Best of Coding with Lewis — 2025

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    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·1y

    How Notion Handles 200 BILLION Notes (Without Crashing)

    Notion has managed its rapid growth by adopting sharding to distribute its data across many smaller databases. Initially using a single Postgres database, they experienced slowdowns and shifted to sharding their block model. They later built their own data lake using AWS S3, Apache Spark, and other open-source tools to handle their data processing needs effectively. By reorganizing and scaling up their infrastructure, Notion maintained performance and avoided service interruptions for users.

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    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·24w

    Atom: The Editor That Accidentally Built Its Own Killer

    Atom was a revolutionary open-source code editor built on web technologies that pioneered the Electron framework. Created by GitHub's Chris Wanstrath in 2015, Atom democratized code editor customization using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. However, Electron's architecture caused performance issues. Microsoft leveraged the same Electron framework to build Visual Studio Code, which proved significantly faster through better optimization. After Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018, Atom development stalled despite promises of continued support. The editor was officially sunset in 2022, but its legacy lives on—Electron now powers billions of daily interactions in applications like Slack, Discord, and VS Code itself.

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    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·24w

    The Database Query That Cost $1,000,000

    Shopify nearly incurred $1 million in monthly BigQuery costs due to inefficient queries scanning 75 GB per request. By implementing database clustering to organize data by date, geography, and timestamp, they reduced query size to 508 MB, cutting costs to under $1,400 monthly. The case demonstrates how proper data warehouse optimization and partitioning strategies can prevent massive cloud infrastructure expenses.

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    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·1y

    This App Wanted $700 So I Built it Myself with Python

    The post discusses how the author built a voice dictation app using Python to avoid purchasing expensive software like Dragon Professional. Various speech recognition models, including Whisper by OpenAI, are explored. The implementation involves using the Whisper model with an Nvidia GPU and the keyboard library to transcribe and input speech in real-time. The process is demonstrated using PyCharm. The project also incorporates OCR for better context understanding and mentions contributions to an open-source project, Whisper Writer.

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    Video
    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·34w

    I Coded on a Smartphone for 7 Days (Surprisingly Good)

    A developer experiments with coding on a smartphone for a week, testing various mobile code editors including GitHub Codespaces, Acode, and NeoVim through Termux. The experiment explores hardware setup with Bluetooth keyboards, ergonomic solutions like phone mounts, and running local AI models for code completion. While challenging due to screen size limitations, the experience proves surprisingly viable with proper tooling, especially using NeoVim in a terminal environment for local development.

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    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·24w

    I Lived in the Terminal for a Whole Week

    A developer replaces their GUI-based computer setup with a terminal-only environment for seven days to combat tech burnout. Using Ubuntu Server, i3 window manager, and CLI/TUI tools like Neovim, Neomutt, and TaskWarrior, they recreate their entire workflow including web browsing, email, note-taking, and task management. The experiment reveals how Linux customization enables personal identity expression through technology, ultimately leading to appreciation for minimalist, utility-focused computing despite the steep learning curve.

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    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·42w

    This JavaScript library changes EVERYTHING 💻

    Zod v4 introduces significant improvements to the popular JavaScript schema validation library, including a new Zod Mini version with functional tree-shakable API for reduced bundle sizes and JSON schema conversion capabilities. The library helps developers validate data structures like forms without writing multiple if statements, while providing static type inference. The new JSON schema feature enables easier creation of structured outputs for AI applications.

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    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·26w

    Why aren’t developers using this!?

    Debuggers built into code editors and IDEs offer a more efficient alternative to print statements and console logs. By setting breakpoints, developers can pause code execution, inspect variables and state, and step through code line-by-line without manual logging. These tools are available across languages and editors, including terminal-based options, yet remain underutilized despite their effectiveness.

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    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·49w

    I Built an AI That Knows 200,000 Game Characters

    A developer built an AI system that recognizes over 200,000 video game characters by scraping data from gaming databases, collecting character images, and using embeddings with a vector database for similarity matching. The project uses NVIDIA's G-Assist platform and demonstrates techniques for data collection, image processing, and building AI-powered gaming tools.

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    Video
    Avatar of codingwithlewisCoding with Lewis·47w

    3 Insane Algorithms Netflix Uses to Scan BILLIONS of Frames

    Netflix uses three sophisticated computer vision algorithms to analyze billions of video frames: match cut transitions that automatically find visually similar shots for seamless editing, video search capabilities that convert text queries into mathematical embeddings to find specific scenes, and scene detection that combines screenplay alignment with multimodal analysis of video and audio tracks. These systems leverage instance segmentation, optical flow, and bidirectional neural networks to automate video editing tasks that would otherwise require thousands of manual hours.

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