Web Developer Monthly (January 2020)

19th 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, programmer, 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 January as a Web Developer…

Which Companies Pay You The Most? 💰

A new report came out analyzing the top paying companies in 2019. Sure, money and salary isn't the only factor when applying for a job, but it's good to know what some people are getting paid at big companies (hint: it's mostly companies in Silicon Valley, so keep in mind the cost of living is high as well...so don't get sad if your salary is lower).

If you are interested in more analysis regarding the tech industry salaries, you can check out this great post.

Take This JavaScript Quiz ⌛️

How well do you know JavaScript? Take this quiz and find out! A great way to learn javascript fundamentals and practice your problem solving skills.

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):

Generative Art as your image placeholders (this is really cool)
The world doesn't have enough color pallets so here is one
The world also doesn't have enough gradient libraries
Really neat command line tool to help you explore folders.
Animate your icons and edit them with this tool
Free illustrations because I really like you (they aren't made by me. I'm not that talented)
Free SVG icon pack

30 Seconds of Code ⏱

Now anytime you have 30 seconds or more of free time, you can spend it staring at code and learning. This neat little website shows you short snippets of code for JavaScript, Python, C#, and CSS. Pretty neat!

Secure Browsing Toolbelt 🗽

Ever thought about what kind of information you are letting others see online? With the new Firefox version 72 release, I figured it would be a good time to give you the perfect (my opinion) toolbelt to browse the internet securely.

You're welcome.

React News 💎

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

Dan Abramov lovers/fans can rejoice because you can now read about his decade in review. He has played a big part in the React and Redux ecosystem.
React Nice Dates. This is a library I will be using for any time I need a Date input. Just so pretty.
Why Did You Render version 4 is out. It tells you if you have any components that may be re rendering for no reason.

New Facebook Feature 🧸

How cute is that teddy bear?! Ok let's focus now...Go here and click on “Manage Your Off-Facebook Activity” to remove what websites share data with your Facebook account. A new feature that Facebook has added that finally makes people happy.

No More Bundlers 🍾

This is a really interesting way of working on your project. Whether you use React or Vue, you can use Snowpack now instead of having to bundle your code on save every time. Snowpack re-installs your dependencies as single JS files to a new web_modules/ directory. A great discussion around this tool can be found here.

Thought You Were Good At UI? 🏞

Check out CodePen's top pens of 2019. This is not only inspiring, it will make you feel like your UI skills are rubbish compared to these people. Just kidding, be inspired everyone, and don't feel like an imposter. These are the most hearted Pens of 2019.

Finally, here is a collection of design inspirations for your next project.

JavaScript Visualized 🦉

The Avocoder (who I'm a big fan of because she helped me out when I was first starting out into the world of teaching and I had no audience), has written a series of articles which help you understand how JavaScript works. See all her articles here. Or start with this one which is my favourite.

More JavaScript Trends In Your Life 📈

You know what we don't get enough of? JavaScript ecosystem surveys and trends analysis to see what the next big thing is (yes, that is sarcasm). Here is another one. Hint: React isn't going anywhere, it's still the way to go by a big margin in the market.

HTML Inputs 📝

You don't need some fancy JavaScript validation for your input forms. This article does a great job showing you how you can use the HTML input field and some built in attributes to do proper validations. Simplicity is the name of the game here.

Simplicity Over Complexity 🔮

You may have heard this saying in your career as a programmer. It's one of those things that makes sense but what does it actually mean? This article shows a great example of what Simplicity and Clean Code may mean.

Web Components Are HERE 🌈

Ok, not really because they have been around for 9 years now, but Web Components is officially supported in all native browsers. This was actually due to the fact that Microsoft Edge moved to using Chromium for their browser (which is what Chrome uses). I used to be optimistic about Web Components but the excitement of libraries like Polymer seem to be dying down (more on this and specifics in an upcoming post).

No Cookies For You! 🍪

This is big news. Google said recently that it plans to phase out support for third-party cookies in their browser, Chrome, within the next two years. Apple and Mozilla have already started blocking third-party cookies by default in their browsers last year but now all the major browsers will be moving away from cookies that were used to track user sessions. The interesting thing here is that this change actually gives more control to companies like Google and Facebook as the only source of user tracking down the line (see pixel tracking).

