Best of InfoQ — June 2025

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    How Software Engineers Can Grow Their Career

    Bruno Rey outlines three key factors for software engineer career growth: ambition, capacity, and opportunity. He emphasizes taking proactive steps to broaden influence by learning from peers, stepping outside comfort zones, and taking on tasks beyond current responsibilities. Rey recommends maintaining a brag document to ensure work visibility, setting realistic long-term career goals with intermediate milestones, and planning for setbacks. The approach focuses on expanding one's area of influence through deliberate action and strategic career planning.

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    Rust: A Productive Language for Writing Database Applications

    Carl Lerche argues that Rust can be productive for building higher-level applications like web apps and database-backed services, not just systems programming. He discusses how Rust's quality benefits translate to long-term productivity gains through reduced bugs and maintenance overhead. The talk covers practical tips for using Rust effectively, including preferring enums over traits, leveraging procedural macros, and proper error handling strategies. Lerche also introduces Toasty, his work-in-progress ORM designed for ease of use, and addresses common challenges like the learning curve and ecosystem maturity.

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    How to Develop Your Skills to Become a Principal Engineer

    Becoming a principal engineer requires more than deep technical expertise. Success depends on developing influence, communication, and strategic thinking skills. Principal engineers focus on enabling teams by setting technical direction, driving good engineering practices, and shaping culture. The role demands becoming a "broken comb" with expertise across multiple domains and collaborative skills. Skills from outside activities like sports, volunteering, or gaming can provide valuable leadership perspective and should not be undervalued in career development.

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    The Void IDE, Open-Source Alternative to Cursor, Released in Beta

    Void IDE, a Y Combinator-backed open-source code editor, launched in beta as a privacy-focused alternative to Cursor and GitHub Copilot. Built as a VS Code fork, it supports multiple LLMs including local hosting via Ollama, allowing developers to maintain control over their code data. The editor offers AI features like inline editing, contextual chat, and code generation while enabling migration of existing VS Code configurations.

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    Opera Unveils Opera Neon: A New Browser Built Around AI Agents

    Opera launched Opera Neon, a browser that integrates AI agents to go beyond traditional web browsing. It features three core functions: Chat for conversational assistance, Do for automating web tasks like form filling and purchases, and Make for generating content like websites and code. The browser uses both local processing for basic tasks and cloud-based virtual machines for complex operations. Opera positions this as 'agentic browsing' where the browser actively helps users accomplish goals rather than just displaying content. The product is available as a premium subscription with early access through a waitlist.

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