Web Developer Monthly Newsletter 💻🚀

50th 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 web development newsletter is focused on keeping you up-to-date with the industry, without wasting your valuable time. I curate and share the most important articles, news, resources, 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?

Let's dive in. Here's what you missed in August 2022 as a Web Developer…

Happy 50th edition! Can't believe that I've been doing this every month for over 2 years... thank you to those who have been part of this monthly newsletter since the very beginning!

James Webb Uses JavaScript 🛰

It turns out that JavaScript, the programming language that web developers and users alike love to complain about, had a hand in delivering the stunning images that the James Webb Space Telescope has been beaming back to Earth.

The actual telescope, arguably one of humanity’s finest scientific achievements, is largely controlled by JavaScript files.

Oh, and it’s based on a software development kit from 2002.

The Rise Of Serverless Databases 🏋️‍♀️

No more databases!? Not really. The same way “serverless” means you don’t need to handle your server, “serverless databases” means you don’t need to handle your database. The platform will handle it for you.

There is a rise in serverless databses so now front-end developers don't ever need to really touch the backend. They just have to pay for the serverless "service".

Here is a bit of history lesson about this.

React News 💎

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

• Avoiding useEffect with callback refs. Say that to someone that doesn't know React to confuse the heck out of them.

• A deep dive on composition in React. Learn the key principles for designing and building reusable components that scale: Advanced React component composition.

• A lengthy guide on using forms in React.

• The minimum TypeScript you need for React... because who has time to learn all the TypeScript features.

• Shameless plug: We recently did a massive update to our Complete React Developer Bootcamp so if you haven't checked it out yet, what are you waiting for?!

Benchmarks Suck ☔️

We all see benchmarks comparing performances of different languages, libraries and tool. But benchmarking is hard. There are many ways which one can accidentally introduce bias for a particular solution. Always double check that you're measuring what you think you are measuring. It's easy to make the benchmark result in what you want to see.

translate, rotate, and scale 🎨

This fun little guide will take you through the CSS Transform property and how you can use the translate, rotate and scale to make your CSS elements do some really cool things. Enjoy the code follow along!

Collecting Garbage 🚛

With the introduction of Bun last month that got everyone hyped up (sorry, I'm still Deno all the way)... the JavaScriptCore engine which Bun uses is a hot topic of discussion again.

Here is a super detailed blog post on how its garbage collection system works which gives Bun some of the performance advantages.

PS. the creator just got $7 million in funding and created a company called Oven to oversee Bun. Cheap money for anything JavaScript land continues. We will see if investors actually make money...

Deno Changes 🦕

Deno made a big announcement this month on some upcoming changes as they get ready for 2.0. Compatibility with Node and NPM, HTTP Server and much more.

Check out the full announcement here. Deno usage is really growing at professional companies too. Keep your eyes out.

Reading about Redis 👹

Redis is one of the most important tools for a developer. If you've taken our Junior to Senior Web Developer ZTM course, you already know and love Redis.

For those that haven't here is a visual guide on the Redis database and why it's so awesome and commonly used in the industry.

Your JavaScript is Still Slow ⚔️

Even if a web application has all assets optimally delivered and/or cached, that doesn't mean that it will run fast or render quickly when it is needed during runtime on the end-user's device.

Your Cached JavaScript Is Still Slow and Incurs Performance Overhead.

Bye Bye Heroku 😭

Heroku announces plans to eliminate free plans, blaming ‘fraud and abuse’... it's a sad day for all of us mooching off of those free servers. Now I have to go re-record the Heroku section of my Complete Web Developer course screams to the heavens.

Big Gastby Announcement 🪅

Gatsby Cloud can now publish to their CDN in one second.

This is now 100x faster than the exact same Gatsby site building on a standard CI/CD service... Gastby is regaining some of its earlier steam.

Fun fact: the ZTM website you're reading this on is built on top of Gatsby.

The Y Combinator 🪆

If you want to prove you're a computer science nerd, you need to know what Y Combinator is. This is one the best explanations I have watched on the topic. If you've done the Master the Coding Interview series here at ZTM (Part 1 here / Part 2 here), then this should be an easy video for you to follow.

Enjoy it.

New Libraries and Tools 🗿

There are a ton of shiny new libraries and tools every month which is why I have this dedicated section for them...

• Docusaurus 2.0 is out from Meta. Meant to create documentation websites with minimal effort.

• Astro 1.0 is live. Does anyone actually use it?

• Cloudscape is out! An open source Design System to create Web Applications built by the team at AWS.

• Crawlee lets you do web scraping and browser automation using JavaScript!

News Around the World 🗺

• Crypto doing crypto things: Hundreds of PyPI and npm Packages Affected With Cryptominers

• Did you know that there is an anti-smartphone revolution happening right now?

Big Tech News 🏢

• Twitter may have leaked 5 million accounts' data. And a whistleblower (former Head of Security!) came out with a massive report claiming all kinds of security and privacy vulnerabilities. Twitter's PR department must be having so much fun right now. Oh ya... if anyone cares the Elon Musk and Twitter saga continues with nothing being resolved yet. This whistleblower seems to help Elon's case though. But this doesn't affect any of us sooooo moving along!

• In news that shocks nobody: Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser.

• The Story of Spotify.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• https://www.google.com/search?q=cat... see what happens.

• Best developer portfolio website ever?

• The world's oldest song written 3,400 years ago.

Best Resource of the Month ✅

Having a smaller website makes it load faster — that's not surprising.

What is surprising is that a 14kB page can load much faster than a 15kB page — maybe 612ms faster — while the difference between a 15kB and a 16kB page is trivial.

This is because of the TCP slow start algorithm. This article covers what that is, how it works, and why you should care... it's actually super fascinating and it will make you a better web developer by understanding how the internet infrastructure  works.

Trick of the Month 🌗

• A new JavaScript playground for you.

• A design system for building retro mac-inspired interfaces

• Interview the interviewer. Questions to ask at your next interview.

Thanks for reading! Don't be shy now... Share this newsletter with your friends. See you next month! ❤️

By the way, I teach people how to code and get hired 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 ZTM courses here.