Parallel Computing On The Web 🤔

Highly recommend you watch this. Don't let the title of this talk fool you. This isn't about just React. This is one of my favourite presentations that discusses how you can achieve efficiency in your front end applications by using things like Web Workers, Worklets, Service Workers and WebAssembly.

Babel 7.8.0 and Yarn 2 🧶

Babel 7.8.0 is out and it supports the new ECMAScript 2020 features by default! What does that mean? No more pesky little preset-env that you have to add to your configurations. You don't need to enable individual plugins for nullish coalescing ??, optional chaining ?. and dynamic import()!

Yarn version 2 is here! Some frustration around the community with the breaking changes. Some people are happy, some are not.

Libraries To Keep An Eye On 👀

A nice little tool to let you programatically open up browsers and automate things. This is an Automation tester's dream.

Mirage JS is an API mocking library that lets you build, test and share a complete working JavaScript application without having to rely on any backend services.

Around the World 🗺️

US Government started restricting exporting of artificial intelligence software due to national security. This is mainly targeted at other super powers like China and companies now will need a license to send certain software abroad.
SHA-1 hashing function is now just as vulnerable as MD5. For those having no idea what that last sentence meant, it means you should use a more secure hashing function than SHA-1 from now on. Fun fact: SHA stands for Secure Hashing Algorithm... HA!
Hospitals aren't very good at protecting their data. About a billion medical images are exposed online due to lack of best practices.
DuckDuckGo is Now a Default Search Engine Option on Android in the EU.
A day long internet outage in Yemen due to internet cable being cut. A reminder that this whole internet thing works through underwater cables connecting everything together.
NY Times released an article that is making a stir in the world of tech and the ethical use of Facial Recognition.
Turkish citizens finally get access to Wikipedia after 2+ years of being blocked.

Big Tech News 🏢

Microsoft recently released a neat little tool Sketch2Code. You draw on paper your template, and it converts it into HTML. Pretty neat use of Machine Learning. There has been an increasing trend towards "nocode" recently (this is a topic I will be discussing in my upcoming 2020 trends article). Also, according to Goldman Sachs, Microsoft Azure has an edge over AWS when it comes to cloud computing for the enterprise. I expect people are underestimating how valuable Azure DevOps knowledge is compared to AWS. Not all good news for Microsoft, as the NSA found a critical bug in Widows 10 this month.
Apple's new feature in iOS13 which notifies users of apps tracking in the background have negatively affected the ad companies needing this data (as they should). Good news here. On not so good news, Apple doesn't encrypt your iCloud backups because the FBI complained.
Alphabet becomes the 4th US company to reach a Trillion Dollar valuation (Microsoft, Apple and Amazon have done it already). Google/Alphabet also really ticked people off by changing how ads are displayed in their search results. They then backtracked because people were complaining.
Intel CPUs where discovered to have another vulnerability.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

LEGO is launching an International Space Station toy model for sale. I'm not crying. You're crying!

Learn Machine Learning 🤖

Want to learn Data Science and Machine Learning? Well, lucky for you, I just released a course with my friend Daniel. It's pretty good if I say so myself. Also, don't judge me for self-promoting in this newsletter. How else am I going to afford the new LEGO international space station?

Best Resource of the Month ✅

A very interesting article: Software Disenchantment... no this isn't the next Harry Potter novel. Instead, it talks about a growing feeling in software when it comes to complexity and efficiency. It is one of those articles that makes you really think. It's easy to complain, but it's a lot harder to see how things could be improved and taking action to make some changes yourself as a software developer.

Along the same line, this is another great article. A lot of the improvements in programs may have been due to the improvements in hardware capabilities which allowed bloated software. Now this article argues that the limitations and limits of hardware will mean we need to rethink how we write software.

Trick of the Month 🌗

You thought your web app was cool? Try again. You can see the Github repo here.
Have you ever asked yourself: What's the longest distance that can be traveled by only using free transportation?. Me neither, but here is the answer.

See you next month!

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.