Web Developer Monthly Newsletter 💻🚀

45th 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 March 2022 as a Web Developer…

You Don't Need JavaScript 👋

Finding simple solutions to your problems is the greatest skill of a developer. For that reason, I really loved this article this month: 5 things you don't need Javascript for.

People use Javascript to do things that are supported by default in good old HTML & CSS. That's usually a bad idea - it's much slower, can cause content to jump around the page after loading, and breaks your site for people with crappy browsers. So what are these 5 things? Go check it out.

Free Tools for Web Developers ✂️

For those of you who don't know, the ZTM team and I list our all-time best free resources here for you.

Or... you can go back and read all of the previous issues of this newsletter. That's a joke. Don't do that!

React News 💎

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

• Holy Guacamole it's finally here! React v18! A ton of new features that you probably won't care about, but one major change that you should make: createRoot(). Read all about it here (we already updated our ZTM courses with this change because we're so hip and trendy). Once done with the announcement, read this one. Okok, if you're REALLY into this React 18 thing, then you should also read this about React Suspense which is a big part of this update.

• How many re-renders is too many? My React component re-renders 5 times. Is this too many? What about 10 times or 20? When should I start optimizing?

• Want some slides about React? Boy do I have something for you.

• In case you missed it, React Native is getting a big architecture update. Read about it here.

• How to structure your React app in a professional way. You can read that, or you know, just take our completely updated ZTM React course to learn it all ;).

• How to not mess up while using all the React Hooks.

Socket.dev Hype 🔌

This past month something came up that made a lot of noise the in the web dev community: Socket.dev.

What does it do? It finds and compares millions of open source packages and evaluates the security and health of any npm package live. You install the github app for your project, and you're all set. Looks interesting. Keep an eye on it.

Why do we need something like this? Well because we have things like this and like this on NPM.

Public Service Announcement 📡

You probably should update your weak ass password. Why? This is why.

Safari Upgrades 🦍

With over 70 additions to WebKit, Safari 15.4 is packed with new web technologies, updates, and fixes. They are known for being behind other browsers when it comes to web development "features" but with this update it looks like they have a newfound commitment to web developers, and the people who use the web.

Code Reviews Suck 💣

Let's be honest. Nobody likes code reviews at work. And if you do, you're a sociopath (just kiddin! but not really). So how can we perhaps improve them? Here is an idea.

Advice From A Veteran 📬

My guiding principles after 20 years of programming (not me). For their 20 years programming anniversary, the author tried to list the top principles that have been accumulated over the years as their guiding principles through their career.

Deno By Example 🦕

If you have been reading my newsletters for a while now, you know I love Deno. So I always have to put something in here about it. This time around, the Deno team announced Deno by Example.

Deno by example is a collection of annotated examples for how to use Deno, and the various features it provides. It acts as a reference for how to do various things in Deno, but can also be used as a guide to learn about many of the features Deno provides.

Pssst. Deno 1.20 is out.

Technical Writing Skill ✍️

As developers, not only do we need to know how to communicate our code, we also need to understand how to create written and technical documentation to ensure our meaning, decisions, and processes are understood.

This technical writing happens as documentation, inter-team communication (communication between different teams), and even blog posts. But what if you’ve never been trained in technical communication? How can you get started in technical writing? Learn it here.

Weekend Project Idea 🧰

Love Tetris? Ever wanted to see if you can build one of the oldest video games in the world with one of the trendiest libraries in the world?

Build Tetris to Learn React this weekend.

Best Portfolio Ever? 🍾

This has to be the best portfolio I have ever seen. What do you think? Fun fact: it uses something called Phaser 3 under the hood. Maybe it will give you a little inspiration. You can find the full code of this portfolio website here.

A Simple Tip 🍸

A nice easy tip for better code. This is it.

Want another one? Here it is: Don't use !important in CSS. From someone that knows what they are talking about.

Designing APIs 👨‍🎨

APIs are awesome, but they're also extremely hard to design. When creating an API from scratch, you need to get many details right. From basic security considerations to using the right HTTP methods, implementing authentication, deciding which requests and responses you should accept and return, ... the list goes on.

