Skip to content

2025

  • 1 min read

Don’t Pre‑optimize: Why Clarity Beats Premature Performance Tweaks

Every developer has stared at a fresh function and wondered, “Can I make this faster right now?” Simon Harris’s Beginner Algorithms (2006) reminds us that pre‑optimizing is often a wild goose chase. In this week’s Weekly Dev Chat we’ll unpack that advice, examine real‑world trade‑offs, and surface strategies for balancing performance with readability. Main arguments:

  • Most hot‑spots are hidden in I/O, network latency, or third‑party services, not in the loops we think matter.

  • Well‑structured code is easier to profile, test, and refactor. Simple abstractions often let compilers and runtimes optimise better than hand‑rolled tricks.

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others. Zoom link will be posted at 12pm MDT.

scientist in laboratory

  • 1 min read

Testing

What is the state of testing at your workplace? Is it continuous? Do you have a dedicated QA team? What tools are you using to support testing? Has Test-Driven Development (TDD) made a significant impact in the industry? Are you conducting security-focused testing?

Last week, AWS experienced an outage—arguably unanticipated due to insufficient testing. Do you test for infrastructure failures?

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others. Zoom link will be posted at 12pm MDT.

testing

  • 1 min read

Staying up to date - Virtual (October 21st, 2025)

Staying up to date

The topic for October 21st, 2025 chat is: how to stay up to date with emerging technologies, frameworks, and industry best practices? How do you keep your skills sharp in a rapidly evolving field? What resources, communities, or strategies do you find most effective for continuous learning and professional growth?

Thanks to a community member for suggesting this topic. If you have topic you would like to discuss in a future chat, please let us know on LinkedIn Weekly Dev Chat group, the Dev Edmonton Slack, or sending us a message on Luma.

Everyone and anyone are welcome to join as long as you are kind, supportive, and respectful of others.

P.S. - We have started experimenting with Luma for registration. Give it a shot and let us know what you think.

P.S.S. - The header image was created with Claude. First it created a boring header image but I prompted it "Try again. That image is boring and and bland." and the above is what it came up with.