The Overflow #151: DIY mad science 

Welcome to ISSUE #151 of The Overflow! This newsletter is by developers, for developers, written and curated by the Stack Overflow team and Cassidy Williams. This week: behold the battle of the cross-platform frameworks, tremble at the engineers willing to sacrifice their nights and weekends for a chance at a 1% bonus, and marvel at the fantastic origin story of the telephone ring!

From the blog

Flutter vs. React Native: Which is the right cross-platform framework for you? stackoverflow.blog
Building traditional native apps often requires maintaining two or more codebases. Let’s look at two frameworks that let you keep your code unified.

Stop requiring only one assertion per unit test: Multiple assertions are fine stackoverflow.blog
One test case, not one test assertion.

Making location easier for developers with new data primitives stackoverflow.blog
The Foursquare app started out as a tool for people to check into places. That location data ended up becoming valuable for developers.

DIY mad science…it’s all about homelabbing stackoverflow.blog
Level up your WFH game with interesting (monetizable) project ideas.

A Beginner’s Guide to Getting Started in DevOps promotion
Get practical information about what DevOps is and how a collaborative culture will benefit your work and company. GitLab’s detailed list of resources and real-world examples provides you opportunities for continuous learning.

Interesting questions

Why is proving something is NP-complete useful, and where can I use it? cs.stackexchange.com
It means that nobody can get mad at you when you don’t find an efficient solution.

Non-anthropic, universal units of time for active SETI astronomy.stackexchange.com
If you think providing providing project estimates is tough now, just wait until our alien overlords get here.

What exactly makes a black hole STAY a black hole? physics.stackexchange.com
It’s not the size of the hole, it’s the compaction of the action.

Some coworkers are committing to work overtime for a 1% bonus. How can I best opt out of this? workplace.stackexchange.com
How much is ruining your holidays worth to you?

Links from around the web

Shell script best practices sharats.me
These might be heavily opinionated practices, but the reasoning behind them are solid.

How does telephone ringing work?  www.youtube.com
Have you ever considered why a phone rings the way it does? How that sound works, and how it has since their beginning? This series is a really fun deep dive into the history and science of phone ringing!

Typographic hierarchies www.smashingmagazine.com
Typography is important not only for understanding content organization, but also for accessibility.

Why do domain names sometimes end with a dot?  jvns.ca
It’s domain deep dive day! Okay, it’s not, but the alliteration is fun, and the reason why is really interesting.

A blast from the past: Linters aren’t in your way. They’re on your side.