Web Developer Monthly (December 2019)

18th issue! If you missed the last few months, check them all out here.

If it’s your first time here… (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 thing that is hard, however, is staying up to date with the constantly evolving ecosystem. You want to be a top performing web developer, coder, programer, software developer, but you don’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. What’s the 20% that will get you 80% of the results?

What you missed in December as a Web Developer…

ECMA2020/ES11 Is Coming To Town 🎅

It's official!. We have some finished proposals for ECMA2020. Want to be the hippest kid on the block that knows all of the latest features? You can check out the list here. If you want a refresher on how this whole ECMAScript works, you can read about it here.

Free Tools For Web Developers ✂️

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 articles… in that case let’s take things slow):

Wireframe SVGs to download for your next project
Confused about which license to use for your open source project? This tool will help
Another Resume template that you can use so you can stop wasting time and get hired quickly
One of my favourite tools Repl.it just released code on Github repository with one click
I have no idea how this will be useful to you...But I'm adding it on here because it is so extremely random (thus funny)
Really nicely done Color Gradients to make you look artsy
Generate invoices and receipts for your clients
A constantly updated collection of beautiful SVG images that you can use completely free and without attribution

Learn to Code in 2020 💻

State of JS 2019 just came out in December. There are interesting discussions around the trends here.

If you want, I wrote an article of what I think is the best way to learn to code in 2020, using the most modern/hireable skills while also being efficient and not wasting time. All using free resources. So you have no excuse.

The Best Talks of the Year 🎬

I was planning on releasing these for my Web Developer Year in Review in a few days (subscribe below to get notified when that is out), but I can't keep secrets. So here is my favourite tech talks from the year that I think everyone should watch. Some of them are long, but trust me on this: You will come out of it, a lot smarter than you started:

Predicting the Future of the Web Development (2020 and 2025) and beyond.
Before you freak out because the video is from Facebook, give this talk a chance. Whether you use React or any other framework/library, this talk really teaches you the current state of the web and how to be smart about designing rich user applications.
Preventing the Collapse of Civilization. Software is getting better... or is it?

React News 💎

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

Create React App 3.3.0 is out! Who cares right? Well, some big changes like the new ECMAScript features Optional Chaining and Nullish Coalescing Operators as well as Templates are added by default. Read about it here.
Modern way to build React based sliders using styled-components and hooks.
Redux has officially decided that a common way we have defined Actions before is now "not recommended". What does it all mean? We should start modelling action as events. You can see it in the official docs here.
Still confused about React Hooks? This side by side comparison compared to the older way is a nice visual read to see some of the differences.
Somebody did 25 React articles for Christmas... quite a lot of content there, but a good thing to bookmark and read when you are bored.
A little late on this, but here are the 10 component commandments.

Big News For WebAssembly 🧩

Yes, we keep hearing about WebAssembly and we have all memorized the pitch by now if you have been following this newsletter: WebAssembly is an open standard that defines a portable binary code format for executable programs, and a corresponding textual assembly language, as well as interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environment. Got it.. but this is huge news: WebAssembly is officially part of W3C recommendation. In case you don't think this is important, the only other tools that are recommended by W3C is HTML, CSS and JavaScript. So WebAssembly is here to stay, and it will be a big part of the web and its future.

JavaScript Turns 24 🍾

JavaScript had its birthday in December. It debuted in 1995 and the officially named JavaScript came out in December. Want to know what people said about JavaScript back when it was released? This is a nice walk down memory lane.

To finish the celebration, here is what JavaScript is made of (its main building blocks).

CSS :is() Is Here 🎺

The new CSS :is() pseudo-class is shaping up to become a great way to target elements. It is the next stage of the evolution of :matches() and :any(), adding a little extra functionality and increasing how semantic and intuitive the language behind selectors is (HA! get it?!). Read the full run down here.

How Does JSON.parse() Work? 🦉

The best way to learn it? Just build one yourself. The term "parse" is used all over computer science. Do you know what it means and can you explain it to a 5 year old? If not, you should give this detailed article a read.

2019 Year In Search 🍿

Google released some data on the most searched topics on the web... If you want some serious traffic, consider building a website about Baby Yoda visiting Notre Dame Cathedral after going to the movies and watching Avengers: Endgame. He didn't eat popcorn because he is doing intermittent fasting. #SEOwins

20 Tips To Be Better With Node.js 🍄

A nice breakdown of some tips for being a better Node.js Developer. Although I don't completely agree with #16, this is a great writeup: Check it out here.

