My TL;DR style notes from articles I read today.

Top 5 Git security mistakes

How to avoid common mistakes most of us make (or have made):

• Never hardcode sensitive data. Use a secure key management solution.
• Use .gitignore to prevent sensitive data from reaching the repository.
• Use PGP/GPP to sign your commits.
• Assign access rights to each repository & give access only to the developers who need it.
• Always patch your software. Know what systems integrate with your Git installation and patch them too.

Full post here, 5 mins read

How to get buy-in for addressing technical debt

• Get the first & unequivocal buy-in from engineers on the team.
• Tell other stakeholders how the business benefits by addressing tech debt.
• Try to understand the pressures on & the problems at hand for other stakeholders and develop genuine empathy.
• Show how addressing tech debt will have ripple benefits across the organization.
• Give it some other name that people care about- self-care, continuous product health, etc.

Full post here, 6 mins read

How to write fast code in Ruby on Rails

1. In Rails
   • Cache all the things.
   • Throttle any operation that can’t be cached. rack-attack and rack-throttle can help throttle unwanted requests. 
   • Consciously minimize dependencies. They will turn into liabilities as projects grow.
2. In Ruby
   • Use metaprogramming sparingly to prevent unnecessary slowness.
   • Think about how your code will scale with more data. Know the difference between O(n) and O(1).
   • Avoid mutating global state while leveraging mutation on the local state.
3. In Active Record (Rails’ default ORM)
   • Know when queries get executed and what causes them to get evaluated.
   • Index the columns you need to query.
   • Use select and pluck to select only what you need. By default, Active Record selects all columns in SQL with SELECT *

Full post here, 8 mins read

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