Web Developer Monthly (November 2019)

17th issue! If you missed the last few months, check them all out 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 thing that is hard, however, is staying up to date with the constantly evolving ecosystem. You want to be a top performing web developer, coder, programer, software developer, but you don’t have time to select from hundreds of articles, videos and podcasts each day.

This monthly newsletter is focused on keeping you up to date with the industry, keeping your skills sharp, without wasting your valuable time. I will be sharing the most important articles, 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?

What you missed in November as a Web Developer…

State of the Web Report 💃🕺

HTTP Archive recently released their state of the Web Report. It contains 20 chapters of data combined with expert advice/details so I recommend blocking out a weekend to read it. Some interesting highlights in there to keep yourself up to date with the industry.

But wait, this isn't it. Here are a few more reports that have come out including surveys to show you what is trending and what others are doing in the industry:

Developer Skills Report
Developer Ecosystem Report
Github Trend/Activity Report
Front End Tooling Survey
A few we already mentioned in the past, but since you're here already: state of CSS and state of JS surveys.

Don't worry if you don't have time to go through all of these. I will be combining all of the insights from above plus a few secret sources to give you the best things to look out for and trends for 2020 in an article I will be releasing in December. Signup to this newsletter if you want to be notified when that is released.

Free Tools For Web Developers ✂️

Some tools and assets to help you build your next project since we are best friends by now (unless this is your first time reading my articles… in that case let’s take things slow):

Really pretty collection of color combinations
Convert fontawesome fonts to line awesome
Find the best font pairings for your next project
Find a ton of free resources and templates for freelancers
Another free service similar to one I already mentioned in previous newsletter. Remove backgrounds from images
An easy way to share files to any device across the world through the web
Free resume templates that you can customize yourself
Really really pretty free illustrations for your next project
Neat little tool to check the responsiveness of your websites
25,000 AI generated free photos of models for all your creepy or normal needs

The Best Tool In A Long Time 🧪

This is so friggin great. Ever thought to yourself: "wouldn't it be great to have a fast and easy way to launch a database and test out my app or project without having to set it all up and connect it to a server?" Well now there is an easy way to get a database up and running in seconds to work with your front end. One click database and no server required.

React News 💎

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

Redux is still cool right? Yes it is. Big things to note: it is still the dominant state management library for React. Also, there is some uncertainty around how it will work with React's new concurrent mode.
Dan Abramov on why Suspense matters. If you want to learn more about Suspense, here is an article on the best practices.
Due to some new privacy updates in the Mac App Store, Electron apps (Big apps like Slack and Visual Studio Code are built with Electron) had issues getting their apps approved in the store due to some APIs used inside Electron. People freaked out.
Easy wins in performance of your React app by using this new library from Google. react-adaptive-hooks allows you to deliver your content, like images, best suited to a user's device and network constraints. It's an easy way to help with app performance to those using lower powered devices.
A nice little writeup on the internal workings of React and how to write your own.
Remember how React Fiber was all the rage a few years ago? Well, it still exists and it is part of the big React 16 update that improves a lot of the performance. You can read a great article on the internal workings of it here.

Where is the Gatsby $ Going? 💵

A few issues ago, I told you that Gastby raised some money even though they are a free open source tool. Turns out that we now know where they are looking to make money and where that investment money went: Gatsby Cloud. A place to build, maintain and host your Gatsby websites. Should be interesting to see if this succeeds. Open source is having a tough time this year trying to find ways to make money for the people involved.

New Things 🎨

TypeScript 3.7 is out. 2 main additions are the proposed features in ECMAscript: Optional Chaining and Nullish Coalescing. Again, because TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, it tends to add features faster than JavaScript. Ps there is something interesting called AssemblyScript (TypeScript-to-WebAssembly compiler... in plain english: it allows you to write code to target WebAssembly very easily)
Firefox came out with Firefox Replay. A new way to track bugs and understand your code better. It is now in beta, but keep an eye on this.

Stress about code reviews 24/7? 🛀

Just kidding. Code Reviews shouldn't stress you out. But still, Github now has a mobile version so that you can checkout all Github goodies while you are walking, talking to friends, and at family dinners.

JS Frameworks Security Report ⚔️

JavaScript frameworks security report for 2019 came out from the security company Snyk. The conclusion: we could be doing better. You can read the full report here. The big takeaways are that: 1- 84% of all websites are impacted by jQuery XSS vulnerabilities. 2- Almost a third of angular projects are still using Angular 1.x. 3- Both Angular and React have things that can improve in terms of security.

Speaking of Security...🧯

You can now do 2 factor authentication on twitter without a phone number (which is known to be insecure). Go do this now and set up 2FA with something like Duo.

Just a small little data leak that affected 1.2billion people happened this month.

20 Years of Programming Wisdom 🥋

A nice short read from a veteran and what he learned about programming after doing it for 20 years. You should probably listen to some of his advice here.

React Native Isn't Going Anywhere 🔮

Yes yes, I know this is a WEB developer monthly, but since React Native uses JavaScript and it is based on the React library, it still counts. This is an excellent article describing some performance optimizations that were made with Discord (it's what our Zero to Mastery students use for our private community). It's an interesting read on how to think about advanced performance improvements. Also, did you know that Microsoft is investing heavily in React Native and so is Walmart? These are big players and in 2020 there is going to be a big uptick in React Native demand. Here's a secret... I'll be working on a React Native course shortly.

