Web Developer Monthly Newsletter 💻🚀

Welcome to the 75th 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 September 2024 as a Web Developer…

One Million Checkboxes ✔️

Let's start this month's newsletter with a fun story: "A few days into making One Million Checkboxes I thought I’d been hacked. What was that doing in my database?"

This is a great story of the inner workings of a website and how some smart teens managed to play with their technical skills. You'll learn something in this one.

Ok, I'm feeling generous, here is another great story from this month: Bypassing airport security via SQL injection.

CSS @property 🔮

The @property at-rule recently gained support across all modern browsers, unlocking the ability to explicitly define a syntax, initial value, and inheritance for CSS custom properties. Sounds confusing doesnt it?

The ensuing demo explores what's possible in the next generation of CSS: Check out this article.

React News 💎

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

1. How to Use React Compiler – A Complete Guide. Everyone is talking about it and making guides on this. ZTM will wait until it officially comes out and the changes stop before we update our React Bootcamp accordingly.

2. Can't get enough of React 19? Here is another guide out of 1290387894691730s.

JavaScript Standard Gets Extra 👯

After nine years of annual JavaScript updates, the TC39 committee has tweaked the process to make rolling out new features faster and smoother.

This probably doesn't affect you as a developer that much, but this is a Web Development newsletter so we should report on it.

Unminify My Code AI! 🪆

Cool little trick with OpenAI: unminify any code that is ineligible from a website.

SSR Performance Showdown 🦾

Server-Side Rendering (SSR) is an often overlooked aspect when building high-performance web applications with Node.js.

Node.js performance issues? In these scenarios, the culprit is almost always SSR. SSR is a CPU bound activity that can easily be the main cause of blocking Node.js' event loop. It's crucial to consider this when choosing your frontend stack.

This article compares the popular frontend tools and their SSR performance.

PHP is the new JavaScript 💅

Wait what?! Didn't I used to hate PHP?

Sure, a little... dislike is more like it. But PHP is making a bit of a comeback lately. There has been a palpable shift in the air. You can sense it. People seem… excited about PHP.

Here is why.

Passwords are Hard 🪜

This is a great question: how do you safely share passwords especially in a company? What follows is an interesting discussion around best practices that will surely make you a little smarter.

State of ES5 📺

What is the current state of ES5 on the web today? And what are the best practices for web developers when building code for production?

This article looks at the data we have to answer these questions. It also offers some concrete recommendations (based on that data) for how both website developers and library authors should approach legacy browser support moving forward.

Concurrency, Parallelism and JS ⏳

A fun easy guide on these complex topics in JavaScript with some nice visualizations. 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...

• Redwood v8 is here! I used to be very excited about this all in one tool, but it seems like it hasn't really gotten the big community push I thought it would when it first came out. Still cool though.

• Vue 3.5 is out! Minor changes and nothing breaking.

• Build single-page apps, without building an API with InertiaJS

• An amazing free font. I like this a lot.

• Did you know you can compile and run C code in JavaScript with Bun?

• Deno 2.0 RC is out... my favourite.

News Around the World 🗺

• All is well in the world and people don't care about elections or wars. Everyone is happy.

Big Tech News 🏢

• Big tech news is all AI news these days. The big story is OpenAI. First off, OpenAI co-founder Sutskever's new safety-focused AI startup SSI raises $1 billion. He left OpenAI under secret circumstances, but most people agree it's due to the direction OpenAI was taking. A few other big players left after OpenAI announced they want to become a for-profit company.

• OpenAI’s new o1 chain-of-thought models released this month are actually very impressive and a promising direction. Here is why it's a big deal.

• Infinity.ai is doing something very cool. Infinity is a video foundation model that allows you to craft your characters and then bring them to life. Bring any historical figure to life.

• Nvidia keeps making money but they had a big shock this month: the DOJ is looking at an Anti Trust case against them.

• Google released Illuminate: Transform your content into engaging AI‑generated audio discussions... this is very cool. Goodbye podcasts?

• TSMC’s first Arizona chips are now in production, and Apple is ready to be the first with mobile processors made using the foundry’s 5nm process in America. Big geopolitical implications here.

• Meta released Orion, previously codenamed Project Nazare, which they say is the most advanced pair of AR glasses ever made.

• Meta also released Llama 3.2, which includes small and medium-sized vision LLMs (11B and 90B), and lightweight, text-only models (1B and 3B) that fit onto edge and mobile devices, including pre-trained and instruction-tuned versions. People are REALLY excited about this and the performance for the models.

Shameless plug time...

ZTM is now teaching more AI topics, in more depth, than any other learning platform out there (with lots more in the works)!

So if you want to learn the latest AI skills and be part of this next massive technology wave, ZTM is where you need to be.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

• Experience the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing. Seriously, this may be the coolest thing you see this month.

• How long can you do nothing?

Best Resource of the Month ✅

People cannot stop talking about AI in our industry. This is the biggest topic of discussion and many opinions vary on the future of tech and tech workers.

So why not follow an actual scientific study looking at this: The Effects of Generative AI on High Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers.

This study evaluates the impact of generative AI on software developer productivity by analyzing data from three randomized controlled trials conducted at Microsoft, Accenture, and an anonymous Fortune 100 electronics manufacturing company.

You can see the discussion around this study here.

Want to know my thoughts on all of this? I've talked about it here (you need to be logged in to view).

Trick of the Month 🌗

• CodeViz - You spend half your day reading code. Visualize & navigate your codebase, from architecture to functions. Looks promising!

• Make hand-drawn style wireframes quickly and easily for free: https://frame0.app/

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.