Web Developer Monthly ๐Ÿ’ป๐Ÿš€

Andrei Neagoie
Andrei Neagoie
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22nd issue! If you missed them, you can read the previous issues of the Web Developer Monthly newsletter here.

If itโ€™s your first time hereโ€ฆ (otherwise, skip this part)

Being a web developer is a fantastic career option. You have many job opportunities, you can work around the world, and you get to solve hard problems. One hard thing, however, is staying up to date with the constantly evolving ecosystem. You want to be a top-performing web developer, coder, programmer, software developer, but you donโ€™t have time to select from hundreds of articles, videos and podcasts each day.

This monthly newsletter is focused on keeping you up to date with the industry, keeping your skills sharp, without wasting your valuable time. I will be sharing the most important articles, podcasts and videos of the month. Think Tim Ferriss and the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) meeting the Software Development world. Whatโ€™s the 20% that will get you 80% of the results?

What you missed in April as a Web Developerโ€ฆ


ES2020 Features Finalized ๐Ÿง˜โ€โ™‚๏ธ

The ES2020 candidate has been finalized in April and we can now see what features will officially be part of this year's release. Are you excited? These stage 4 proposals are coming to a JavaScript interpreter near you. You can get into more detail here.

Free Tools For Web Developers โœ‚๏ธ

Some tools and assets to help you build your next project since we are best friends by now (unless this is your first time reading my articlesโ€ฆ in that case letโ€™s take things slow):

  1. My new favourite color palette tool. #289797957 color palette tool on the web. Also, this one from Palette List is my second favourite
  2. 50 free animated icons for your project
  3. 404 illustrations for all those wrong URLs
  4. Don't have Photoshop? Illustrator? Sketch? No problem, you can open all those files using this free online photo editing app now.
  5. Enhance images using AI
  6. Background generator with patterns of your choosing. And here is another one using CSS
  7. How fast can your website be? Here is a tool to check your website speed
  8. Free illustration packs
  9. Make your CSS use Windows 98 styles
  10. Check how responsive your web app is with all the different screen sizes

React News ๐Ÿ’Ž

Mostly everyone's favourite frontend library. What crazy things have they been up to?

How About That Vue 3? ๐Ÿ”‹

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Definitely not Vue 3 because we're still in Alpha stage...

Vue 3 isn't ready yet, but for those eagerly waiting for something more stable you can spend some time reading about what is expected to come to this major release one day.

What Is A Compiler? ๐ŸŽ›

Why would a web developer need to know what a compiler does? Well, it's because compilers are all around us. TypeScript, Svelte, Angular, React, etc... all use a compiler in some way. But what does it all mean? This article does a great job giving you a high-level overview of what a compiler does. Now that you have a good idea of what a compiler is, read how the Svelte compiler works just for fun. If you really want to dive deep, you can even learn about interpreters as well.

Building Secure And Reliable Systems ๐Ÿ”ฌ

Although this may be a little "too much information" for a web developer, it is still nice to browse through. Security is crucial to the design and operation of scalable systems in production, as it plays an important part in product quality, performance, and availability. Google just released this book you can read for free. In this book, experts from Google share best practices to help your organization design scalable and reliable systems that are fundamentally secure. It's 500 pages... so maybe save it for a rainy day?

How To Deploy? ๐Ÿฐ

Slack shared with us their method of deploying code to production. A nice little overview of how a big company like Slack delivers code to customers and an interesting overview of one of the possible ways to do deployments. I like their system a lot (but I still prefer using Discord for our online community chat ๐Ÿ˜‰).

Github Yoda ๐Ÿฆ‰

We all spend a lot of time on Github. What if I told you that you can be more productive, more efficient, and much cooler using it? Well here is an article that will make you 10x cooler on Github with tricks, tips and hacks.

