Web Developer Monthly Newsletter 💻🚀

61st 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 interesting problems.

One of the hardest parts? Staying up-to-date with the constantly evolving ecosystem.

Of course you want to be a top-performing web developer, coder, programmer, software developer, but you don’t have time to select from 100s of articles, videos and podcasts coming out every 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 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 July 2023 as a Web Developer…

The Rise and Fall of CommonJS 🎎

JavaScript, the undisputed king of web development, is being sabotaged — not by a rival language or a revolutionary new technology, but by its own baggage from the past.

This insidious saboteur is none other than CommonJS, the antique module system that we’ve tolerated for far too long... the article starts off strong, but gives you a nice historical context that perhaps some of the new developers might not have known.

Worth a read.

React News 💎

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

1. How React 18 Improves Application Performance:

Learn how concurrent features like Transitions, Suspense, and React Server Components improve application performance.

2. Github Engineering team came up with a great post on how to build a GPT-3 App with Nextjs, React, and GitHub Copilot. Worth the read.

3. Dan Abramov (that guy that started Redux and then worked on the Core React team) is leaving Meta. All the lambda functions cried in unison.

4. How do you update an older React Application? This is a good breakdown.

5. Watch an interview with our React Instructor... it's worth it.

Weekend Project Idea 🍭

This will absolutely blow your mind. Can you build a truly async chat application with just CSS and no JavaScript?

Turns out you can... this is your fun project to try out and play around with this weekend. A truly monstrous async web chat using no JS whatsoever on the frontend.

What's Up JavaScript? 📮

A look at what's coming up next for JavaScript and its features including useful types, modern tools to make internationalizing your sites and web apps easier, plus hints at what might come later for JavaScript... Enjoy the read.

The Book Of TypeScript 📘

A nice, free and open sourced book on everything you want to know about TypeScript. The Concise TypeScript Book: A Concise Guide to Effective Development in TypeScript.

Side note, you should read this too.

Or alternatively, if you want a dedicated course to follow along and learn TypeScript from scratch, go ahead and check out our brand new TypeScript Bootcamp!

Taught by an industry professional, this course covers everything from beginner to advanced topics. If you're a JavaScript developer who is serious about taking your coding skills and career to the next level, then this is the course for you.

You can start watching the course here for free.

NGINX Fun ⚖️

Want to play with NGINX but don't want to set up servers?

Well then, you're going to love the NGINX playground. Go play and figure out how to do load balancing and all the other fun things that come with this popular tool.

Frontend Party 🎊

This is a fun little website that compares and shows snippets of code and components for all of the different frontend tools like React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, but also some lesser known ones like Mithril.

Compare, contrast, and pick your favourite one!

Data Engineering Map 🃏

Although not directly a Web Development field, it still encompasses different aspects of Web Development. What does a Data Engineer do and what type of roadmap do you need to become one? Turns out there is not roadmap.

Trust me, you'll want to read this one.

The Derek Zoolander Center For A.I. 👨‍🎤

How to Use AI to Do Stuff Good. This is an opinionated guide on how to use A.I. in your workplace... pssst, make sure you check out the Best Resource of The Month section below for something special in this newsletter.

Blast From The Past 📺

This is a fun one. Here is the official press release from December 4, 1995 when Netscape and Sun announced JavaScript to the world for the first time.

Then JavaScript went on to do this...

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...

• React Graph Gallery: Build interactive charts for the web.

• Prettier 3.0 is out! The popular code formatting tool now introduces ECMAScript modules.

• driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more. I really like this one.

• Tremor: a cool React library to build dashboards.

News Around the World 🗺

• This could have VERY big consequences for the computing world. Has the “The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor” been discovered? Everyone is debating this one right now.

Big Tech News 🏢

• Meta released Threads as a competition to Twitte...I mean 'X'. If you want an intelligent, non emotional discussion around this decision and the two apps, check out this thread. Finally, if you want to know how the Threads app is made, you can find out here.

• Meta released Llama 2. The popular open source language learning model to combat the likes of OpenAI(Microsoft) and Google. Want to run this locally on your laptop? Here is how to do it.

• Apple is working on an "AppleGPT" as well so it doesn't get left behind.

• Google is doing Google things by trying to introduce Web Integrity API which everyone is hating on this month. If you want a deep dive into why this might be bad, here it is.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

This is blowing up...talk to historical figures from the past.

Best Resource of the Month ✅

Let's be honest, we cannot get away from every coworker, friend, and family member talking about LLMs like ChatGPT these days and how it's going to change the future of work.

Instead of listening to everyone's opinion, why not listen to the people that actually work in your industry and use these tools everyday?

State of A.I. 2023 just came out with the results!

The report had 3,240 participants working in your industry answer work related questions. If you want to know WHAT you should focus on and HOW to use certain A.I. tools, then this is the best resource our there right now so you can keep up with the rest. Enjoy!

Trick of the Month 🌗

• GPT4All: A free-to-use, locally running, privacy-aware chatbot. No GPU or internet required.

• pkg-size: Find the true size of an npm package

Ok... one more because you've been good and have read this entire newsletter.

• Make yourself look like a cool hacker at your local coffee shop.

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 our popular courses below or see all ZTM courses here.