Changing the Default Git Branch
By: Parker Johansen
Recently, there has been a push to change some of the names and rhetoric we as technologists use on a daily basis. This blog post explores the technical challenges, side-effects, and process of one such change: renaming default git branches
Tech Skills as Virtual Goods
By: Lilac Mohr
My three oldest kids have just returned from their grandparents’ house. They run into my office, each child waving a twenty dollar bill.
“Look at what we got for helping Oma in the garden!” Their sweaty faces are beaming with pride.
“And how will you spend your newfound wealth?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“I’m getting V-Bucks,” 11-year-old Elowen announces. Her twin sister, Linnea, nods emphatically.
“It’s Robux for me,” declares 9-year-old Hallden.
Ideas for Onboarding
By: Maxwell Clemens
I'm currently on my third engineering team at Pluralsight. While each team has had their similarities, they've also each had unique tech stacks and code bases. The first couple of months on a new team is a time of accelerated learning, especially if the tech stack is unfamiliar. When I'm new to a team I find myself wanting to contribute as much as possible, while also wanting to have the space to develop my understanding of the new and unknown. In my experience some tasks hit this balance better than others.
Knowledge Silos
By: Jeff Nuss
Knowledge silos impede our ability to quickly deliver value to our users.
Become a Digital Detective With Application Monitoring
By: Michelle Sisti
An unexpected perk of keeping an eye on your application's stats is detecting anomalies that could be tied to malicious users. Let’s look at ways that your logging and monitoring setup can work double time for you and help you to catch users with ill-intent.
How Metrics Helped Me Find My Voice as a Female Software Engineer
By: Lilac Mohr
Many software engineers approach productivity metrics with cynicism and distrust; they see them as a way for managers to spy on employees and turn people into numbers. As a soft-spoken female in the male dominated high-tech industry, I have a different story to tell about software metrics.
Synthwave Styling Data Visualizations in Python with Altair
By: John Walk
The dream of the '80s is alive in my new favorite Python visualization tool.
The Newspaper Problem
By: Sam Backus
When you find yourself in a disagreement it might be helpful to remember this old riddle: 'What's black and white and red all over?' It has lessons to teach us about how we can think, communicate and solve problems together
Nickname Generation with Recurrent Neural Networks with PyTorch
By: John Walk
Recurrent Neural Network architectures are a potent way to model and generate sequential data, especially for tasks like working with human language. Let's build one over individual characters to generate cheeky nicknames!
Life is Weird Right Now.
By: Jenny Carlston
Life is Weird Right Now. As the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and around the world has progressed our society has been strained and our methods of interaction have been tested.
What is a Data Owner, Really?
By: Jenny Carlston
What does it mean to take ownership? There are a lot of different ways the term owner is used in our society and within our organization.
Data Processing with Dask
By: John Walk
It's remarkably easy to reach a point where our typical Python tools don't really scale suitably with our data in terms of processing time or memory usage. The Dask library joins the power of distributed computing with the flexibility of Python development for data science, with seamless integration to common Python data tools. Let's build a simple data pipeline for working with text data.