Commented footage of the space shuttle launch

Ascent is a commented montage of carefully selected videos of the launch of space shuttle, made by the Glenn Research Center. A DVD and a Blu-ray were produced but are apparently yet to be distributed reliably, so meanwhile the DVD ISO can be downloaded on this unofficial website.

The document is 45mn long, and presents outstanding footage taken during launch of missions STS-114, STS-117, and STS-124, from some of the 125 cameras used to ensure vehicle safety. Views include close ups of the ignition and of the launchpad at 400 fps, mid range footage, and up to footage taken from over 30km away (with the equivalent of a 4000mm lens). The comments give abundant detail about what is happening on the picture as well as the camera involved (lens, film, speed…).

As mentioned this video is 45mn long, but I’ve found it so captivating that I hardly noticed the length. If you only have 8mn available though, this other montage shows the launch from the cameras attached to the solid rocket boosters (SRB) with the recorded sound, from ignition, up until separation, then down to landing in the sea.

Facebook’s iOS Infrastructure

In this talk from @Scale 2014, Adam Ernst and Ari Grant present some of the problems met during the development of the native Facebook mobile application, and the solutions developed.

The first part, starting at around 7’00, explains why the built-in data management library was ill-suited and how they designed a different system to better suit their needs. The second part, starting at around 24’30, shows how their implementation of MVC was becoming unmanageable and how they redesigned it. Interestingly enough, in both cases the solution was based on immutability.

On proper use of communication in development

The following links came to my attention in a relatively narrow span of time. There would be a lot to be said but I will keep it brief.

Last month someone explained their reasons for leaving the Linux Kernel development team in an article that consequently got quite some attention. Apparently a toxic culture is encouraged there, under the motive of promoting open, direct discussion that doesn’t shy away from tackling issues.

Whether the motive is genuine or rationalized could be meat for debate by the way but, moving on. Last week this mail was posted by Linus Torvalds on the LKML, painfully illustrating the problem. Warning: (im)mature language.

Then, someone proposed this rephrased version, which is the reason of me posting today.

This here, is not just a joke, a funny contrast or Linus getting schooled; this is a lesson for anyone and an example to follow, this is what you want and the standard you should promote and expect from yourself and others in any development team you belong to. Especially so if you are a lead.