developer tools

Casey Muratori responds on-stream to a dismissive Twitter post by demonstrating how slow Visual Studio's startup and debugger watch window are, comparing it to much older software and machines. It is a long rant about software performance and bloat.

A fasterthanlime video essay arguing that GitHub Actions is a poorly designed system, with a history of personal computing and CI, and a look at how it works behind the scenes. It is sponsored by Brilliant.

Jake Archibald argues that URLs are nearly impossible for humans to interpret, especially for security. He walks through what browsers do about it, including highlighting the registrable domain, and floats a possible better design.

Austin Meyer, developer of the X-Plane flight simulator, explains how he was sued by a patent troll over a trivial claim about an app's license server. He walks through how the shell-company litigation works and why ignoring the suit makes things worse.

MegaLag investigates PayPal's Honey browser extension, showing how it swaps affiliate attribution and was promoted by large YouTube influencers. It includes technical demonstrations of the affiliate tag replacement in browser dev tools.

A video essay arguing that the next major real-time strategy game will fail unless it gets the fundamentals right. It covers the playerbase and demographics, what older RTS games did well, and the roles of the engine, spectacle, development tools and player-generated content.

A long Techlore video documenting what it presents as hostile conduct by GrapheneOS leadership and community members, including lead developer Daniel Micay, toward CalyxOS and others.