Also, there is now a new doctor command for debugging your developer environment in React Native.

Visual Studio Online 🥁

The popular editor with web developers is now previewing an "online" version of the developer environment that can be accessed from anywhere with any device. Pretty neat.

What's Next for CSS? 🎁

Did you know that CSS is constantly evolving and new features are being added? Well, you can now easily monitor new features and their positions in the process of becoming implemented into web standards. Check it out here to be the hippest early adopter.

Node.js Loves ES Modules 🎊 🎉

Finally! No more require statements in Node! You can now use native ES modules in your Node.js apps (no longer behind a flag but still experimental). Hooraaaayyyy! All online courses just got a little sadder now that they have to update their videos.

Iteractive GraphQL Tutorial 🌅

Here is a fun little 6 part series on learning how GraphQL works. It's all interactive and it doesn't require any setup on your part. Enjoy it.

Encryption Good 🗝

Good news that web traffic is now over 90% encrypted. No matter what we may think, overall security on the web has been improving year over year. More and more websites are using HTTPS instead of just HTTP. An easy way to get that server of yours set up with HTTPS is to use Caddy.

Around the World 🗺️

This is a great read and article from the Wall Street Journal that talks about the trend of Digital Nationalism that has taken shape over the last few years. Instead of the open nature of the internet as it was originally intended, more and more countries are trying to control the internet inside their boarders and the data storage location for their citizens.
Speaking of the above point, Iran shut down their citizen's internet for a bit this month amidst protests.
If you're travelling through the USA border, TSA agents can no longer randomly search your electronic devices without reasonable suspicion. Hey, at least it's better than it was before where they can check your phone anytime they want.
A great speech by Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Borat) on the issues with social media like Facebook. It's not as boring/dry/complainy like a lot of the stuff out there. Quite funny to watch.
An interesting thing happening with .org domains. Essentially, a private equity firm is taking over managing them which will lead to some actions taken in preference for money making. ICANN also removed price caps. .org domain prices may sky rocket soon so you should probably do this if you own one.

Big Tech News 🏢

Twitter has decided to stop all political advertising on their platform. Google also decided to take action as well but didn't really specify to what extent. Twitter also said they were going to release/make available inactive twitter accounts, and immediately backtracked when people complained.
Microsoft recently released the Microsoft Office App that finally puts their popular Excel, Word and Powerpoint into one single app for your phone.
Remember Google Cardboard for VR? Well Google, just open sourced the SDK to be able to build anything you want for your Virtual Reality experience on Google Cardboard. In less positive news, if you haven't heard, Google Chrome is working on limiting the ability of Ad Blockers to remove ads in future versions of Chrome. Work and testing has began on this now (called Extension Manifest V3). People are upset about this. Speaking of upset, inside Google, there is some trouble brewing between employees and management. Oh and Google decided to remove URLs from search results on the page and people got really upset.
Sounds like Apple is working on their own VR product and Glasses. Additionally, they finally came out with a new Mac Book Pro that has some serious power. I've never wanted something so bad (ok maybe I can think of a few things). But Apple, feel free to send me a free one. I won't refuse your gift. Ps here is a full tear down if you want to know every single nook and cranny of the hardware used. People have been asking for a more performant Mac Book Pro for a while.
Let's just say that WeWork hasn't been having a great year after cancelling their IPO, and now this.
I swear I'm not targeting Facebook. It's just that they make it so easy to report on this stuff every month: They had a bug on their iPhone app that lets it keep the iPhone camera turned on in the background. Ok to prove to you that I am not always anti Facebook here is an unpopular opinion: Facebook launched Facebook Viewpoints and I actually think it's a good idea that may help people earn income.
Amazon has been struggling to maintain quality measures on their online products (it's a hard problem after all). This is another blow to them: Nike will no longer be selling any of their apparel and shoes on Amazon.
Tesla did Tesla things and are on a marketing high after announcing their new Cybertruck.
Toshiba just did the opposite of Theranos and released a working "real" product that shows promise.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

Speaking of useless to your career, but great for sounding smart at the next party: here is how Wifi works at 35,000 feet on an airplane.

Guess how hard this was to build?

Best Resource of the Month ✅

An interesting thing happened this month. The Bytecode Alliance was started and it promises to build a secure by default, composable future for WebAssembly. What does that all mean? You can read about it here. Even if you don't care about WebAssembly, it's an interesting article talking about how programs and 3rd party code can be run in a secure way. Right now our ecosystem for handling dependencies and modules is full of issues. This is one look at how we can solve this. It's a long read, but it's a must read.

One more bonus since I like you. What does it take to be a genius? Read this thought provoking article by Paul Graham

Trick of the Month 🌗

Turn any article into a podcast you can listen to.
Also here is a list of all University courses around the world that are available to you for free online.
Another one: Find out all devices connected to your network. This is also a great way to see if there are any hidden cameras or devices connected to the network of your next AirBnB stay.
Ok, this is getting ridiculous but here is another one: Github on Steroids

By the way, my full time job is to teach people to code 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 of my courses by visiting the courses page.