Web Developer Monthly 💻🚀

25th issue! If you missed them, you can read the previous issues of our Web Developer Monthly newsletter 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 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 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 July as a Web Developer…

---

Vue 3 is ACTUALLY Coming 😭

Sure, I may have taken some shots at Vue 3 never coming in the past newsletter, but they have finally done it (kind of). Vue 3 release candidate is finally out, and the creator also did a mid 2020 status update of the project. Would you like to see a Vue 3 course?

Bonus: here is a fun weekend project using Vue.

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):

1. freeillustrations.xyz... guess what they offer?... and let's add another one
2. Grab brand logos the right way
3. 266 responsive icons for free
4. Cool little new tool for your terminal for those who love productivity
5. Generate Big Heads
6. Find the perfect font pairing. Then you can grab the CSS perfect for all screen sizes
7. Free customizable SVG icons
8. A list of lists you can copy paste
9. Compare your mockups with your live website to pinpoint any missing details
10. Image placeholders for your drafts
11. The ultimate avatar library

React News 💎

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

• React Spectrum came out from Adobe using their own design system as well as some custom hooks. Check out the documentation.

• A super in depth article going over how you can test your React applications. I really enjoyed this one and a nice summary of the most important things you need to know. Once you are done with that, read this to get some historical context.

• Do you know the 4 ways to fetch data in a React app? Try to answer this before you read this article.

• How Tailwind CSS created their blog using Next.js.

• useCallback Hook demystified.

• New React Native feature, LogBox, is here. I was actually going to launch a React Native course this month but it is now a little delayed because we want to make sure it's 110% better than any course out there. It will now be coming out this fall 🍂! In the meantime, check out how Khan Academy transitioned to React Native.

• Apollo Client 3.0 is out! Next.js version 123987917391 (just kidding, 9.5) is out!

v8 Updates 👾

Everyone's favourite JavaScript engine that runs Node, Chrome, Edge, etc... got a bunch of new updates. Here is a video of some of the new features added to this engine. It's also a nice recap of some of the new features coming to JavaScript.

The Best JavaScript Library? 👑

I dare you to find something better. "But Andrei, this should be in the Completely Useless To Your Career But Still Great section". To which I say, this is my newsletter and it's definitely useful 😛.

Rise Of The Expert Beginner 🤓

An important read. "When you consider the Dreyfus model, you’ll notice that there is a trend over time from being heavily rules-oriented and having no understanding of the big picture to being extremely intuitive and fully grasping the big picture. The Advanced Beginner stage is the last one in which the skill acquirer has no understanding of the big picture. As such, it’s the last phase in which the acquirer might confuse himself with an Expert." Don't be an expert beginner.

Publishing Deno Modules 🦕

Can't go a month without mentioning Deno! This article shows you how to publish a Deno module easily using Github.

PS. Deno 1.2 is out!

PPS. Pika CDN recently changed its name to Skypack.

PPPS. We just recently added a bunch of new content to our Deno course and will continue to do so as the ecosystem evolves. Check it out!

JavaScript new Date() 🕰

This is something we should all be excited about. A new proposal to improve the dreaded Date object in JavaScript and creating something new and improved called Temporal. Hope this moves through the process and lands as an official JavaScript feature (hopefully will no longer need moment.js or date-fns).

Performance Rabbit Hole 🐇

You know what we don't have enough of? Arguments about which frontend framework/library is the best. Here is a website that lets you compare their performance so that we can keep arguing.

Finally, this article will give you the most common/important performance optimization you can make in a single page application.

TypeScript 4 🤿

If you are like me and your head hurts just reading the TypeScript documentation, then boy do I have a surprise for you: More features, new types and much more in the new TypeScript 4 Beta release. Java programmers are loving every second of this.

While we are on the topic, Svelte officially supports TypeScript now.

And here is a fun read of why this one programmer switched from TypeScript to Rust due to some of the issues they encountered.

Speaking Of Rust 🥉

Rust is the most loved programming language according to the popular stackoverflow survey. It's also graining popularity on the web with the introduction of WebAssembly. Here is a great introduction to get started with Rust.

New JS Bundler On the Block 🏟

Webpack, Parcel, Rollup... do we really need another bundler? Well this new project called ESBuild takes an interesting approach to the problem of slow bundlers (it is built using Go) and you should keep an eye on it.

Best Tool In A While 🎺

It's a bold statement, but I have to say, this is a tool I will be using on all of my future projects. Compare 1.3 million JavaScript packages with reviews and unparalleled insights instead of just randomly picking stuff to download from NPM.

Data Structures & Algorithms Are Useless 🚦

That's a lie. However, a lot of people argue that all those DS & Algorithms interviews are useless. I disagree, and this article outlines places where the knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms comes in handy. It doesn't just have to be when you work for big tech companies.

New Chrome CSS Feature 🎨

This new feature in Chrome is going to be something you will love. Not much to say on it other than that you now have an easier way to copy CSS of websites you are inspired by. Also, here is a not so exciting documentation website for a really exciting CSS library.

