TWIL September 5th 2025

• It's very important to clarify requirements from the PM before holding an RFC meeting
  • otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time because no one knows the problem they're trying to solve
  • still managed to hash out some parts of it though
• Even if I had all the necessary info, I definitely could have facilitated better
  • maybe ok to open by giving an overview since not everyone had time to read it, but should've prepared something
  • should have opened by going through the comments
  • then asking if anyone had questions/opinions overall
• Caching is amazing, I definitely get why people fall into the trap of caching everything now
  • The endpoint I was optimising went from a P90 of 20 seconds to 6 seconds without caching
  • Then from 6 seconds to probably a few hundred milliseconds once I added caching
  • Plus, most calls to the endpoint can use the global cache rather than a specific key, so should be hit in the vast majority of cases
  • I think this was definitely a good usecase because it blocks the whole app rendering, can have relatively few cache keys and doesn't change often
• You can't use concerns in a rake task (at least not without accessing them through the model/controller they're included in)
  • But you can use modules without requiring them, just Module.method
  • Another win for modules, along with needing to include the module name making it obvious where they come from
• It's probably a good idea to test that you can screenshare before trying to demo something
  • Especially when you went to the trouble of preparing literally everything else about the demo

Links

The -path of least resistance - Amit Sheen

At the time I'm writing this the caniuse for clip-path looks a bit patchy, but once its fully supported I look forward to not cringing in horror when I see flowing shapes all over the screen in a design. offset-path, which the second article in the series digs into, also looks intriguing. So many different cool animations it enables, though as with most animation stuff I have a feeling the best choice will remain to not use it.

Introduction to Postgres Indexes - Adam Rackis

This a high quality (2 part) series by Frontend Masters as usual, but that's not why I'm including it. I'm including it because of this line in part 2:

Always read these from the bottom:

It's about a postgres query plan, and it blew my mind. I've always known query plans are useful and pulled key information from them, but I always found them difficult to parse. Turns out I've been reading them backward. Like any English speaker I have the temerity to expect text to read top-down, but Postgres says 'No Thank You Sir' to convention and starts its query plan with the last action. I have no idea why it took someone literally pointing it out to notice, but it's changed my life. Thank you Mr. Rackis.