[Dev Catch Up # 70] - Meta's Superintelligence Labs, How Reddit Works, Cookies vs Sessions vs JWT, Claude Code builds GitHub Actions workflow, Octelium, Context Engineering, Glance, and much more!
Bringing devs up to speed on the latest dev news from the trends including, a bunch of exciting developments and articles
Welcome to the 70th edition of DevShorts, Dev Catch Up!
For those who joined recently or are reading Dev Catch Up for the first time, I write about developer stories and open source, partly based on my work and experience interacting with people all over the globe.
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Must Read
Mark Zuckerberg announced Superintelligence Labs, to be led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Meta hired 11 AI researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google with huge compensation packages. Check CNBC's report for details on the talent acquisition strategy.
Agentic solutions are everywhere now, but sometimes simpler patterns work better. Hugo's post explains when to use an agent and when not to use an agent. It also talks about which workflow patterns to use instead of agents. Worth a look before building your next agent.
Reddit started on a single machine and now handles millions of users through smart scaling choices. Neo Kim breaks down how they use job queues, cache servers, and partitioned databases to handle growth. Check this post if you want to understand how enterprise platforms scale.
Claude Code is getting a lot of attention for automating coding workflows. Simon Willison showed how Claude Code built a full GitHub Actions workflow while adding a new feature to his repo. Check the video to see his approach in action.
OSS Highlight of the Week
This week we're featuring Octelium, a self-hosted alternative to corporate VPNs like Tailscale and Cloudflare Access. It gives you secure remote access without VPN hassles or sharing passwords. You can control who accesses what based on identity, all on your own servers. Check out the GitHub repo if you want modern remote access without vendor lock-in.
Good to know
Every developer has probably worked on user authentication using cookies, sessions, or JWTs. But many aren’t clear on how each one works, where they fit best, or their pros and cons. Check this post for a clear, practical comparison of all three.
I often have too many tabs open for different feeds and dashboards. Glance fixes that by pulling everything into one fast, self-hosted dashboard. It’s built in Go and comes with 40+ widgets. If you want a single page to monitor all your feeds, check the Glance GitHub repo for full details.
When we say high availability of systems, it's all about making the right system design choices. This guide helps understand failover patterns like active-active vs active-passive and replication strategies for keeping data available. Check Raul's post to know when to use each pattern.
Code with leaked secrets causes data breaches. MongoDB released Kingfisher, a tool that finds hard-coded credentials, API keys, and other sensitive data in the code. Check the GitHub repo if you want to scan your code for security issues.
Notable FYIs
After all the buzz around Claude Code, I looked for open-source terminal coding agents and found SST’s OpenCode. It works with any AI provider and supports local models as well. Check the GitHub repo for setup and other details.
TypeScript is my usual choice for projects, but sometimes I have to work on a project without TS. I used to miss features like hover tooltips, so I looked for ways to bring those benefits to JS. I found a post about JSDoc that adds TypeScript benefits. Check this post to see how JSDoc improves your development workflow.
I’ve been exploring context engineering and found that it’s more effective than prompt engineering. The Context Engineering Template helps give AI the right context to build features. Check the GitHub repo for setup and workflow commands.
We’ve already covered tools for code security. This one is focused on Cursor. Since Cursor may generate unsafe code, these rules act as a safeguard. Check the GitHub repo if you find this interesting.
Distributed systems bring challenges like unreliable networks, coordination between nodes, and the Two Generals’ Problem. This guide explains these issues and offers solutions. Check this post if you’re building applications across multiple servers.