DevToolsDigest: Issue #88

The Week in Developer Tools

Cloud Computing without Containers

Cloudflare has a cloud computing platform called Workers. Unlike other cloud computing platforms, it doesn’t use containers or virtual machines. Is that the future of serverless and cloud computing?

The Writable Files API: Simplifying Local File Access

The writable files API is designed to increase interoperability of web applications with native applications, making it possible for users to choose files or directories that a web app can interact with on the native file system, and without having to use a native wrapper

The JavaScript Handbook

The JavaScript Handbook is a 171-page ebook by Flavio Copes. The ebook is free but you can also take a look at the table of contents or preview the first 30 pages. 

AWS API to get EC2 Instance Prices

AWS provides an API for everything! This includes the Pricing API to find out how much you can spend via their other APIs. This API can be difficult to use to answer questions like: How much does an EC2 instance cost?

sr.ht, the Hacker’s Forge, Now Open for Public Alpha

Though it’s missing some of the features which will be available when it’s completed, sr.ht today represents a very capable software forge which is already serving the needs of many projects in the free & open source software community.

Comparing bfloat16 Range and Precision to Other 16-bit Numbers

How the bfloat16 number format, popular in machine learning, compares to other 16-bit numbers in terms of range and precision.

Rookout Launches Its Live Kubernetes Debugger

Rookout, a startup that offers debugging tools for applications that run on modern container and serverless platforms, is launching a new feature that brings the equivalent of breakpoints to Kubernetes. 

Industry Research

Heatmaps Make Ops Better

Heatmaps are a vital tool for software owners: if you’re going to look at a lot of data, then you need to be able to summarize it without losing detail. Unfortunately, the word hasn’t spread as widely as it could yet.

Ana Ulin: Things Nobody Told Me About Being a Software Engineer

There's a big difference between “programming” and working as a professional software engineer.

GitLab's Secret to Multi-Million-Dollar Success: All 350 Employees Work Remotely

It's a classic story: Tech company goes to Silicon Valley incubator, emerges with a plan, and grows explosively. The only exception is that few of GitLab's employees actually live in the Bay Area.

Future of Work #4: Enterprise Knowledge Management 2.0

Just as the legal industry now has legal search and discovery to find documents faster, eliminate down time, and be more productive, there is opportunity for a new generation of enterprise search & discovery, collaboration and knowledge management tools, that converge and combined with machine-learning capabilities, will create a new layer of team intelligence.

How Zapier Reached $35M ARR with This SaaS SEO Strategy

Zapier is an app integration and automation platform that lets users (primarily SMBs) set-up triggered actions and workflows between different applications. They started in 2011 and have only raised $1.3M in venture funding, primarily bootstrapping their way to $35M ARR. Currently they have over 1,000 apps on their platform.

The Source History of Cat

It is easy to see why the average person might believe that a field like computer science, or a profession like software engineering, completely reinvents itself every few years. Of course, the amazing thing is how little actually changes.

Venture Announcements

Meet Jennifer Tejada, the Secret Weapon of One of the Fastest-Growing Enterprise Software Startups

PagerDuty, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based company that sends companies information about their technology, doesn’t receive a fraction of the press that other fast-growing enterprise software companies receive. But that's changing. 

Airtable Raises $100M at a $1.1B Valuation

Airtable, which uses a simple interface built on spreadsheets and other tools familiar to knowledge workers as a frontend to produce apps and other web-based experiences, has raised $100 million in funding to expand its business with more talent and offices outside the US.

Framer Scores $24M Series B Led by Atomico

Founded by ex-Facebookers Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk, Framer has set out to ride (and power) a trend that is seeing every company having to become a digital business and often a product-first company, as consumers become accustomed to high-quality apps and other desirable digital experiences.

Apptio to Go Private in $1.94 Billion with Vista Equity Partners

Software company Apptio Inc announced it agreed to be bought by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $1.94 billion in cash, two years after going public.

From The Heavybit Library

Navigating Enterprise Needs

In this session, CTOs Kimber Lockhart from One Medical, Ralph Gootee from PlanGrid, and Valentino Volonghi from AdRoll, discuss the frameworks they use to diligence technical products, the core enterprise features they need to satisfy their risk profiles, and the nuances of selling into their unique industries and businesses.

Practical Product Ep. #16, Building and Leveraging Product Marketplaces

In episode 16 of Practical Product, Craig and Rimas are joined by Connie Kwan to walk through the process of buying and selling products on marketplaces.