Web Developer Monthly (September 2020)

27th 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 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 September as a Web Developer…

Applebot Is Here To Play 🍎

This may sound like insignificant news until you dive a little deeper: Applebot is a web crawler. The most famous web crawler Googlebot is what allows Google to index websites and give you hopefully meaningful search results. So why does Apple need an Applebot? Well, for their Siri and Spotlight searches, but this may also mean a possibility that Apple will come out with their own web search to compete with Google (focused on privacy?) soon. Keep an eye (preferably the right eye) on this.

Speaking of crawlers, Googlebot will soon crawl websites using HTTP/2.

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):

Checklist to advance within your career and climb that (virtual) corporate ladder
Some free animated icons to use for your projects. And even more icons
Yet another resume builder because who has time to do it themselves?
Copy and paste CSS box shadows
Free HTML templates for your next quick prototype
SVG background generator for your websites, blogs and app
Every single accessibility resource you ever wanted
16,000 sound effects for you to use for the rest of your life

React News 💎

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

Not much going on with the new React 17, but there is an official React blog post about it anyway talking about the new JSX transform and what it is/does. With the new transform, you can use JSX without importing React...speaking of....
import React from 'react' may be gone one day.
Create React App 4.0 is coming!
Have some fun with React for the next hour and create this cool little flip animation. While we are at it, here is another fun idea: popup library.
A great React hit piece? Not really, but this is an excellent article talking about some of the pitfalls of React and the Virtual DOM model. It talks about client side, server side, and hydration, all in an attempt to better understand how React works. Some great insights in here. Don't miss this article.
Is React becoming a black box? I actually agree with the points made in this article... I miss the good old days where the hardest part of React was memorizing all the lifecycle hooks. Speaking of hooks... kind of agree with this piece: The Ugly Side Of React Hooks (don't hate me).
A list of large open source React apps you can take a look through and analyze their code and how they structure large apps.
Understand how the new Recoil library everyone is drooling about works.

Maintainable Code 👾

We've all heard about writing maintainable code. However that could mean a million things. Luckily for you, somebody wrote how NOT to write maintainable code. It's a funny read but also teaches you what NOT to do. Check it out here

10 Secret Web APIs 🕵🏻‍♀️

Not exactly a secret, but a list of 10 lesser known but still useful web APIs (I had to grab your attention with a headline somehow). What's your favourite one from this list?

Weekend Project Idea 🚨

For the past few years, I have mentioned how cool Stripe's real time globe animation is. Well, now they have released a blog post to show you how you can build it from scratch using Three.js. An awesome post and a great thing to add to your portfolio simply for that awesome visual.

Want more? How about building a snake game in JavaScript?

New Github Things 🎈

Ever since getting acquired by Microsoft, Github has been on a tear with new features. Here are a few more: Github Container Registry. It's like the Docker Registry but on Github. It essentially helps you handle containers within GitHub Packages. Read more here. They also officially are out of beta and released Github CLI 1.0. Never have to leave github again.

Speaking of Github, they now have a new Readme feature that developers have been using to create their snazzy developer profiles. For us less excited folk who don't need another social media/resume platform to show off our skills, here is a simple generator for you without all that hassle.

DENOsaurs Assemble 🦕

Deno may be a little quiet until their next major release, but the community has not stopped growing. We now have mod.land: a free and sleek URL where you can host a free website for your deno project. Another great reason to jump on the Deno bandwagon.

P.S. Deno 1.4 is out!

Blue Green Deployment 🗝

Something I learned this month: Blue Green Deployment... despite years in the industry I never bothered to look up what this actually means. This is just a reminder that all those complex sounding jargon are just a small google/wikipedia search away and nobody knows everything.

Now that we all know what Blue Green Deployment means, here is how to do it using Node.js.

JavaScript Tids and Bits 🧩

A nice refresher on some of the common but hard things you should know if you want to call yourself a true JavaScript Developer. Nice little reading on your next work from home commute.

