The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Streak redemption, vectors are the new JSON, CommonJS is hurting JavaScript & the rise of the AI Engineer (News)

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Lukas Mathis writes about streak redemption, Jonathan Katz thinks vectors are the new JSON, Andy Jiang says CommonJS is hurting JavaScript & Swyx on the rise of the AI Engineer.

What up nerds, I'm Jared and this is Changelog News for the week of July 3rd, 2023. Did you catch our conversation with Kelsey Hightower on Changelog and Friends over the weekend? One of my favorite parts was when we were talking about the beauty of a 1.0 and the bloat that occurs when you just keep adding features to software. You know what's funny? Like, imagine if music worked that way, right? Like, people have their favorite albums. You know all 12 of the songs on that album, and that's it.

But imagine if that album kept adding songs. You're like, yo, this don't sound like the same album anymore, right? Like, once you get past track 13 into track 72, it's a whole different vibe. We have so much fun on that show. Give it a listen if you haven't yet. And if you dig it, tell your friends about ChangeLogging Friends. Okay, let's get into the news. Lucas Mathis, who is the author of Designed for Use and one of my favorite design-focused writers, takes up one of the problems with using streaks as a motivator. Quote, losing a streak can be

so demoralizing that it can be difficult to start from scratch and get going again. I'm in a glass case of emotion! I've certainly experienced that myself. The worst part, the longer the streak, the harder the fall. Enter the concept of streak redemption. Quote, if your app has a streak feature, provide some way to recover from a streak loss after it has happened. This could be a harder task that makes up for a lost day, or maybe a lost day is redeemed if the user manages to continue the streak for a certain amount of days. Or perhaps it's something else. End quote. I would absolutely love the opportunity to double my exercise ring for a day and reclaim yesterday's

failure. Let's start working this concept into every piece of software that tracks streaks. You may have heard Craig Kirsteins on the changelog tell us about JSON in Postgres and how the NoSQL movement came along and had something Postgres didn't have until they added proper JSON support, and then Postgres was pretty much back on par with the newer databases. Looks like it's time to swap out the subject, rinse, and repeat. Here's Jonathan Katz. Quote, vectors are the new JSON. That in itself is an interesting statement, given vectors are a well studied mathematical structure, and JSON is a data interchange format. And yet in the world of data storage and retrieval, both of these data representations have become the lingua franca

of their domains, and are either essential, or soon to be essential, ingredients in modern app development. And if current trends continue, I think they will. Vectors will be as crucial as JSON is for building apps, end quote. There are, of course, a bunch of new vector databases on the market, but Postgres junkies should have no fear because PG Vector is here. Jonathan says, quote, similar to the Postgres 9.2 days of JSON, we're in the earlier stages of how we store vector database in Postgres. And while a lot of what we see in both Postgres 9.2 days of JSON, we're in the earlier stages of how we store vector database in Postgres. And while a lot of what we see in both Postgres and PGVector is very good, it's about to get a whole lot better. You know what time it is. It's time for Sponsored News.

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Sign up for free using the link in your show notes and learn how you can reduce resolution time from days to minutes in your backend projects. What do you have to lose? Thanks to our friends at Sentry for sponsoring ChangeLog News. Andy Jang from Deno argues that CommonJS is hurting JavaScript. Quote, JavaScript, the undisputed king of web development, is being sabotaged. Not by a rival language or a revolutionary new technology, but by bits of its own baggage from the past. This insidious saboteur is none other than CommonJS, the antique module system that we've tolerated for far too long, end quote. He goes on to tell the history of CommonJS, how it came to be, how it was born before ES modules

were a thing, but how now, he thinks, it needs to go away. Is it already time to scratch prompt engineer off your resume? Swix thinks that might be the case. Quote, we are observing a once-in-a-generation shift right of applied AI fueled by the emergent capabilities and open source slash API availability of foundation models. I take this seriously and literally. I think it is a full-time job. I think software engineering will spawn a new subdiscipline specializing in applications of AI and wielding the emerging stack effectively. Just as the site reliability engineer, DevOps engineer, data engineer, and analytics engineer emerged. End quote. Check Swix's full article to see why he thinks this is the rise of the AI engineer and why, he also thinks, this will likely be the highest demand engineering job of the decade.

That is the news for now. Of course, the companion email newsletter features many more stories and links, including advanced macOS commands, GPT migrate, how NASA writes space-proof code, the deep history of who killed Google Reader, and much more. If you're not subscribed to the newsletter, pop in your email at changelog.com slash news. No spam, no tracking, just the freshness. We have a great interview episode of The Changelog for you coming out on Wednesday.

Adam and I are talking efficient Linux at the command line with Daniel J. Barrett. I've been using Linux for 20 plus years and I still learned a lot. Hopefully you will too. Have a great week. Share changelog with a friend who might dig it. And I'll talk to you again real soon.