Web Developer Monthly Newsletter 💻🚀

Welcome to the 72nd issue of Web Developer Monthly!

If it’s your first time here, welcome, I like you already. If you want the full back story on the newsletter, head here.

The quick version: I curate and share the most important articles, news, resources, podcasts, and videos from the world of web and software development.

Think the Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) meeting the programming world. I give you the 20% that will get you 80% of the results.

If you're a long time reader, welcome back old friend.

Alright, let's not waste any valuable time and jump right into this month's updates.

Here's what you missed in June 2024 as a Web Developer…

State of JS News 🏆

The annual State of JS survey results have been released.

It came out a little later than usual, but it's still a valuable thing for JavaScript developers to look at to see what the industry is doing. Nothing too big from previous years other than the two things I've noticed:

1. People are starting to get tired of React complexity
2. Vite is one of the bright spots in the ever growing new toolset of the JavaScript developer. Everyone is moving towards it

Oh, and no big deal, but Zero to Mastery made the top 5 best resources to learn JavaScript and Web Development.

Thanks for your support everyone ❤️

ECMA2024 Is Here 🥁

Ecma International approves ECMAScript 2024 which means new features are coming to JavaScript. Here is the breakdown of them all.

The best part is the new Set methods... you can see some good examples of how to use these to make your life easier here.

React News 💎

React... it's still mostly everyone's favourite frontend library. What crazy things have they been up to?

1. React Conf 2024 just happened, and here is a recap of the entire conference in case you were getting FOMO.

2. Worried about the new React 19 changes? Don't worry, codemod got you covered with their little tool to make migrations easier.

3. Earlier this year, the much anticipated React 19 was announced, but along with all the shiny new features, there was a little change that went unnoticed until last week that could potentially degrade in a significant manner the performance of many websites that rely on React: How React 19 (Almost) Made the Internet Slower.

4. How Slack engineering used AI tools to transition from Enzyme to React Testing Library. A great way to use those AI tools.

Fetching Some Data 🍓

Data Fetching Patterns in Single-Page Applications is a great article to read this month.

Although it is demonstrated on React applications, the pattern and methods applies to the whole frontend world. I highly recommend this read.

Asynchronous State Handler pattern, Fallback Markup, Parallel Data Fetching, Code Splitting, and Prefetching... it covers a lot of these interesting topics.

HTMX Bump 🦾

I don't know about you, but I'm kind of sick and tired of all these over-engineered web applications. More and more I'm starting to like what HTMX offers and some people seem to think the same since its usage continues to grow.

Here is a great read as to why htmx is the fresh new thing that maybe we all need.

If you're into this kind of stuff, here is my recommended free resource to learn more about it.

Google's Advice to Programmers 💅

When Google gives their opinions on software best practices, usually the industry listens. This time they share their thoughts on how software engineers should use AI tools, and personally, I think they are right on the money with this one.

If you work in software, you need to read this one.

Composing JavaScript 🎼

Function composition in JavaScript is an advanced topic, but a powerful one that all programmers should know if they want to write clean and efficient functional code.

Composition functions allow us to create function pipelines. They line functions up so that the output from one function flows straight into the next. And when these functions all work together, data flows like maple syrup over pancakes.

But what happens when the functions don’t line up? What if some of them expect more than one argument? What do we do then? How do we compose functions with multiple parameters?

Here is an epic guide.

Best Discussion of the Month 🤳

A great discussion around the topic: Why do message queue-based architectures seem less popular now?

It turns into revealing that "just because Big Tech/Google does it, doesn't mean all startup/projects should do it". I highly recommend reading some of the top comments.

An Alternative AI Universe 👽

Here is an alternate perspective on AI and how useful it is to companies. As with all things in life, it's never black and white. This article, however you may receive it, is hilarious though...

JS Modules Love 🥰

How JavaScript Is Finally Improving the Module Experience. Multiple long-term proposals collectively known as "module harmony" will complete the features lost when JavaScript move away from CommonJS. Read 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...

• Wired Elements - A set of common UI elements with a hand-drawn, sketchy look

• Farm - a Rust-Based Web Building Engine to Facilitate Your Web Program and JavaScript Library

• React-Admin V5 is here - if you're a weirdo that likes making admin dashboards

News Around the World 🗺

• Top engineers (and co-founder) of OpenAI have left to create this company for the sake of humanity and AI safety.

• Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free after many years. This story needs to be made into a movie.

• Adobe got sued for making cancellations really hard for their product. Scummy behaviour is not cool.

