This is so sick thank you for sharing. I do a lot of Go + DuckDB stuff. I’ve done some janky JS / html/template stuff for charting so this will be fun to play with
I am an avid discovery coder and was actually day dreaming an outline for a similar article on my way home on the bus today. I think this is an extremely important concept at all levels of engineering and something we all need to adopt at one point or another in our careers / practice.
I think it follows a few topics, "the art of the POC/Spike" or just exploratory coding. These things give us a tangible hands on approach for understanding the codebase, and I think lend to better empathy and understanding of a software system and less rash criticisms of projects that may be unfamiliar.
This is particularly relevant to me right now as I am discovery coding a fairly large project at my company and working with product to lay out design and project planning. Whats difficult to express from my current standing is how the early stages of these types of projects are more milestone / broad based rather than isolated small key pieces. Sure I can spend a week delivering design, architecture, epic, outline docs for all the known and unknown features of the project (and I am). But at the same time I need to discover and test out base case / happy path solutions to the core business problem to more accurately understand the scope of the project.
I think its something I particularly love about being a TL / IC at my company. I have the flexibility and trust to "figure it out" and the working arrangement to provide adequate professional documentation at the appropriate time. I am fortunate to have that buy in from leadership and certainly recognize it as a unique situation.
All that being said:
1. Learn how to effectively isolate and run arbitrary parts of your system for YOUR understanding and learning
2. Make it work, make it right, make it fast.
3. Learn to summarize and document your findings in a suitable fashion for your situation
4. Encourage this throughout your team. Useful in all aspects from bug triage to greenfield work
Someone gifted me All Systems Red this year and I had never heard of the series and it may be one of my faves of all time. I’m on book 5 now it’s been such a joy
> “It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” Gurathin said. I opened my eyes and looked at him; I couldn’t stop myself. From their expressions I knew everything I felt was showing on my face, and I hate that. I grated out, “That was private.”
So many good things with incremental improvements in the space, but as a consumer it kinda stresses me out having to worry about libsql vs sqlite vs duckdb etc.
I personally use SQLite and DuckDB daily, but recently adopted turso in lieu of litestream for a something. I appreciate that they all are relatively compatible but I'd love to just have a tool.
Even then thats why I love the relationship between SQLite and DuckDB. I can backend my system with SQLite and run analytics and processing via DuckDB and they service specific purposes.
The hard thing with this for me is being a split consumer and not having the bandwidth to split my attention between who is doing better innovation and just using a tool I can rely on to predictably get the job done for me.
That being said, hats off this is awesome. I really appreciate turso.
What I love about projects like this is they are dynamic enough to cover a number of interests all in one.
I personally have some side projects that have started as X, transitioned into Y and Z, and then I stole some ideas and built A, which turned to B, which a requirement in my professional job necessitated the Z solution mixed with the B solution and resulted in something else which re-ignited my interest in X and helped me rebuild with a more clear mindset on what I intended in the first place.
All that to say, these things are dynamic and a long list of "failed" projects is a historical narrative of learning and interests over time. I love to see it.
There was a restaurant I went to in CDMX this summer and their menu was a public preview link to a document in Figma. I couldn't stop laughing at the fact but delighted by how well it just worked. I love this stuff.
I have tons of little single HTML file sites I make from this [Vue template](https://vue-template.spaghet.me/). I also have sites just published as public Notion docs, inline photo libraries from iCloud, etc. Its amazing how easy and available it is to just connect stuff, and how often I want to over complicate things and build something from scratch when I can just link stuff together.
On an aside I also love things like [mmm.page](https://mmm.page/) for quickly stitching together little micro sites or single use sites if I don't have time to do something else. Its fun exploring all these tools
> “Capital One is the opposite of both those things”
I am biased, I worked for Capital One out of college for 4 years as a software engineer and had a wonderful experience. It was the best place for me to learn industry and professional engineering, and I felt the company culture / company itself was a fantastic place to work. So respectfully I disagree.
