Web Developer Monthly Newsletter 💻🚀

Welcome to the 77th 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 November 2024 as a Web Developer…

Octoverse Results Reveal 🐙

There are 2 big annual surveys in our industry:

1. The Stackoverflow survey
2. The Octoverse survey which is done by the team at Github

The results for 2024 Octoverse are in and there are some interesting insights in the report. I recommend everyone read through everything to stay on top of the industry trends.

Some of my highlights:

• Python is now the most used language on GitHub: In 2024, Python overtook JavaScript as the most popular language on GitHub, while Jupyter Notebooks skyrocketed—both of which underscore the surge in data science and machine learning on GitHub.

• A.I. adoption is growing significantly: The use of AI tools like GitHub Copilot is on the rise, with 73% of open source respondents reporting they use these tools for coding or documentation.

About GPU Computing 🤖

Trust me on this one. Read it.

Most programmers have some understanding of the basics of CPUs and sequential programming because they grow up writing code for the CPU, but many are less familiar with the inner workings of GPUs and what makes them so special.

Over the past decade, GPUs have become incredibly important because of their pervasive use in deep learning and these AI tools we keep hearing about. Today, it is essential for every software engineer to possess a basic understanding of how they work. This article helps you get this understanding.

React News 💎

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

1. Uncontrolled component vs controlled component in React... how are they different? Find out.

2. This is a cool tool: React Scan "scans" your React app for problematic renders. It's just JavaScript, so you drop it in anywhere – script tag, npm, you name it.

3. React Router v7 is here! The creators mention that it brings everything you love about Remix back into React Router proper. They encourage all Remix v2 users to upgrade to React Router v7.

State of JS 🏆

The annual State of JS survey is out. It's one of the most popular surveys in the Web Development world.

Now that ZTM is officially a "big" school, I think it's time we leave our mark on this survey like we did last year.

Take the survey here (you don't need to signup) and when you get to the RESOURCES category (2nd last section)... it will ask you "Which paid resources (courses, videos, books, etc) have you used to learn?"

When you get there, feel free to check:

👉 Zero to Mastery

Anybody that does this gets good karma for life and will really make our day... seriously 🙂

WHAT ??== 👀

This is a guide to using ??= in JavaScript to handle null and undefined values elegantly. This is called the nullish coalescing assignment operator, and it is relatively new to JavaScript so better learn it now!

Frameworks Are Dead 🎻

This one is going to make you think, and maybe there is a bit of truth behind this. Will we care about frameworks in the future?.

The author asks an interesting question:

I'm of the belief that software development is entering a radical shift that is currently driven by agents like Replit's and there is a world where a person never actually has to manipulate code directly anymore.

As I was making broad and sweeping changes to the functionality of the applications by throwing the Agent a couple of prompts here and there, the software didn't seem to care that there was repetition in the code across multiple views, it didn't care about shared logic, extensibility or inheritability of components... it just implemented what it needed to do and it did it as vanilla as it could.

I was just left wondering if there will be a need for frameworks in the future? Do the architecture patterns we've learnt over the years matter? Will new patterns for software architecture appear that favour LLM management?

CSS New Logo 💅

CSS got a new modern logo this month, and it uses rebeccapurple which as you will find out will give you some feels. Check it out here.

Very timely because we just released our latest course here at ZTM: Advanced CSS & JavaScript Projects Bootcamp.

JS Without A Build System 📟

We love overcomplicating things lately in the web development world. Do we even need all of these libraries and tooling to build apps? Most likely, no.

So let's go back to the basics: Importing a frontend Javascript library without a build system.

In the post you will learn:

1. the three main types of Javascript files a library might provide (ES Modules, the “classic” global variable kind, and CommonJS)

2. how to figure out which types of files a Javascript library includes in its build

3. ways to import each type of file in your code

Meet Angular v19 🛡

Angular is still going strong and it just had its latest release with v19. Here are the highlights of this frontend framework that is actually starting to gain in popularity again.

Threads vs Async/Await 🛠

An interesting article around the topic of Threads vs Async/Await.

Which is better? When should one be used over the other?

This is programming language agnostic and an interesting read for any programmer out there to upgrade their knowledge base of programming theory.

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...

• JavaScript to WASM compiler - Jawsm (pronounced like "awesome") is a JavaScript to WebAssembly compiler written in Rust.

• A New JavaScript Package Manager has entered the chat: vlt

• Vite v6.0 is out!

News Around the World 🗺

• Evidence of oldest known alphabetic writing was unearthed in ancient Syrian city. some 500 years older than other known discoveries.

• Not much more to report. Everyone is happy in the world... right?

Big Tech News 🏢

• Big news out of OpenAI is the new ChatGPT Search: Get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources... this is a big Google search competitor.

• Out of all the big tech companies, I like Apple because their focus on security is much more tied into their product. What does that mean? It means that they are more interested in providing data protection than most other tech companies (because their main revenue isn't advertising). Their latest announcement is really exciting: Private Cloud Compute... they never store your data and it's the best model for AI privacy so far.

• This is big news: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome in their push to enforce antitrust measures against Google search. If this happens, this could have rippling effects.

• Big news out from Starlink: Starlink direct to cell is coming, and I'm excited about it.

• OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are starting to reach their limits. A new report suggests they are struggling to build more advanced AI and they are seeing diminishing returns from their costly efforts to develop newer models.

• Amazon is planning to invest another $4 billion in Anthropic. This is an interesting deal for Amazon because as one hackernews user mentions:

Curious if anyone knows the logistics of these cloud provider/AI company deals. In this case, it seems like the terms of the deal mean that Anthropic ends up spending most of the investment on AWS to pay for training.

Does anthropic basically get at cost pricing on AWS? If Amazon has any margin on their pricing, it seems like this $4B investment ends up costing them a lot less, and this is a nice way to turn a cap ex investment into AWS revenue.

Response:

Yes exactly.

This was the brilliance of the original MSFT investment into OpenAI. It was an investment in Azure scaling its AI training infra, but roundabout through a massive customer (exactly what you’d want as a design partner) and getting equity.

I’m sure Anthropic negotiated a great deal on their largest cost center, while Amazon gets a huge customer to build out their system with.

-- tyre

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app. This has now created an interesting corner of the internet: IMG_0416

• Netlify just got to 5 million developers, and to celebrate they built this incredible web experience... I spent way too much time playing with this.

Best Resource of the Month ✅

A nice and short one for this month, but it's a goodie: Algorithms we develop software by.

The article talks about some good heuristics you can use throughout your career, and I have to admit, I agree with all of these points.

This also reminds me of an important principle on learning. I feel a lot of the newer generation developers are missing this as they look for the "easy way"... which is a bad mentality to have. Why?

There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment. This is very convenient for everyone involved: the people watching enjoy thinking they are learning (but actually they are just having fun). The people creating this content also enjoy it because fun has a much larger audience, fame and revenue.

But as far as learning goes, this is a trap. This content is an epsilon away from watching the Bachelorette. It's like snacking on those "Garden Veggie Straws", which feel like you're eating healthy vegetables until you look at the ingredients.

Learning is not supposed to be fun.

It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the quickie doesn't do anything, it's just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn.

-- Andrej Karpathy

Trick of the Month 🌗

• Claude (my A.I. tool of choice) recently released Claude for Desktop. It's really good and it's what I use 99% of the time now.

• Convert HTML from any page to React and/or Figma, edit with AI with this little plugin. This is cool.

• For Mac users only, but a nice couple of little tricks for the command line.

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.