Engineering blog
A blog by the Guardian's internal engineering team. We build and run the Guardian website, mobile apps, editorial tools, revenue products, advertising, and data and identity platforms. This blog is where we share our experiences and approaches, including software development tips, code examples, open source software and code stories behind product development
Parsing: the merit of strictly typed JSON
Dealing with content that keeps changing can lead to bugs on users’ devices that are hard to reproduce. By precisely describing the shape of the content using types and ensuring it matches, exceptions can be avoided and users shown helpful messages when errors occur. This post will illustrate how this can be achieved with standard web technologies.
When security matters: working with Qubes OS at the Guardian
The latest version of the whistleblowing platform SecureDrop runs on the Qubes operating system. At the Guardian we used the Salt management engine to set up a Qubes environment where journalists could safely interrogate sensitive documents.
Who said what: using machine learning to correctly attribute quotes
Today’s blog does not come to you from any developer in product and engineering but from our talented colleagues in data and insight. Here, the Guardian’s data scientists share how they have teamed up with PhD students from University College London to train a machine learning model to accurately attribute quotes. Below the two teams explain how they’ve been teaching a machine to understand “who said what?”
Standardisation: the merit of consistent patterns
Coming back from a long holiday? Recently joined the department? Collaborating on a complex, cross-team problem that spans different tech stacks and programming languages? At one point, we’re all going to find ourselves in one of these situations. So how can we ensure that no one feels overwhelmed or unable to make meaningful contributions?
From a zebra to a rotating banner: how we stepped up your ability to Support the Guardian over the last seven years
Since you’re here… please find somewhere comfortable to sit and read my story about the journey the Supporter Revenue team has undergone since I joined them as an Engineering Manager back in January 2016
Our journey towards the fastest breaking news service
Over the past couple of months the Guardian has made significant improvements to the speed at which push notifications are delivered to our app users. We discuss what process and technological changes were needed by the engineering team to achieve this