Bonus: here is a great article on things that you should know about CSS.

Check Web Accessibility 🔮

Find out if your website is ADA & WCAG compliant. Since the recent DOJ affirmation, all business-related websites are now considered places of public accommodations and must be accessible for people with disabilities. This website let's you check if you are compliant.

SSR vs Static Generated Apps 🤼‍♂️

If you paid attention to the web developer roadmap I did, you should already know this. However, if you chose to ignore it, or forgot about it, here is an article summarizing the differences between tools like Next.js and Gatsby and that dreaded SSR vs Static Site generation debate.

Memoize Memoization In Your Brain 🗿

Everything (and more) you wanted to know about memoization and how it is used to optimize and improve repetitive calculations. A fun read if you are new to this topic or have always been confused by this big word.

Fullstack Myth 🧱

This is an interesting opinion piece about the two popular roles on the web: frontend and backend. Should these two roles be separated? Although I don't agree with all the points made in the article, it does raise some interesting points for you to consider.

Pixel Perfect Parfait 🍨

Pixel perfect is a term coined by designers and clients as they request their design mockups reflect the design and be an exact copy of it. However, how do you account for this when there are now so many screen sizes to account for? This might help.

New Microservice Architecture 🥞

For those who are interested in the Microservices/Monolithic debates and how to organize large services/codebases, an interesting thing happened this month. Walmart Labs came out with their solution to some issues they saw with Microservices: Domain Driven Microservices. A few weeks later, Uber engineering released a post with a similar idea. Their name for it?: Domain Oriented Microservices. Creative stuff. All jokes aside, there are some really good common ideas here.

PHP8 And Ruby Updates 🌹

Everyone's love/hate web language (PHP) is getting a fancy new feature. Named Arguments. I couldn't leave this out of a web developer newsletter.

Ruby is jumping on the static typing bandwagon/excitement from the last couple of years. They are getting RBS, a type signature language.

Changing An Email? 🦧

Quick quiz: what's the logic you need to implement if a user on your website wants to update their email? It might sound easy but it's a lot trickier than you may think. Try to answer it in your head, then find out how complex this can get here. This is a common thing in programming where we initially think implementing a feature is easy but as you start thinking about all cases, things get harder and harder. It's why estimating time on projects is so difficult.

News Around the World 🗺

• Unsecured MongoDB and Elastic Search databases are a common thing. This is because they have unsecure defaults and a programmer/administrator needs to enable those safety features. Well, somebody created a program to delete all those unsafe instances to force people to secure these databases better.
• Australia is making Facebook and Google pay for the news that they display on their search results from Australian companies. An interesting move that may effect what other countries do with news in the future.

Big Tech News 🏢

• Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon are all getting questioned for anti trust. Keep an eye on this.

• Twitter got hacked big time this month through some silly security practices that they had internally. The hackers? A bunch of teenagers.

• An interesting article on why this company isn't interested in implementing Sign in With Apple. But the big news out of Apple this month was their move to AMD chips for their laptops. "We’re about to enter an exciting, messy transition. Not only will Apple Silicon make better Macs, it will force Microsoft to polish its Windows on ARM act, both hardware and software. In turn, this will cause PC OEMs to reconsider their allegiance to x86 silicon…and that will have serious consequences for the old Wintel partnership." Check out the explanation of what this means here.

• Barclays was caught using the internet archive as a CDN (bad because they make enough money to not use a non profit's servers for free).

• Facebook's SDK for iOS crashed a bunch of apps (a lot of big apps) again and people were not happy.

• Do you feel like you are unqualified for a job? IBM is hiring people with 12+ years of Kubernetes experience. Fun fact, K8s came out in 2014.

• Google is investing $10 billion in India. Lots of big companies moving assets into the booming Indian tech scene lately. Speaking of Google, they are now doing online certificate programs and offering 100,000 scholarships. This is a positive trend that hopefully more and more companies will adopt (most people in the world can't afford to pay $100,000 for a fancy CS Degree, nor do you need it to be a great programmer). Maybe soon Google will announce their scholarship program for ZTM Academy Memberships 😁!

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

Do you think your website could last 20 years? Space Jam website is still working perfectly fine. No React/Angular/Vue needed.

Also, here is a time-lapse of Google satellite images.

Best Resource of the Month ✅

A higher level of abstraction. We hear this phrase quite often in our industry. Do you fully understand it? What exactly is abstraction and why is it a useful concept when it comes to programming? Can abstractions be good and bad? This was my favourite article this month discussing this very important topic. Enjoy the read.

Ok, I have to share 2 things this month that I loved because this one is just as good. The takeaway? Write code that is easy to delete.

I lied. There are 3 articles for this month. It kind of ruins the whole point of this section, but all 3 of these articles are tied for the top spot this month. What should you do to succeed during a technical interview? This is one of the best pieces I have read on the topic.

Trick of the Month 🌗

• Build your next voice app using this JavaScript library.

• Or you can built your own Wikipedia with this JavaScript library.

• Next time you write a book, use this.

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.