Changelog News 127

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+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+What up, nerds? I'm Jerod and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, January 13th, 2025.
+
+One way folks pinch pennies these days is by downgrading their streaming subscriptions to the ad-supported plan. But just how many ads might you have to endure from any given streamer?
+
+According to some Sherwood News [research](https://sherwood.news/tech/just-how-many-ads-are-there-on-ad-supported-streaming-apps-really/), Disney+ will likely subject you to more ads than anyone else, eating up ~13-16% of your watch time. Netflix, on the other hand, shows you ads ~3-4% of your time. These numbers are different depending on what you're watching, and they may change at any moment, but I found them interesting, nonetheless.
+
+Ok, let's get into this week's news.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[The new $30,000 side hustle](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7283591208180822016/)
+
+Bloomberg reports (but I link to Megan McDonough's commentary on LinkedIn because paywall) that employee referrals have become a lucrative side hustle for tech workers.
+
+> Platforms like Blind and Refermarket are connecting job seekers with company insiders willing to offer referrals— for a fee.
+
+I'm not surprised that this is a thing, but I'm certainly disappointed. How can you feel good about making money by referring *a complete stranger* for a position!? I guess you get over it because it's an easy $30k? Crazy times...
+
+While this phenomena is likely rare, it is indicative of a job market that is way out of wack. The $30k income referenced in the headline is one individual who produced "more than a half a dozen successful hires for the company" after referring more than *one thousand* job candidates to his employer.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[Mistakes we make in large codebases](https://www.seangoedecke.com/large-established-codebases/)
+
+Sean Goedecke has spent a decade working on large established codebases, which he defines as having:
+
+- Single-digit million lines of code (~5M, let’s say)
+- Somewhere between 100 and 1000 engineers working on the same codebase
+- The first working version of the codebase is at least ten years old
+
+I can't say I've ever worked on a codebase in this category, so I'll have to take Sean's word for it. That word is...
+
+> There’s one mistake I see more often than anything else, and it’s absolutely deadly: ignoring the rest of the codebase and just implementing your feature in the most sensible way. In other words, limiting your touch points with the existing codebase in order to keep your nice clean code uncontaminated by legacy junk. For engineers that have mainly worked on small codebases, this is very hard to resist. But you must resist it! In fact, you must sink as deeply into the legacy codebase as possible, *in order to maintain consistency*.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[Apple is killing Swift](https://blog.jacobstechtavern.com/p/apple-is-killing-swift)
+
+Jacob Bartlett tells the brief history of Swift and why he believes (and its creator, Chris Lattner seems to agree) that it has fallen from its original, great vision.
+
+> Today, we’re going to learn how modern programming languages are governed. I’ll explain how Swift’s dictatorial structure is uniquely terrible, and demonstrate to you how bad the situation has become.
+
+Jacob describes Python's BDFL roots, Rust's community-driven roots, and Kotlin's corporate-backed roots. Then, he compares these to Swift, which he calls "Corporate Dictator for Life"
+
+> Modern Swift is a slave to the top-down whims of the Apple MBA cabal: who prize secrecy and sneer at community input. Unshackled from Lattner’s influence, or even the relentless drive to craftsmanship imposed from Jobs, it’s all about shipping the latest proprietary profit driver.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[Turn any GitHub repo into an interactive diagram](https://gitdiagram.com)
+
+GitDiagram is an awesome site by Ahmed Khaleel that uses Claude 3.5 Sonnet to take the contents of any GitHub repo you pass it and turn it into an interactive [Mermaid](https://mermaid.js.org) diagram! Here's the diagram it created when I [passed it changelog.com's source code](https://gitdiagram.com/thechangelog/changelog.com) (check the chapter image if you're listening audio only or look at the screen if you're watching the video)
+
+You can click on each component to go straight to the code it represents and you can export the Mermaid code for use elsewhere.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+[Exploring a stablecoin bank](https://x.com/bridge__harris/status/1875245405673238796)
+
+Bridget Harris goes deep on the potential of crypto stablecoins to disrupt Visa and Mastercard's duopoly:
+
+> Right now, Visa and Mastercard charge merchants egregious 2-3% swipe fees — which is typically their second highest cost after payroll. Sadly, smaller merchants are disproportionately hit by these swipe fees.... This is partly why Visa and Mastercard’s profit margins are each higher than 50%: small businesses have no choice but to accept Visa and Mastercard since they control 80% of the credit card market.
+>
+> A stablecoin network could drop those swipe fees to essentially zero. Merchants hate swipe fees — rightfully so — and if they could opt for a lower-fee network that wouldn’t limit their TAM, they’d switch in a heartbeat.
+
+I've long asked cryptocurrency bulls to point me to the killer apps. First it was ICOs, which didn't really pan out (too many scammy founders). Then it was NFTs, which were a lot like the pogs of my youth (fun for a day or two). More recently, it's been ~~prediction markets~~ gambling, which I admit is a legit app, just not one I'm interested in.
+
+But, "knocking 3% off every transaction in the world"... That dog could hunt! Unfortunately, it's also going to require government intervention, of which I'm a perma-bear.
+
+**Break:**
+
+**Jerod Santo:**
+
+That's the news for now, but also scan this week's companion newsletter for even more stories worth your attention. Such as, Introducing Werk, a simplistic build system and command runner, awareness syndrome, which is kinda like imposter syndrome, but not, and of course our award-worthy unordered list of awesome links.
+
+Get in on the action at changelog.com/news
+
+ICYMI, we had Rachel Plotnick talking buttons and Mat Ryer singing songs on the show last week, and coming up this week we're joined by EmbeddedFM's Elecia White to talk all about programming things that aren't computers.
+
+Have a great week! Leave us a 5-star review if you dig our work, and I'll talk to you again real soon.