I was particularly impressed by the first one, esbuild. The architecture documentation is so thorough—it’s something I would have loved to have for codebases I’ve worked on in the past.
Does anyone have other examples of projects with this level of architecture documentation?
> I wish I'd done educational products ("info products") earlier. They're like a microcosm of the experience of launching a product because you have to find customers, pitch to them effectively, and then deliver something they'll want. Like you can do that whole cycle in a month, whereas it would probably take 3-10x that long to do it with a SaaS.
Something that helps with this fast cycle is that many people have prior experience which they can turn into an info product. For example, Daniel worked for many years at AWS, and then after quitting could write up https://dvassallo.gumroad.com/l/aws-good-parts by leveraging his many years on the job.
If the info product is along the lines Daniel describes,
"This is an opinionated book. We only cover topics we have significant first-hand experience with. You won't find most of the knowledge we share here in the AWS docs."
it's really valuable.
I find it similar to how it's more effective for a fresh university student to ask senior classmates which classes are good and which professors to avoid, rather than asking professors or academic advisors. They'll get more relatable advice from peers.
The same goes for lots of knowledge or skilled work, whether accounting, construction, or something else. First-hand experience that doesn't appear in textbooks can be so valuable to others.
The author says “The solution to search is a search engine that is aligned with the users.”
I wholeheartedly agree.
The incentives at play are often at the detriment of the person searching, and for the benefit of the company and shareholders of the search engine. Google measures ad revenue and related metrics far more than the abstract concept of whether people are getting the best search results.
The Browser Company, with 22 investors putting in over $50M, has pressure to make a return on that money. The way to do that in the long run? Show paid results. Unless they can make a subscription model work, which many search engine startups have failed at, they'll eventually resort to paid results. Then people will see what's been paid to show up, even if there might be something more relevant to their search than the ad.
When hiring software engineers, I look for people who can take in context from different areas to make good decisions. Some people only care about the technical merits of a solution, but it’s a load off my shoulders if an engineer also considers the constraints of other areas.
You can present yourself as someone with good software engineering fundamentals that also understands the business context. Someone out there is looking for exactly that and it’s hard for them to find it.
Also showing that you’re able to pick up new skills quickly—yes, it’s cliché—is competitive. In my experience, someone who can understand well the fundamentals of one area will follow a similar approach to understand another, so if you can show that, you can convince someone that you can settle into a more specialized position despite not having the skills right now.
Does anyone have other examples of projects with this level of architecture documentation?