#herb-sutter

#herb-sutter

Contracts are a means of setting preconditions and postconditions on function declarations, and adding assertion statements within functions. The feature is intended to help make C++ code safer and more reliable.

New overloads on TarFile.CreateFromDirectory accept a TarEntryFormat parameter, giving direct control over the archive format. Previously, CreateFromDirectory produced Pax archives. The new overloads support all four tar formats—Pax, Ustar, GNU, and V7—for compatibility with specific tools and environments.

While the codebase is fresh and grows fast under the umbrella of the local environment, we tend to rely on debugging tools, which were created specifically for that purpose. The app is half-baked, and the code is split open. We observe it through the lens of our IDE and with the speed of our brain. Everything is possible; we may pause execution for minutes, and the whole system is a white box - an open book for us.

Most blogs about switching jobs in tech talk about grinding harder. More LeetCode.More applications.More hustle. But when I switched from SDE-1 to SDE-2 in just 1.5 years and doubled my CTC, I realized something uncomfortable: 👉 Effort was never the bottleneck. Direction was. This post is for backend engineers who already work hard - but want clarity on what actually moves the needle in SDE-2 interviews.

port-killer A powerful cross-platform port management tool for developers. Monitor ports, manage Kubernetes port forwards, integrate Cloudflare Tunnels, and kill processes with one click. Features: 🔍 Auto-discovers all listening TCP ports ⚡ One-click process termination (graceful + force kill) 🔄 Auto-refresh with configurable interval 🔎 Search and filter by port number or process name ⭐ Favorites for quick access to important ports 👁️ Watched ports with notifications 📂 Smart categorization (Web Server, Database, Development, System)

Anthropic has launched Claude Sonnet 4.6, an update to the company's hybrid reasoning model that brings improvements in coding consistency and instruction following, Anthropic said. Introduced February 17, Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a full upgrade of the model's skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, design, and knowledge work, according to Anthropic. the model also features a 1M token context window in beta.

Poettering is best known for systemd. After a lengthy stint at Red Hat, he joined Microsoft in 2022. Kühl was a Microsoft employee until last year, and Brauner, who also joined Microsoft in 2022, left this month. The trio are leading lights in the Linux and open source world. Brauner posted on Mastodon: "My role in upstream maintenance for the Linux kernel will continue as it always has." Poettering will similarly remain deeply involved in the systemd ecosystem.

The headline runtime feature in this preview is Runtime Async, described as a major change to how asynchronous methods work in .NET. According to the release notes, since C# 5 introduced async/await, the compiler has been solely responsible for rewriting async methods into state machine structs that track progress across suspension points. With Runtime Async, the runtime itself now understands async methods as a first-class concept and takes over responsibility for suspending and resuming methods.

It's a powerful tool for coders and one that may very well drive the price of software markedly lower as the technology advances. Of course, Anthropic's enterprise focus may very well be working in its favor as it looks to have one of the most capable AI coders on the market. With Claude Cowork, which was coded in large part by Claude Code, also gaining traction as 2026 becomes the big year for agentic AI, it certainly feels like the tech landscape is shifting

For twenty years, QCon has tracked the industry's major inflections. As the conference marks its 20th anniversary with its 2026 events, the editorial stance remains consistent: sessions are curated by senior engineers, focusing on what has actually worked (and failed) in production. The upcoming programs for QCon London (March 16-19) and QCon San Francisco (November 16-20) apply this lens to a new set of compounding decisions: moving AI from experiment to reliable production and validating the ROI of platform engineering.

The software industry is collectively hallucinating a familiar fantasy. We visited versions of it in the 2000s with offshoring and again in the 2010s with microservices. Each time, the dream was identical: a silver bullet for developer productivity, a lever managers can pull to make delivery faster, cheaper, and better. Today, that lever is generative AI, and the pitch is seductively simple: If shipping is bottlenecked by writing code, and large language models can write code instantly, then using an LLM means velocity should explode.

The reason for this is Snap - a Linux application packaging format - creates a local Trash folder for each VS Code version, one that's separate from the system-managed Trash, according to a VS Code bug report dating back to November 11, 2024. Not only that, but Snap keeps older versions of VS Code after updates, potentially multiplying the number of local Trash folders and the trashed-but-not-deleted files therein. Emptying the system Trash folder doesn't affect the local instances.

When I moved to VMware, I expected things to continue much as before, but COVID disrupted those plans. When Broadcom acquired VMware, the writing was on the wall and though it took a while, I eventually got made redundant. That was almost 18 months ago. In the time since, I've taken an extended break with overseas travel and thoughts of early retirement. It's been a while therefore since I've done any direct developer advocacy.

Taxwell helps everyday Americans get every tax advantage they deserve by finding credits and deductions they never even knew existed. Our tax preparation software offers easy guidance and ensures your maximum tax refund. We strive to build a team of like-minded experts in both tax and technology who align with our brand purpose, are advocates for our customers and have a fresh, non-traditional approach to the tax industry.

Every few months, the developer tool hype machine finds a new hero. In 2023, it was GitHub Copilot, the AI pair programmer that made autocomplete feel like magic. In 2024, the vibe shifted to Cursor and the new class of AI-first editors. And now, at least on X, Google's "agent-first" Antigravity is being pitched as the next inevitable thing. Meanwhile, the model layer keeps whiplashing.