April 2020
Welcome to ISSUE #17 of The Overflow, a newsletter by developers, for developers, written and curated by the Stack Overflow team and Cassidy Williams. Just like the white winged dove, you're on the edge of newsletter seventeen. This week, we're introducing a robot that flags unfriendly comments, checking a US nickel's magnetism, and watching what happens when Git works.
From the blog
The Unfriendly Robot: Automatically flagging unwelcoming comments stackoverflow.blog Unfriendly comments are an issue in our system because of the effect that their tone has on their recipient’s and future readers’ willingness to contribute to Stack Overflow. The solution to these issues isn’t to argue about circumstance or intent. The only remaining option is to work on the comments themselves.
Podcast 225: The great COBOL crunch stackoverflow.blog In this episode of the podcast, we talk about the history of COBOL, a “common business-oriented language”, which is suddenly missions critical to government systems, like unemployment, overwhelmed by the pandemic. After that, we chat about the supply chain in China, which pivoted within weeks from pitching Ben electronic components to offering critical medical supplies.
The best product decisions start with the right data promotion Use this free ebook to identify the canonical CDP use cases you can implement to guide your product roadmap and democratize data access, no matter where your team is located. Learn how to drive better decisions and launch faster with mParticle.
Interesting questions
Found a good question or answer? Tweet us with the hashtag #StackOverflowKnows or leave a comment on Facebook. We’ll include our favorites in the future.
Why isn't the American nickel magnetic? chemistry.stackexchange.com Is there enough nickel in an American nickel for a magnet to take notice?
Home networking: How can I have ethernet in another part of the house? superuser.com You might have to unplug your toaster first.
Polymorphism case study: design pattern for 'morphing' between two classes? softwareengineering.stackexchange.com "It's important to differentiate between the type and the state of an entity.”
How do I know if a Google Chrome extension is leaking data? security.stackexchange.com If you got the skills, you can play detective on your extensions.
Is this a mini computer, a novelty monitor, or something else? retrocomputing.stackexchange.com Finally, I can teach my hamsters how to code.
Links from around the web
The phases of remote adaptation about.gitlab.com GitLab put together a really interesting list of phases for teams switching from a colocated environment to a remote one. It's a good reflection on how your team culture might work, and how to be prepared for changes.
Alternate Reality IBM colors deskthority.net Fun fact: in the 1970s in Germany, they mandated "Workplace Laws" that forced all computers and parts to be white/beige. Here's an interesting thread about what old computer parts might have looked like if that law weren't in place!
Half of America just started working from home. So, how's it going? zapier.com With half of America working from home, here's a fascinating set of stats about how it's going so far.
Porting to TypeScript solved our API woes executeprogram.com Remember the JavaScript "wat" video? The guy behind the "wat" wrote a great bit on his team's journey of porting their front-end AND back-end to TypeScript.
CS visualized: Useful Git commands dev.to Oftentimes though we use commands that we know work, but we don't understand how they work under the hood! Here is a great series of visualizations of git commands to understand them more at a theoretical level
