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The Overflow #164: Is software getting worse?

New SO features, the politics of sudo, and the state of WebAssembly

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Welcome to ISSUE #164 of The Overflow! This newsletter is by developers, for developers, written and curated by the Stack Overflow team and Cassidy Williams. This week: This week: We decipher what's going on from the latest waves of layoffs, trace the historical importance of breakfast, and figure out how to animate SVGs with ease.

From the blog

Is software getting worse? stackoverflow.blog With all the advancements in software development, apps could be much better. Why aren’t they?

CEO update: Eliminating obstacles to productivity, efficiency, and learning stackoverflow.blog It was a busy and successful quarter, so although our first CEO update of 2023 takes place in a fundamentally different environment than the first of 2022, our optimism for the future has not changed. It’s simply joined by a dose of pragmatism.

Announcing more ways to learn and grow your skills stackoverflow.blog Now you can discover relevant online courses from Pluralsight® and Udemy® on Stack Overflow.

What do the tech layoffs really tell us? (Ep. 533) stackoverflow.blog The home team convenes to talk about how tech layoffs are reshaping the industry, where to look for software engineering jobs beyond tech, the brain-computer interface that speeds up communication for people experiencing paralysis, and Ben’s million-dollar game idea (free for the stealing).

A faster, easier, and more flexible database-as-a-service. promotion Couchbase Capella DBaaS is flexible, full-featured and fully managed – with built-in access via K/V, SQL and full text search. It’s blazing fast, yet surprisingly affordable. Try Capella today for free.

Interesting questions

How can a grain of sand be “spaghettified” when nearing a black hole? physics.stackexchange.com This is all speculation since we can’t really run experiments with black holes.

Does the meme “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” come from a 1944 cereal marketing campaign? skeptics.stackexchange.com Breakfast is so important that it’s mentioned in foundational religious texts.

What’s the rationale behind allowing sudo -u root but disallowing `sudo -u ` security.stackexchange.com Welcome to policy jungle, we’ve got confusing rules. You can impersonate any user you like, so long as you got root.

Does a query that is suspended due to an ongoing ASYNC_NETWORK_IO cause blocking? dba.stackexchange.com As a senior engineer would say: “It depends.”

Links from around the web

World Wide Web - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org The World Wide Web is the world’s dominant software platform. Do you know its history? Did you know it once even had a logo?

Easy SVG customization and animation: A practical guide www.smashingmagazine.com Customizing and animating SVGs can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be.

The State of WebAssembly – 2022 and 2023 platform.uno WebAssembly has come a long way! Take a look at where it’s been and where it’s going.

Refraction, dispersion, and other shader light effects blog.maximeheckel.com We all like pretty lights! There’s a whole lot to learn about them, and this blog touches on the nitty gritty details of shaders (and more) in the browser.

Three must-listen podcasts for software developers medium.com Finally, forgive us the self link, but we can’t help it when folks put our podcast in such fine company.

A blast from the past: Most developers believe blockchain technology is a game changer.

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