A Byte of Coding Issue 389

Hey-yo,

Hope you had a nice weekend. I work a lot with CSVs and JSONs for my data-driven websites, so I shared two short command line scripts I use to quickly convert between the two. The json2csv version isn’t perfect, so if you have a better solution, let me know!

Also I’m hiring two full stack devs as contractors to help with building out the aforementioned websites, so if you have experience with svelte + postgres + typescript / javascript and are interested in data and owning the work you do (or know someone who might be interested), please reach out to me. Experience with elder.js and / or design is a big plus! Front-end leaning or back-end leaning are both fine, but you should be comfortable with basic ETL and then using that data to build a compelling webpage (we have a designer who can code, but you’d have to set up an outline of the page with all of the information plumbed in).

Anyway, here’s the issue.

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Recursive CTEs: Transforming and Analyzing Data in PostgreSQL, Part 3

Published: 22 April 2024

Tags: postgres, database

Ryan Booz dives into recursive CTEs in postgres, which can be used to generate hierarchical queries. These can be very powerful and I used them extensively on https://findenergy.com/ to map the relationships between parent and subsidiary companies.

Some highlights:

• explains how to implement a recursive CTE

• includes examples of recursive CTEs

• it’s pretty easy to accidentally get into an infinite loop with these, so I’d recommend adding a counter column with some upper limit and setting a WHERE clause in the recursive query to check its value (ie counter < 20) 

C is dead, long live C (APIs)

Published: 21 April 2024

Tags: c, api design

Jussi Pakkanen explains why C apis are still going to be important for a while and some best practices for designing them.

Some highlights:

• most programming languages have native apis for using C dependencies

• advice given using a pdf generation library written in C as an example

• “design functions that are as high level as possible and try to ignore all implementation details you can, almost as if the C API was a slightly cumbersome DSL”

A Developer’s Guide to One-Time Passwords (OTPs)

Published: 28 June 2021

Tags: sponsored, auth, web

WorkOS has published an extensive guide on how one-time passwords work, their benefits, and implementation details.

Some highlights:

• “OTPs come in three different forms, and each form works differently: time-synchronized OTPs, lockstep synchronized OTPs, or transmission-based OTPs”

• OTPs are more secure than static passwords, but can create a frustrating user experience due to potential delays

• Pros and cons for OTPs

Scaling ChatGPT: Five Real-World Engineering Challenges

Published: 20 February 2024

Tags: ai, optimization, scaling, machine learning

Gergely Orosz discusses the scaling challenges OpenAI faced with Evan Morikawa, who led the Applied engineering team as ChatGPT launched and scaled.

Some highlights:

• includes info on how chatgpt4 works and the importance of gpus

• scaling challenges covered are kv cache and gpu ram, batch size, metrics to measure, getting gpus, and inability to auto-scale

• section on lessons learned at the end