All tips are language-agnostic, so they apply to any framework or technology.

Speaking of designing APIs, if you really want to go down the rabbit hole of NodeJS, then this is the right place for you.

Let's Talk WebGPU 🕹

WebGPU is an upcoming Web API that gives you low-level, general-purpose access GPUs. Having a modern API to talk to GPUs on the web is going to be very interesting.

Will you be able to run massively parallel workloads on the GPU using JavaScript? Learn all about it here... super interesting for the future of the web.

Tiny Projects 🍡

Sometimes you don't need to build that big flashy project just to put on your portfolio and impress an employer/coworker/pet lizard. Tiny projects show that you are a curious programmer that is able to solve problems with code... that in itself leads to great interview conversations and makes you stand out.

Have a read through this.

No More Frameworks! 🧘

Although I don't agree with all the points made in this article, it's a great read to learn about the tax/costs that come with building your next app with a popular Framework/Library like React, Angular, Vue, and other framework du jour.

Solid.js vs React 👨‍🎤

Sometimes you become wary of how error-prone React hooks code becomes. Solid.js feels like it uses a lot of the ergonomic parts of React while minimizing confusion and errors. This article tries to show you some of the parts of Solid that make it an "easier" tool to use than React. SolidJS feels like what I wanted React to be.

New Libraries and Tools 🗿

Just because we had a ton of these this month, I've added them into this section. Check out these shiny new/interesting things:

• A cool Add to Calendar Button.

• CSS Checker: Show Similar & Duplicated CSS Scripts with Diff in Seconds!

• Lax.js: Simple & lightweight (<4kb gzipped) vanilla JavaScript library to create smooth & beautiful animations when you scroll.

• shader-park-core: A JavaScript library for creating interactive procedural 2D and 3D shaders.

• React Flow: React component for building node-based editors and interactive diagrams

News Around the World 🗺

• Digital Ocean has acquired CSS-Tricks. In the past they acquired Scotch.io (which is now gone). Interesting move.

• Is open source being weaponized during these turmoiling times?

• Microsoft and identity management platform Okta both this week disclosed breaches involving LAPSUS$, a relatively new cybercrime group that specializes in stealing data from big companies and threatening to publish it unless a ransom demand is paid. Here’s a closer look at LAPSUS$, and some of the low-tech but high-impact methods the group uses to gain access to targeted organizations. Turns out they were teenagers from the UK.

Big Tech News 🏢

• Google is introducing a new privacy platform called Checks. Look up the definition of the word oxymoron. This is exactly what an oxymoron is.

• Remote work slacking is over! Lots of companies are finding that remote work isn't such a great thing for their employee productivity (despite what employees may try to convince you of)... Google is bringing workers back into their offices along with other big tech companies.

• Meta, in one of its big moves since announcing the rebranding, released this: https://thesoloist-vr.com/. Exclusively available to watch through their Oculus platform. Is this the future of media with walled garden content?

• Apple had their big event where they announced a ton of new features and products. Here are the noteworthy ones.

• Nividia is going big into the CPU market after their failed takeover of AMD. Check it out.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Most addictive game ever: Almost Pong

• Endurance: Shackleton's lost ship is found in Antarctic and extremely well preserved. Ps I highly recommend reading the book about the crazy survival story.

• This may be one of the coolest products I have ever seen. Tell me you don't want one.

• “Better than our most optimistic prediction” – first images from James Webb exceed all expectations.

• Top movies and coding music according to developers.

Best Resource of the Month ✅

The story of how VPS (Virtual Private Servers) died. I love historical context and this article gives you a great insight into how we went from the world of using (personal) servers that you wholly or partially manage.

No more SSH'ing in. No more updating Linux kernel / packages. No more Apache / Nginx setup. No more MySQL / PostgreSQL administration. No more SSL certificates to renew. No more CPU / RAM usage to monitor.

This is a controversial one, but also kind of makes sense.. what do you think?

Trick of the Month 🌗

• Web Extension for Firefox/Chrome/MS Edge and CLI tool to save a copy of an entire web page in a single HTML file

• Want to scan bar codes? There's a Web API for that.

• Hey! New code editor for Mac users in the wild!

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.