beat: dev-practices
articles: 8 · answers: 39
latest: July 16, 2026
---
Development Best Practices
Conventions, patterns and hard-won habits that make codebases readable, maintainable and fast to ship.
What are good software development practices?
Good practice is whatever makes a codebase readable a year later and safe to change under pressure: honest naming, small reviewable changes, dependency hygiene, incident-ready logging, and a supply chain you can audit. Crashtech writes these as concrete engineering guidance with examples, not as slogans.
Claude and ChatGPT Both Went Down the Same Day, Then Claude Broke Four More Times
Downdetector logged 2,000+ Claude and 10,000+ ChatGPT reports on July 14, 2026, then Anthropic's status page logged four more incidents by July 16.
A Misconfigured GitHub Action Backdoored Packages With 3M Weekly Downloads
A pull_request_target flaw in AsyncAPI's CI let attackers steal a token and trojan 4 npm packages — 3M+ weekly downloads — with credential-stealing code.
Malware Hid Inside a Popular Obfuscation Tool — and Went Hunting for Your AI Coding Agent's Credentials
Stolen npm credentials let attackers slip native-binary malware into jscrambler, hunting for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf credentials.
The Company That Sells You Cybersecurity Just Got Hacked — Hacker Claims Its Cloud Keys Too
A hacker calling itself 888 claims 35GB of stolen Accenture source code and Azure keys. Accenture confirms a breach, disputes the scope.
JetBrains Built Its Own AI Coding Benchmark Because It Doesn't Trust Anyone Else's
JetBrains released a 105-task, open Kotlin coding benchmark on July 8, 2026 — and Claude Code beat JetBrains' own Junie agent by 3.81 points at launch.
npm's Biggest Security Overhaul in 16 Years Is Here — Attackers Are Already Adapting
npm v12 blocks install scripts, Git dependencies, and remote sources by default. Researchers say attackers are already routing around it.
One Vendor Flaw Just Exposed 14.2 Million Logins Across Six Japanese ISPs
A flaw in one unnamed vendor's software let attackers into a shared email platform, exposing up to 14.2 million accounts across six Japanese ISPs.
Programming Naming Conventions Explained: camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case & More
Learn the difference between camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, kebab-case and UPPER_SNAKE_CASE — which languages use which, and how to name things cleanly.
Questions we answer on this beat
- How many outage reports did Claude and ChatGPT get on July 14, 2026?
- What did Anthropic's own status page say about the July 14 Claude outage?
- Did Claude have more outages after July 14?
- What did ChatGPT's status checker say was wrong?
- Is this outage pattern actually unusual for AI providers?
- What GitHub Actions vulnerability did the attacker exploit?
- How many npm packages were compromised, and how widely were they used?
- What did the malicious payload actually do?
- Why wasn't this vulnerability fixed before the attack happened?
- Does blocking npm install scripts stop this kind of attack?
- What is the jscrambler npm supply chain attack?
- Which jscrambler versions were affected, and which are safe?
Entities on this beat
Frequently asked questions
What naming convention should I use in code?
Follow the language ecosystem you are in rather than a personal preference — camelCase in JavaScript, snake_case in Python, PascalCase for types — and keep names describing intent, not implementation. Crashtech explains the reasoning behind each convention and where mixed styles are legitimate.
How do I protect a project from supply-chain attacks?
Pin and audit dependencies, restrict install-time scripts, require provenance for publishing, and treat CI tokens as production credentials. Crashtech reports real npm and GitHub Actions compromises and reconstructs exactly which control would have stopped each one.
How many Development Best Practices articles has Crashtech published?
8 articles on this beat, the most recent published July 16, 2026 and the earliest May 23, 2026. 39 questions have a dedicated answer page with an authored direct answer.