JavaScript Modules ๐Ÿคนโ€โ™€๏ธ

JavaScript was initially written with no modules in mind. That is, it was designed as a toy language that is supposed to be written all in one file. But things have changed and we have large JavaScript codebases. So what happened? Here is the crazy world of JavaScript modules and all the things that happened, and are happening, to allow JavaScript to finally have multiple files in a project.

Internet Explorer Exodus ๐ŸŽป

For those who have been doing this for a while, know how painful Internet Explorer was for web developers. Support for this outdated browser is slowly dropping, with a major announcement from one of the heaviest used libraries on the web: Bootstrap is dropping IE support.

Github Teams Is Free! ๐ŸŽŸ

Microsoft continues to try and dominate the programmer toolchain market and offer more value since acquiring Github. They just announced free private repositories with unlimited collaborators for teams with GitHub. If you are curious why Microsoft keeps doing these nice things for us, I explained their strategy in a past post here.

Dark CSS Generator ๐ŸŒƒ

This is a really nice tool that allows you to use your current CSS and generates the "Dark" version of your app. Great tool for you to implement Light and Dark theme for your pages.

Speaking of CSS, did you know that you don't need commas anymore when specifying colors?

Gatsby, Zeit/Vercel, Netlify ๐Ÿ”ฎ

What do all of these have in common? I recently tweeted about this and am working on something explaining this interesting development. However, here is the sneak peek: A new "Wordpress" is coming for those looking to create static pages like blogs as simple as it was with Wordpress. These big players above are all trying to own the market for hosting these types of pages. Zeit recently changed their name to Vercel as they raised VC money to compete in this space. Gatsby Cloud announced incremental builds.

Databases Are Everywhere ๐Ÿ—ณ

Yes they are. So you should be aware of how they work even if you are working as a frontend web developer. This article teaches you some of the basics of Databases without taking you too deep into the rabbit hole. Enjoy.

Node.js 14 With Modules ๐Ÿ› 

Node.js version 14 was released this month! This is the one that will have Long Term Support and include ES Modules (finally without the warning!), plus a few other goodies. Check out the breakdown of the Node.js 14 release.

Angular vs React vs Vue vs Svelte ๐Ÿ’ฃ

Yes, the age-old debate of what is best. As humans, we always like to ask this question. Who would win in a fight: A tiger or a lion? I don't know but have always been curious...

Ok, let's get back on track. Here is a breakdown of these frameworks/libraries when it comes to the amount of JavaScript it ships.

Writing Technical Spec ๐Ÿ–‹

I was really torn about including this resource in this newsletter. On one hand, planning and thinking about the code/project/feature you are about to implement is important. On the other hand, it can also lead to overcomplicating things, technical jargon, and unnecessary delay in shipping something. However, sometimes a job requires you to write a technical spec document. If that need does arise, here is a guide on writing one.

News Around the World ๐Ÿ—บ

Big Tech News ๐Ÿข

Completely useless to your career but still great ๐Ÿ™ƒ

Who needs to learn Unity? Psssht... Anybody can be a game developer using Google Docs now. That's right, here is a choose your own adventure game built just with Google Documents.

I have to share this because it is hilarious. Check out the cover image of this website. Introducing the most depressing thing I have ever seen in remote office design. Just me?

Also, people have too much time on their hands...

Best Resource of the Month โœ…

Cognitive biases in software development. These types of articles to me are more important than overly technical ones. Being a good programmer isn't just about your technical knowledge. This article is a must-read this month to understand some of the biases we have as programmers. Knowing that they exist will help you notice them in the future... hopefully.

Trick of the Month ๐ŸŒ—

  • Can you make a youtube video with a dynamic title? That is, a title that is constantly changing based on the number of views? This video will blow your mind and teach you things that you may not have even realized.

  • And remember, dealing with isolation is not supposed to be easy. Stay safe out there and take care of yourself. This may help.

See you next month everyone!

By the way, my full-time job is to teach people to code in the most efficient way possible as the Lead Instructor of Zero To Mastery Academy. You can see a few of my courses below or see all of my courses by visiting the courses page.

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