Python 3.13 overview 🐍, tired of AI hype 😮‍💨, write code for humans 🧑‍💻️

Python 3.13 introduces two major changes: a "free-threaded" version that allows disabling the GIL and experimental Just-in-Time compilation 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With  TLDR Web Dev 2024-09-30 🎂 Celebrate Cloudflare's 14th birthday with a lot of new features (Sponsor) In celebration of its 14th Birthday Week, Cloudflare has recently announced loads of new developer platform product updates: ⚙️ Queues, Calls TURN server,  and Vectorize are now generally available 🖼️  More for free: 5000 free image transformations a month for all accounts, free tier for Vectorize, and more 🏃 Speed improvements for Workers KV and Workers AI ✏️ AI Gateway enhances AI App monitoring with persistent logs of user prompts and AI responses 🏎️ Zero-latency SQLite storage in every Durable Object Get started on Cloudflare — the one-stop spot for building, optimizing, and securing your websites. 🧑‍💻 Articles & Tutorials Everything you need to know about Python 3.13 – JIT and GIL went up the hill (18 minute read) Python 3.13 (officially releasing on October 1) introduces two major changes: a "free-threaded" version that allows disabling the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), potentially boosting multi-threaded performance, and experimental Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation, which could improve performance over time. The GIL removal addresses Python's limitations in fully utilizing multi-core processors, while the JIT compiler promises to optimize code execution by generating machine code on the fly. A Taxonomy of Tech Debt (20 minute read) An engineering manager at Riot Games proposes a taxonomy for categorizing tech debt based on three metrics: impact, fix cost, and contagion. The impact measures the negative effects of the debt, fix cost assesses the resources needed to rectify it, and contagion quantifies its potential spread. He identifies four types of tech debt: local debt, MacGyver debt, foundational debt, and data debt, each with unique characteristics and strategies for mitigation. Build a serverless ACID database with this one neat trick (atomic PutIfAbsent) (22 minute read) This blog post goes through implementing a serverless ACID database using 500 lines of Go code with no external dependencies. It uses atomic "PutIfAbsent" operations on a file system-based object store to achieve concurrency control and snapshot isolation. Working code examples are shown throughout the post. 🧠 Opinions & Advice Types vs No Types (9 minute read) Using types in programming is similar to color-coding wires in an electrical system. Types act as labels, making it easier to understand the flow of data in code and preventing mismatches. They also provide automatic error checking and make it simpler to identify and fix issues, so they should always be used in complex codebases. I am tired of AI (6 minute read) This software testing expert is frustrated with the overhyped and often ineffective use of AI in various domains. He feels that AI's current applications often lack depth and fail to replace human creativity and critical thinking. He especially dislikes the mindless adoption of AI without considering its real value and impact. It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans (10 minute read) Writing code for humans is much harder than writing code for computers because it involves understanding and catering to a user's mental model of the code. To do this well, devs should prioritize user onboarding, provide clear examples rather than abstract concepts, and create a user-friendly experience by minimizing conceptual overload. 🚀 Launches & Tools Cloudflare Workers: deploy serverless code instantly for exceptional performance, reliability, and scale (Sponsor) From signup to globally deployed in <5min Your code runs within milliseconds of your users worldwide Say goodbye to cold starts—support for 0ms worldwide Persistent logs for every Worker Start building! Better Auth (GitHub Repo) Better Auth is a framework-agnostic authentication and authorization library for TypeScript. It provides a consistent API and has a plugin ecosystem. Better Auth supports features like email & password authentication, account and session management, rate limiting, database management, social sign-on, organization and access control, two-factor authentication, and more. Pagoda (GitHub Repo) Pagoda is a starter kit for Go web development. It uses libraries like HTMX and Alpine.js to create a modern UI without relying on JavaScript. Pagoda is built on a foundation of popular frameworks like Echo for backend and Ent for ORM, with SQLite as the default database. mitata (GitHub Repo) mitata is a benchmark tooling library for JavaScript and C++ that provides high-resolution timing, visualizations, and automatic garbage collection. 🎁 Miscellaneous If your AI seems smarter, it's thanks to smarter human trainers (6 minute read) AI models are getting better thanks to human trainers who verify the accuracy and reliability of AI outputs. They teach models to avoid errors and hallucinations, while also providing high-quality data that makes the models' outputs better overall. How AlphaChip transformed computer chip design (6 minute read) AlphaChip is a reinforcement learning method developed by Google that uses AI to create chip layouts in hours, a process that previously took weeks or months. It was created initially for Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and generates layouts that outperform human design. These layouts are used in chips worldwide. Visual Studio Code is designed to fracture (21 minute read) While VSCode's source code is open, Microsoft uses a proprietary license for the downloadable product and strategically incorporates telemetry and other features that fracture the open-source community. This strategy creates legal barriers for companies like Gitpod, GitLab, and others who attempt to build competing products based on VSCode. ⚡ Quick Links Open-source AI code editor models revealed (2 minute read) An open-source AI code editor was found to be calculating model usage client-side. Being Raised by the Internet (5 minute read) The open access of online resources has provided this author, along with many others, the skills and confidence needed to escape poverty and build a successful career. Web components are okay (9 minute read) While web components may have limitations, they offer a valuable tool for web dev and open up the creative possibilities of the web. GitHub Repo Visualizer (Website) A visualizer of various statistics for a GitHub repository using D3.js. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/d0af4569/3 Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of web developers and engineering decision makers, you may want to advertise with us. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! Thanks for reading, Priyam Mohanty, Jenny Xu & Ceora Ford If you don't want to receive future editions of TLDR Web Dev, please unsubscribe from TLDR Web Dev or manage all of your TLDR newsletter subscriptions.