Links for 2020-04-20

Async C, DDD + Django, From Org-Mode to Blog, Optimizable Code, Writing Technical Specs, Apple and Amazon, Zoom and Meetings.

Libcsp

Yes, C is pretty bad and such, but holy cow, this is pretty: a library for async function calling in C on the communicating sequential processes (CSP) model, which is the same used by Go.

And, personally, the code looks prettier than Go.

Doing Domain Driven Design with Django

Slides to a presentation about doing DDD with Django. Although it's a presentation and, thus, this means is has to be short and not specific, but it does a good job in explaining DDD and how does it relate (or not) to the Django architecture.

How to blog with Emacs Org mode

In pushing the "everything plus the kitchen sink" of Emacs features, this post explains how to write things in Org-Mode and publish it into HTML, making it easier for someone to write posts in Org-Mode and then publish.

(Hey, this blog is written in Markdown and them published in HTML, so that's not that weird!)

Optimizable Code

The great question about optimization. Sure, not do it prematurely, but this boils down to memory alignment. This post gives some tips about it.

A practical guide to writing technical specs

A roadmap on how to write a spec. While I don't agree with the front matter part -- why the heck do you need to know who wrote it, when it was created and when it was updated? -- it gives the general template for writing a spec.

How to Provide Test Fixtures for Django Models in Pytest

While I'm not a huge fan of Pytest -- unittest is there already, even if it is that panacea of methods -- this explains pretty well how to integrate Pytest into Django, specially since it takes the road from the original unittest, the one you learn when reading the Django documentation, and turns into Pytest.

Apple, Amazon, and Common Enemies

This is a point about Apple doing what every monopoly does: If it can take something from whoever needs you, you take. But don't think this is exclusive to Apple: Google does that, Amazon does that, and so on.

Zoom Is Not the Problem – Our Meeting-Centric Workflow Is

This feels, initially, another of those "shut up and let me work" kind of posts, but once again there is the call for "async communication" -- a.k.a. "write a doc and send an email".

Personally, I saw both sides of this coin: Either we have a lot of emails floating around, which made really hard to follow everything that was going on, or we had too many personal talks and nothing was being saved for future reference. I believe what you really need to have things written down, even if they are preliminary and prone to change, but you also need a direct discussion about some points from time to time, beyond the simple daily "Yesterday, I did this, that and that, and that's it", which does not explain the reason for doing this, that and that.