Happy Wednesday!

Today's Issue: A DS podcast, an essay about how AI is causing a crisis in software engineering, and two frontend platform tools.

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Over the years, I've constantly tried to think of ways to make this newsletter more interesting and relevant for you, my reader! I've found that a lot of my growth as a software engineer has come from reading what other people write, listening to what other people say, and exploring tools that other people build.

I think casting a wide net allows me to bring more useful and valuable ideas to my everyday work, and I decided it might be a good idea to share the information I've been consuming with you.

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Help, I'm starting a new design system job! with Amy Ogg

If you're into design systems and you haven't heard about Elyse Holladay yet, you're missing out! She runs a fantastic podcast called On Theme: Design Systems in Depth, where she interviews other design systems practitioners about their experience building design systems for a variety of organizations.

I most recently listened to the episode called Help, I'm starting a new design system job! with Amy Ogg. This one resonated with me particularly because I've just hit 90 days in my new role at Honeycomb.io (I wish it had come out in November).

Even if you've been at your role for awhile, there are a lot of gems in there especially around avoiding burnout and making sure that you're solving for what your coworkers need right now instead of trying to build the "perfect" design system.

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The Software Engineering Crisis

In The Software Engineering Crisis, Annie Vella starts the essay by describing the feeling many software engineers are feeling as the use of AI becomes more prevalant in building software.

For many, we've begun to feel alienated from our craft. She writes: "We're moving from producers to managers of AI systems, from detailed implementation to expressing intent, from delivery to discovery through rapid experimentation, and from content creation to knowledge curation".

As the essay continues, she reveals the bright side of adapting and evolving to use AI more successfully, reclaiming "our craft, not as mere coders, but as master builders of AI-augmented systems".

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Betterer CLI

Ever felt like you're Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill? Wow, me too you must work in frontend platform. Betterer CLI solves just that. It's a tool to help developers backstop their progress as they make large scale changes to a codebase. You can take a "snapshot" of the current state of the codebase, and ensure that the build fails if future code worsens the current state. This can help you to migrate a codebase incrementally rather than having to take the "big bang" approach.

By the way, I've written about running frontend platform migrations before, if you're interested:

• Keep Product Teams Shipping Faster with Successful Frontend Migrations
• Migrations are the hardest part of design systems work

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React Scan

React Scan is a tool that detects performance issues in your React app. It has a very cool UX, where it automatically highlights components that require optimizations. Ther's also a popover that provides more details about exactly what types of issues you have.

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Around the Web

• styled-components is going into maintenance mode What's next? My guess is Emotion.
• Rsdoctor can help you visualize webpack's build process. Ever been confused as hell trying to understand your webpack config? Now you can "identify bottlenecks and optimize performance" more easily.
• The <select> element can now be customized with CSS. This has been on my wishlist for years. I must've done something right in a past life.