Speaking of Node.js... it uses the V8 engine underneath the hood and version 8 of V8 engine was just released. People had a field day on twitter.

Cookies or JWT? 🔮

This is a topic I cover in-depth in my Junior to Senior Web Developer Roadmap course. I'm a big fan of JWT tokens for authentication, but when should you use them and when should you not? This is a great discussion around this topic.

CSS Flexbox Review 🌈

We all know about Flexbox by now, but this quick article gives us a nice framework for remembering Flexbox syntax so we don't have to constantly google CSS Tricks.

Console.log Master 🏅

Now you can impress your date with all the things you can do with console.log in the browser. Enjoy going down the deep rabbit hole here.

Can You Answer This Question? 🤔

Before you look at the answer, try to answer this question posted on StackOverflow. If you can answer it, I think you may be in the top 1% of JavaScript Developers.

Funnest Way To Learn SQL 🌅

Hey, you still need to know SQL as a Web Developer. But the topic can sometimes be tough and not very interesting when you get started. How about learning it with a Murder Mystery?

Another Security Roundup 🗝

Lots to talk about this month:

An interesting article showing how you can easily inject malicious code in an NPM lock file.
170 million passwords were stolen from Zynga (if you played Words With Friends + others from them) you should probably change your password.
macOS Catalina version has a weird permission bug when it comes to file access.
Facebook (kind of) exposed 267 million User IDs and Phone numbers in an ElasticSearch clusters because it didn't set a password.

Around the World 🗺️

Well, there goes all of my Chinese audience (this will surely be blocked now): Uyghur facial recognition system in China for potential discrimination gets rolled out across the country.
Kashmir WhatsApp users are getting kicked off of the service because of account inactivity... you know, because they don't have internet access.

Big Tech News 🏢

This year has not been a great year for the tech giants in North America with a lot of talk about their market dominance, privacy issues, and other anti-trust related issues:

Google has a dominant position when it comes to search. Other options like Cliqz are trying to have more options for search engines, and there is a website showing you how NOT to Chrome. Finally, browsers like Brave are starting to increase their user base and of course FireFox is rolling out more and more security features to be anti Google. On another note, Google's co-founders have officially stepped down from their company to spend time swimming in their money pool. Pichai is the boss now.

On a brighter note, Google satellite images cover 98% of the global population now. Curious what the remaining 2% is located...They are also planning on taking over the dominant role in Cloud computing by 2023 and beat out Microsoft and Amazon. So expect big investments in Google Cloud in the coming years.

Microsoft recently released the Xbox Series X
Amazon is slowly taking over the logistics and delivery business of UPS and FedEx. Over half of their Amazon packages are now delivered by them (Amazon). They are getting a little sneaky with FedEx.
Facebook is building their own operating system for VR and AR.
Apple may be working on its own satellites.
Lyft lets your rent cars now.
Amazon, Google, Apple, Ikea, Samsung and others team up to develop an open source smart home standard for their IoT devices so that things work well together. We will see if the kids play nice.

Outside of North America...

TikTok has some privacy concern and this person did a rundown of some of the privacy issues discovered in this popular app.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

Mobile phones have really taken over the DSLR market as more and more mobile phones take better pictures than your cool Canon that you have no idea what to do with. Ever wondered how Computational Photography works? This lengthy post describes it in great detail.

Also, do you think more CPU cores on your computer, the better your computer? Think again.

One more... play with this brain simulation. All using JavaScript.

Best Resource of the Month ✅

How do you build a webpage that lasts the test of time? The answer may surprise you. This is an important read for all Web Developers out there.

One more... and this one is a little future hint of something I'm working on geared towards efficient learning. Something that I think will be more and more important in the future for any career. From the Article: "When I was in college, a particularly earnest philosophy grad student once told me that he never cared what grade he got in a class, only what he learned in it. This stuck in my mind because it was the only time I ever heard anyone say such a thing."

Trick of the Month 🌗

Twitter was on fire with great tips this month. My favourite one or two or three? This one and this one. And one last one for the freelancers out there

See you next month and Happy New Year!

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.