Web Developer Monthly (March 2019)

9th issue! If you missed the last eight months, check them 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 going to be focused on keeping 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 March as a web developer…

Why Symbol() is useful 🧬

A nice little writeup of the youngest JavaScript type: Symbol(). Often overlooked, it is quite useful and this article does a great job showing you in which situations you should be using them to make your life easier.

Free Tools For Web Developers ✂️

Here are some free tools and assets to help you build your next project:

Free Surrealist Illustrations for your next project
Legal document templates for you next startup/project
Create your portfolio website with just a few clicks and your Github profile
Free and secure way to transfer files from Mozilla
Nothing new, but this a pretty neat color palette
Stock videos for all, and a free avatar collection
Images for your landing page

We are on fire this month with all these tools. One more because we are such good friends by now: http://www.potlabicons.com

Salary progression in tech 💰

Although geographical location really matters when it comes to salaries, this is a good progression map that you can use for your own career to see what type of roles and salaries are possible as you progress through your career.

Google’s KV Storage 🧳

Google is trying to improve upon the storage services available in the chrome browser with the new KV Storage. This is the first time the idea of a built-in module is being used (like any javascript module but they don’t have to be downloaded because they are part of the browser). This could be the start to many modules like these in the future. Keep an eye out on this.

React News 💎

Wouldn’t be a monthly recap without some React news. What crazy things did they get up to?

Storybook 5.0 was released. This is the way to go for component development if you are working on a large React project.
A great writeup on scheduling in React. The topic is a bit advanced, but it should give you a great insight into some optimization techniques.
Complete overview of multiple ways you can create components in React.
To be honest with you, I haven’t read this fully yet because it’s insanely long. However everyone in the React community is excited about it. I do feel like I’m being told a thousand times how great something is (react hooks).

Don’t reinvent the wheel 👩🏽‍🔬

A checklist for the next time you are working on a project and you are building something very common: Checkout, Cart, Pricing, Search, Navigation, Modals and much much more. This is a great resource to bookmark.

25 things JavaScript developers should know 👨🏽‍💻👩🏼‍💻

A great writeup of optimization techniques that you should know if you want to be considered an advanced JavaScript developer. This article will help you cover some of the inner workings of the language.

Mistakes I made when learning to code 🤦🏻‍♂️

Here is an article from yours truly. These are the things I wish I knew when I first started learning to code to save myself from focusing on the wrong things and wasting my time. Enjoy!

You need to be more than a great coder 🔮

A little different from most resources in here, but that is because this is a skill that is often overlooked by programmers. Spend some time reading through this great thread. It is one of the big differentiators that you can have in your career to succeed.

JavaScript is still the King/Queen 🏅

Language rankings in 2019 by Redmonk. There are many of these rankings around, but this resource does a great job giving you an overview of the programming language landscape currently.

Turn websites into mockups for your projects 🎨

Ever find a website that inspires you and you want to create something similar? Maybe you are working with a designer and you need to have a mockup of what you want to build? This is something I will 100% be using in the future and so should you: https://epic.ai/mockdown

Top JavaScript Libraries, Frameworks and Plugins 🎯

Do you ever get overwhelmed with all of the choices that come with being a JavaScript developer? Well, you no longer have to spend hours trying to figure out what is great, good, meh, and bad: Everything you need in one spot.

Big Tech News 🏢

Google Chrome had a major security issue pop up. If you haven’t updated your chrome browser in a while, now is the time to do so. This is a great discussion around the topic. Even a product with a massive/smart engineering team still produces code with security vulnerabilities. No such thing as a 100% secure software.
Apple announced a bunch of new services: TV, Arcade, News, Credit Card, and a few others.
Google announced a bunch of new services as well. People are most excited about this. Also, they got hit with a 1.5billion EU fine over advertising. Just another regular month for Google.
Facebook’s potential pivot? They may be focusing more on person-to-person messaging instead of the newsfeed timeline that has created a ton of problems for them.
Amazon, DeepRacer league is starting!

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

Ok, maybe not completely useless, but here is an incredible lists of APIs that you can use and explore to build the most useful or useless applications you can think of: https://public-apis.xyz

Best Resource of the Month ✅

This absolutely blew my mind. I am not sure why I didn’t think this was a thing, but it was a great read to understand a little bit more about the internet in our current world landscape.

And here is a quick reminder from Paul Graham (he started Y Combinator) which can apply to you as well. Don’t worry about other people’s success. Focus on improving your skills.

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.