Holger's Blog

The latest Chrome beta (version 70) introduces changes to the Shape Detection API and the Web Authentication API.

The Shape Detection API consists of three APIs: A Face Detection API, a Barcode Detection API and a Text Detection API. Given an image bitmap or a blob, the Face Detection API returns the location of faces and the locations of eyes, noses, and mouths within those faces. To give you rudimentary control of performance, you can limit the number of returned faces and prioritize speed over performance.

They cannot (yet) compare faces and recognize known faces in the browser. Give it a year. Soon browser plugin creators are able to scan the photos you upload to Facebook and identify the people you had fun with last night. If you think I am exaggerating, please wait for the next paragraph.

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The latest Chrome beta (version 70) introduces changes to the Shape Detection API and the Web Authentication API.

The Shape Detection API consists of three APIs: A Face Detection API, a Barcode Detection API and a Text Detection API. Given an image bitmap or a blob, the Face Detection API returns the location of faces and the locations of eyes, noses, and mouths within those faces. To give you rudimentary control of performance, you can limit the number of returned faces and prioritize speed over performance.

They cannot (yet) compare faces and recognize known faces in the browser. Give it a year. Soon browser plugin creators are able to scan the photos you upload to Facebook and identify the people you had fun with last night. If you think I am exaggerating, please wait for the next paragraph.

Read More →

Imagine you have a team member that always criticises your work. You make commit after commit and put your best effort forth, you try to find the best names for variables and methods. You check your code using tools like RuboCop and Linters. Yet in every pull request, he asks you whether you considered refactoring objects. Things like extracting some logic out of a class, introducing view models and repository objects and sometimes even crazy stuff like domain driven design ideas. Why can’t he leave you alone?

I tell you why: Because the fundamentals matter. They make the difference between software projects where things go smoothly and projects that just fail.

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Imagine you have a team member that always criticises your work. You make commit after commit and put your best effort forth, you try to find the best names for variables and methods. You check your code using tools like RuboCop and Linters. Yet in every pull request, he asks you whether you considered refactoring objects. Things like extracting some logic out of a class, introducing view models and repository objects and sometimes even crazy stuff like domain driven design ideas. Why can’t he leave you alone?

I tell you why: Because the fundamentals matter. They make the difference between software projects where things go smoothly and projects that just fail.

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The other week I went on vacation with my family. We flew to Switzerland and had a really great time. I took the big camera to make gorgeous shots of my wife, my baby daughter and the Alps. The iPhone camera is great but pales in comparison to a professional camera. As I am no great photographer you can see this in every shot. But still, the pictures I made with the DSLR are just better. When using a big camera I always try to take more time for the composition of the shot. I use the lens, different focus spots and depth of field way more than when shooting with my phone.

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Imagine you are about to go on a trip. Perhaps with your partner or some friends. You want to take the car into the woods, to a place you have never been. The vacation spot has a nice house with a pool and a barbecue. The woman you rent it from stocked the fridge with cold drinks. And they have water beds. And WIFI! IN THE WOODS!

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You probably already noticed from the title of this letter, the topic of documentation is still important to me. Now that I began spending time with it I notice the many different aspects of documentation. And there’s more than I thought.

Today I want to share a resource with you that taught me about the four different levels/types of docs. I didn’t even know that there were four levels, or why they mattered. They start with something very important:

It doesn’t matter how good your software is, because if the documentation is not good enough, people will not use it.

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I received great replies to my letter last week. I want to quote two for you today.

First is Jacob Wyke on the question why these people become some kinds of star for you an me.

I think its because they teach people things, and so generations of developers look up to them as they taught them things.

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Do we have software development stars? I was wondering. We have people like David Heinemeier-Hanson who created Rails. We have Martin Fowler and Uncle Bob, among several others. Are these stars?

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Hi friend.

I am going to drum the quality drum again. This is a big topic and I know for a fact that I haven’t even scratched the surface of what there is to say about it.

About a month ago I wrote

I’d like to admit, I never had a mentor or teacher who showed me how to properly document software. It was all learning by doing. If you don’t mind, I’ll take some future episodes of this newsletter to document (see what I did there? 👅) my findings and further thoughts about this topic.

This is one of these letters about documentation. My knowledge hasn’t grown by as much as I would have loved, but I read some interesting articles about docs. I want to share these with you.

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