Big Tech News 🏢

Apple's AI Day was the big talk this month especially because of what it means for the industry moving forward and Apple's plans for generative AI: ‘Apple Intelligence’.

I personally think that as usual, Apple is right on the money on how to use the power of A.I.. My favourite part was their ideas around AI privacy for individuals.

You can read the full article on the Apple AI strategy here which is super fascinating, or read the summary below.

Benedict Evans (a VC) summarized the whole event nicely:

1. A LLM (SLLM?) on the device, with variants tuned for different capabilities, will power a wide range of new features within existing Apple apps, and available to third party apps. Tasks that need more compute will be passed to a full-sized Apple foundation model running in an Apple cloud on custom Apple Silicon (sorry Nvidia) with a new and sophisticated security architecture meaning that Apple itself never sees the data. Apple provided benchmarks claiming that both models have comparable quality to competing on-device and large models from competitors (sorry OpenAI).
2. Most of these features are about suggestion, image generation, autocorrect and complete etc - ‘rewrite this mail to be more friendly’. As I’ve said, I think GenAI is a tech that can enable new features much more than it is a product in itself. Meanwhile there are no open-ended prompts, and there’s an image generator but it doesn’t do photorealism - Apple is trying to close off the obvious paths for abuse or misunderstanding.
3. Apple is also very focused on personal context. LLMs mean that Siri will now actually (maybe) work - you can ask ‘how long will it take to get to the restaurant my mother mentioned the other day?’ There’s a (secure, private) index of your activity and content on the device, an expanded system of ‘intents’ (with an API) to track which apps can do what, and a brokerage system to work out which apps to combine for your request (you could call this an agent, if you like). Obviously, a cloud LLM like ChatGPT has none of this context today, Google Search and Meta have bits of it, and arguably only the device (iOS/Android/Windows) has this holistic view of your context: so far only Apple has really articulated this model.
4. An OpenAI partnership: for tasks that Apple describes as needing a ‘world’ model - ‘suggest recipes for this photo of my groceries’ - your device will suggest sending the query to ChatGPT, for free, with no account needed and no data retained. This seems to have confused some people: to make it clear, none of the other features use ChatGPT at all.
5. All of this needs a lot of local compute and RAM and so only the iPhone 15 Pro (last year’s model) and M1 and later Macs and iPads (the last few years) will get these features. You can argue whether this will drive a refresh cycle, but the underlying hardware justification is plausible.

• Not to get outdone by Apple, Meta is working on its own AI strategy: Create models and open source them to the world. Here is how they train their models at scale.

• Microsoft on the other hand had an AI stumble: Microsoft postpones Windows Recall after major backlash — will launch Copilot+ PCs without headlining AI feature.

• Google, although they introduced the initial paper that propelled this boom in LLMs and AI tools, is now a little behind. They are shifting strategies: Google DeepMind Shifts From Research Lab to AI Product Factory... because they need to make money off this thing. The company combined its two AI labs to develop commercial services, a move that could undermine its long-running strength in foundational research.

• U.S. Clears Way for Antitrust Inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI... makes sense considering last month Nvidia became the most valuable company in the world.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Try drawing the most ridiculous iceberg and see what happens.

• The most insane 0.35 seconds Rubiks Cube solver. Human or robot? Can you guess before watching this video?

• Hacking Millions of Modems (and Investigating Who Hacked My Modem). This is a great read and a great demonstration of problem solving.

• How Online Privacy Is Like Fishing - a pretty fresh read.

• Make some beats with this cool little website.

• The most epic game of Pong you will ever play.

• Did you know that we don't know exactly how water freezes?

Best Resource of the Month ✅

The JavaScript ecosystem is known in the programming world as a convoluted mess. It's hard to keep track of all the tools available to you in the industry, as they are constantly changing. In the end we often forget the reason why these new tools are being introduced to begin with.

So let's take a step back and look at the big picture. What are the main tools in the industry, and WHY do we even need them?

This article this month is probably one of the best articles of the year. Trust me, you don't want to miss this one. Guaranteed that it will help you get a better grasp of our crazy JavaScript world: Exposition of Frontend Build Systems

We've come a long way since the very first browser and websites.

Trick of the Month 🌗

• The most useless but fun thing you have ever had on your desktop while working. You're welcome from making you procrastinate even more at your job.

Thanks for reading!

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See you next month! ❤️

By the way, I teach people how to code and get hired in the most efficient way possible as an Instructor at the Zero To Mastery Academy. You can see a few of our most popular courses below or see all ZTM courses here.