Welcome to Week 8!

Happy Thursday, friends! It’s hard to believe we’re halfway through the year, yet here we are. Onwards to your links for this week:

1. Conventional: Comments 📝 - A few weeks ago I linked to an article about code review best practices. This is an initiative to standardize code review feedback, by categorizing comments and sticking to a format. I already do some of these (labels like nitpick, non-blocking, etc) so it’s good to see there is a movement to do that and more. I think having a format to use is helpful for everyone involved.
2. “Steve Jobs used to say that we, the customers, pay them to make decisions.” 💡 - This is a link to a Twitter conversation that included this quote. It’s a good reminder of the responsibility and agency we have when designing software.
3. UESizeofTypes ⚖️ - This is a big list of Unreal Engine 4 data types and their sizes. Most workflows don’t make this information apparent, so having it available in this format helps to reason about expected memory usage when using this engine.
4. Flutter 📱 - Flutter is a cross-platform app development framework, built by Google. It’s also open-source and uses the language Dart. I’ve tried a lot of tools and frameworks to ship apps on both iOS and Android, and this would be my current choice for doing it for any app that isn’t a game.
5. Pokémon Sprite Decompression Explained 🎮 - This 35 minute video does a fantastic job at explaining the run-length encoding compression approach that Pokémon used for some of their sprites. It’s a great intro or refresher on the subject! I look forward to checking out the other videos from the same creator.

Do you have any questions or comments? Let me know! Thanks for reading and talk to you next week!

-Karl