogged down in billing projects? Why is engineering the critical path to pricing and packaging changes? Most startups start with Stripe, but beyond basic billing, there’s a whole layer of infrastructure required. We call this the last mile of pricing & packaging in SaaS: 🔹Admin panels 🔹Customer portals 🔹Feature flags 🔹Entitlement management 🔹Plan management 🔹Handling exceptions 🔹UX for trials, upgrades/downgrades, usage meters, and more. This infrastructure is essential for managing how customers interact with your product, how features are gated, how usage is tracked and billed... Building this infrastructure requires significant time, ongoing maintenance, and interoperability with downstream business systems. Moreover, pricing and packaging logic often ends up hardcoded into the application, making it brittle and costly to update.  Every time the business needs to change pricing, add a new feature, or adjust plan entitlements, code changes are required—delaying time to market and distracting engineers from building core product features. We’ve seen these challenges across hundreds of startups, which is why we built a solution to get engineering out of billing projects for good. Schematic sits between your application and Stripe so you don't have to build the last mile, allowing your startup to manage pricing, plans, and entitlements—without requiring code changes. 🔹Embeddable UI components like customer portals, pricing tables, and upgrade paths to deliver great billing experiences to your customers 🔹 Feature flags to control access and entitlements 🔹 Usage metering & tracking to aggregate usage & billing data in one place & support hybrid billing models 🔹 Admin panels to manage customers & provisioning

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#SaaS is a team sport. Pick your teammates wisely. If you aren’t familiar with Momento, the serverless cache SaaS provider has already established quite a community of advocates like James Eastham of Datadog, who credits the product for the reduction in average latency from 600-800ms to 9-12ms. Led by Khawaja Shams, a product leader with great vision, Momento had already been making waves before they decided to partner with us at Clazar to accomplish their vision for #CloudGTM. So why did a business as successful as Momento decide they needed us? It’s because successful SaaS businesses go to market with partners. Since partnering with Clazar to scale their cloud marketplace operations, Momento has seen a 36% increase in monthly revenue and a 50% increase in monthly buyers. In Khawaja's kind words - “Clazar has drastically accelerated the last mile of our deals by helping us realize the full potential of the AWS Marketplace. The platform is a delight to use, built by a team of deep domain experts that know how to build multi-billion-dollar SaaS businesses on the Marketplace.” You can read about Momento’s case study with Clazar (I’ll link it in the comments), but the fact that we are still active collaborators 18 months after kickoff tells its own story. If you are building SaaS, consider AWS partners like Clazar, who can accelerate your time-to-market on the AWS Marketplace, and help you maximize your co-sell opportunities. And if you happen to be in San Francisco on July 26, I’d be happy to meet and chat in person at “Building Great SaaS”, with AWS SaaS Factory, and other select partners. More information at - https://lnkd.in/eSzwzR5X

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Startup425 will be hosting their "Eastside Summit" on August 1st at Bellevue City Hall during #SeattleTechWeek and you do not want to miss it! The Eastside Summit is hosted by Startup425 and its partner cities of Bellevue, Renton, Redmond, Issaquah, Kirkland, and Bothell. Join #Founders, #Investors, Executives, PolicyMakers, and those in bigtech and startups for a day of networking, education and community. There will be a series of panels around topics like... - Venture Capital & Startup Investments: Offers a deep dive into funding trends and investment strategies, providing attendees with crucial insights into the financial backbone of startups. - Eastside Startup Founder Exits: Successful founders share their exit strategies and experiences, offering invaluable insights for upcoming entrepreneurs. - Enterprise Technology on Eastside: Highlights the latest advancements in enterprise technology and their impact on both the local and global markets - Business and Technology Policy: Facilitates a dialogue on evolving regulatory frameworks to better support technological innovation and business growth Registrations have just opened.

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