I’ve never used etsy.com, but they’ve got a great technical blog at codeascraft.etsy.com. If you do web dev work, then Code as Craft should be required reading.
Here are a few examples of why I put Code as Craft on my recommended reading list:
Making it Virtually Easy to Deploy on Day One:
At Etsy we have one hard and fast rule for new Engineers on their first day: deploy to production.
Last week I wrote about the joy of deploy. Being able to see something your wrote (even if it is just a small change) go live is a great feeling. It encourages you do it again (and again, and again), which is the life blood of web dev.
what’s the smallest number of steps, with the smallest number of people and the smallest amount of ceremony required to get new code running on your servers?
Deployment is a big deal. If deploying is an elaborate marching band process then things are likely going to be more painful. Why? Because deploy isn’t just about new features, it is about small bug fixes too. Deploy should be fast and light, just like your development process.
June 2012 Site Performance Report
The median and 95th percentile times for core pages
First, it is just cool that they are tracking this type of information and are posting publicly about it. Second, great to see them tracking 95th percentile and not just the median (or average). Check out thinking clearly about performance for why things like 95th percentile are so important and why averages can hide what is really going on.
Kudos to the folks as Etsy for having a great tech blog: codeascraft.etsy.com.