# Small ideas Published articles for Small ideas. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## Outbid.lol's Growth and Lessons for Payment Infrastructure DevFeed: [Outbid.lol's Growth and Lessons for Payment Infrastructure]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Rishabh Goel Published: 2026-09-07T00:00:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Dodo Payments Blog]() Topics: [Website](), [Internet]() Tags: [build](), [competition](), [newsletter](), [payments](), [platform](), [product](), [scale](), [small-ideas]() ### AI overview The article examines how Outbid.lol grew from a simple paid public leaderboard into a widely discussed launch, citing reported figures of more than a million visitors and over $220K in bids or revenue. It also discusses the importance of payment infrastructure during sudden growth and announces Dodo Payments v1.113.6 improvements. ### Source excerpt Outbid.lol turned a 3-hour build into $220K and a million visitors. Why small ideas scale, plus v1.113.6: subscription pause, PPP, and Charm Pricing. ## Why Testing a One-Line Bug Fix Can Take Nearly a Week DevFeed: [Why Testing a One-Line Bug Fix Can Take Nearly a Week]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Dave Cheney Published: 2020-12-15T04:45:54Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Dave Cheney]() Topics: [bug](), [test](), [Microservices]() Tags: [bug](), [code](), [database](), [function](), [microservices](), [object](), [programming](), [small-ideas](), [state](), [test](), [tests]() ### AI overview The article contrasts making a quick one-line bug fix with first creating a reproducible test. It argues that difficult setup, dependencies, object state, and test data can make validating a seemingly simple fix take nearly a week. ### Source excerpt Picture yourself, an engineer working at the hottest distributed microservices de jour, assigned to fix a bug. You jump into an unfamiliar codebase and quickly locate the line where the problem occurred. The fix is simple, just return early or substitute a default value in the case that one cannot be determined from your input. [...] ## The Zen of Go DevFeed: [The Zen of Go]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Dave Cheney Published: 2020-02-23T06:46:10Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Dave Cheney]() Topics: [Go Language](), [Code]() Tags: [advice](), [article](), [code](), [design](), [go](), [small-ideas]() ### AI overview The article examines how developers can recognize and teach good Go code. It questions whether the idea of idiomatic Go and Go Proverbs provides effective guidance, arguing that idiomatic conventions can be exclusionary and that proverbs are observations rather than statements of value. ### Source excerpt This article was derived from my GopherCon Israel 2020 presentation. It's also quite long. If you'd prefer a shorter version, head over to the-zen-of-go.netlify.com. A recording of the presentation is available on YouTube. How should I write good code? Something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, when reflecting on the body of my [...] ## Dynamically scoped variables in Go DevFeed: [Dynamically scoped variables in Go]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Dave Cheney Published: 2019-12-08T01:36:27Z Content type: tutorial Language: en Sources: [Dave Cheney]() Topics: [Go Language](), [Unit testing](), [Testing]() Tags: [code](), [go](), [small-ideas](), [testing](), [unit-testing]() ### AI overview This article explores a Go unit-testing problem involving repetitive assertions and the need to pass testing context through helper calls. It presents dynamic scoping as a thought experiment and describes how stack traces and pointer parsing can be used to emulate it in restricted cases. ### Source excerpt This is a thought experiment in API design. It starts with the classic Go unit testing idiom: func TestOpenFile(t *testing.T) { f, err := os.Open("notfound") if err != nil { t.Fatal(err) } // ... } What's the problem with this code? The assertion. if err != nil { ... } is repetitive and in the [...] ## Complementary engineering indicators DevFeed: [Complementary engineering indicators]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Dave Cheney Published: 2019-12-04T09:46:26Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Dave Cheney]() Topics: [Development](), [issue tracker](), [Statistics](), [Software]() Tags: [development](), [engineering](), [issue-tracker](), [metrics](), [small-ideas](), [software-delivery]() ### AI overview The article discusses using complementary engineering indicators to assess software project health. It describes tracking delivery date, completeness of promised work, and defects reported, while noting that optimizing one measure can negatively affect another. ### Source excerpt Last year I had the opportunity to watch Cat Swetel's presentation The Development Metrics You Should Use (but Don't). The information that could be gleaned from just tracking the start and finish date of work items was eye opening. If you're using an issue tracker this information is probably already (perhaps with some light data [...]