Welcome to issue 245 of Programmer Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

Quote of the Week

"UML is not dessert topping and floor wax." - Grady Booch

Reading List

Here’s how I use LLMs to help me write code

This post shares practical tips for using LLMs to write code effectively, emphasizing that it's not always easy and requires managing context, setting expectations, and thorough testing. The author suggests thinking of LLMs as over-confident, lightning-fast pair programming assistants and provides a detailed example of building a tool with Claude Code.

A Quick Journey Into the Linux Kernel

This post provides a quick overview of the Linux kernel's fundamental concepts, highlighting key takeaways from exploring processes, scheduling, system calls, and memory management. It emphasizes the differences between kernel and user-space programming, and encourages further exploration through hands-on experimentation and studying relevant kernel resources.

Why fastDOOM is fast

Fabien Sanglard explores how fastDOOM, a port of the original DOOM, achieves significant performance improvements on older hardware (like a 486-DX2 66Mhz) without cutting features. He analyzes the various optimization techniques used, including video mode choices and assembly-level code improvements, to understand the "magic trick" behind the speed boost.

What I Learned Building a Free Semantic Search Tool for GitHub and Why I Failed

SemHub, a semantic search tool for GitHub issues, was built to address the limitations of GitHub's native search and enable cross-repository searches. Despite a clear need and functional core features, the project ultimately failed, offering valuable lessons for other developers.

Building a production-ready Kubernetes cluster from scratch

From hardware assembly to network configuration, this guide will guide you through the process of building a production-ready Kubernetes cluster from scratch using Raspberry Pi devices.

How we built enterprise search to be secure and private

Slack's enterprise search is built on secure and private principles, ensuring customer data never leaves Slack and external data remains up-to-date without being stored in Slack's databases. The system leverages OAuth for user authorization, respects existing permissions, and allows admins and users to control access to external sources, adhering to the principle of least privilege.

Unspoken git secrets that save you mountains of time as an engineer

This isn’t another article or set of tips on the most basic git commands you already know and use. It will teach you the lesser known commands and configs that save you tons of time and effort.

Trimodal Nature of Tech Compensation in the US, UK and India

Deepdive into the distribution of software engineering compensation, based on more than 20,000 data points from Levels.fyi.

Every pod eviction in Kubernetes, explained

This blog post explores the various Kubernetes pod eviction methods, highlighting that many, such as node pressure and taint-based evictions, bypass PodDisruptionBudgets, leading to potential disruptions. The author also points out the surprising fact that kubelet restarts can terminate pods due to admission checks, even without graceful termination.

The 10 Biggest Leadership Blindspots Based on 10 Years of Research

How to identify these blindspots for yourself, and most importantly, how to avoid them.

How I built this website on a Raspberry Pi

This guide details how to host a website on a Raspberry Pi, covering equipment setup, headless configuration, installing Apache, making the site public, securing it with HTTPS, obtaining a domain, and implementing HTML/CSS. It also provides tips on SEO, tracking viewers, security, and monitoring the Pi's performance.

Watch, Listen

How to Deal with Software Complexity

Dr. Gail Murphy and Charles Humble discuss software complexity, developer productivity, and the role of AI in code generation. They explore balancing architectural integrity with rapid development and the challenges of using open-source components.

DeepSeek R1 Theory Tutorial – Architecture, GRPO, KL Divergence

The course explores how R1 achieves exceptional reasoning through reinforcement learning, focusing on Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) and how it improves upon traditional PPO methods. You'll also understand KL divergence's role in model stability, with practical code examples and clear mathematical explanations.

Interesting Projects, Tools and Libraries

Lynx

Lynx is a family of open-source technologies empowering developers to use their existing web skills to create truly native UIs for both mobile and web from a single codebase, featuring performance at scale and velocity.

PurrCrypt

A fur-ociously secure encryption tool that encodes your secrets as adorable cat and dog sounds, using real elliptic curve cryptography with a playful disguise.

dmap

Dmap is a zero-friction hashmap for C.

CodeTracer

CodeTracer is a user-friendly time-traveling debugger designed to support a wide range of programming languages.

Airo

Deploy your projects directly from your local computer to your production server easily.

anon-kode

Terminal-based AI coding tool that can use any model that supports the OpenAI-style API.

vtm

Text-based desktop environment.

RLAMA

A powerful document AI question-answering tool that connects to your local Ollama models. Create, manage, and interact with RAG systems for all your document needs.

Auntie PDF

Your all-knowing guide that unpacks every PDF into clear, actionable insights.

Wait4X

A lightweight tool to wait for services to be ready.

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