Is The Web Getting Slower? 🍯

How would you answer this question? The answer may surprise you. The big takeaway? Websites today run more code and are multiple times larger than websites 10 years ago. Still, mobile web – as experienced by users – has become slower overall. At the same time, a lot more people now experience the mobile web. This will drag down the overall experience people have with web performance.

Machine Learning in JS 🤖

Machine Learning for JavaScript Devs in 10 Minutes. If that title doesn't get you then I don't know what will. Despite the classic headline grab, it's actually a pretty fun read and does a good job of giving an overview of what machine learning looks like using Javascript.

Want to learn more? Here is a full Data Science course using JavaScript.

AVIF I Know What That Is... 🤓

If you enjoyed my pun with the title, wait until you actually read this article. AVIF is a new image format on the web that brings with it some great improvements. Read all about it here.

@media (min-width: 768px) 📱

Everything you ever wanted to know about media queries. Ok, maybe not everything, but it does teach you a cool little trick: To determine if the document matches the media query string in JavaScript, use the matchMedia() method.

How HTTPS Works 🏛

A detailed and animated walkthrough of what happens during an HTTPS connection and why have the security baked in. I wish we had more easy to read posts like these in our industry.

Vue 3.0 Things 🔋

Last month we announced that Vue 3.0 was finally coming. Now that everyone is getting their hands dirty with Vue 3.0, here are some noteworthy features: Github release

Common Security Vulnerabilities 🦹‍♂️

If you have taken my Junior to Senior Web Developer Roadmap course, you already know these things, but believe it or not some people go their entire lives without taking that course 😱. For those people, here is a quick recap of the most common security vulnerabilities in JavaScript.

ECMAScript 2021 💃

Who doesn't like the new and shiny things? Here is a sneak peak of what is coming in 2021 for the JavaScript lovers out there.

Ruby 3.0.0 💄

Ruby 3.0.0 preview is out! Some big changes are coming to the languge which you can read all about here. The 2 biggest things being RBS (types in Ruby) and Ractor (concurrency made easy).

Design Is 🔥

The Desgin field is blowing up right now as companies are looking to hire more and more designers. Unlike programming, the path to becoming a designer is a lot less structured with way fewer resources out there. For that reason, we just launched: Complete Web & Mobile Designer in 2020: UI/UX, Figma, +more. You should check it out.

Here is a great resource on the state of prototyping and why it is important.

New/Updated Libraries 🗿

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

NativeScript 7.0 is out! Angular developers rejoice!
Tailwind Ink is an AI palette generator trained with the Tailwindcss colors.
Stiches Near-zero runtime, server-side rendering, multi-variant support, and a best-in-class developer experience... or so they say.
Moment.js is done. Yep. It's going into retirement (why add new things if it's "done"?).
Playwright-cli is possibly the best way to do E2E testing right now. If you are not sure how to do E2E testing, here is a guide for you.
New frontend framework because why not? Halfmoon
Visx from AirBnB

News Around the World 🗺

I had nothing to put in here for this month (without depressing everyone) so here is the most useful article of all time for this month: New Emoji Added

Big Tech News 🏢

Google is shutting down Chrome Webstore Payments. Google shutting/ending products/tools is a monthly occurrence by now. On a more serious note, Google is probably going to get an antitrust case against them very soon.
Facebook is going back in time and going back to its campus roots.
Apple had their big fall event where they announced a bunch of new things. Also, Apple is in a big saga right now with companies like Epic, Basecamp, Spotify, who are complaining that they shouldn't be paying the 30% in app purchase tax that Apple imposes. Apple recently made some changes in their app review process.
Nvidia is acquiring ARM for $40 billion. This is huge news with a massive impact for the future of computing. For discussions on why this may be a bad thing for the industry, enjoy this.
Microsoft underwater data center is out of the water after 2 years. In more exciting news, they just signed an exclusive license to use the technology behind OpenAI's GPT3.
Cloudflare is joining forces with Wayback Machine to make the web more reliable. A great way to support a non-profit like Wayback Machine.
Amazon is getting into the online gaming business: Luna. They also have an indoor security drone now. When you have all that money, I guess you have to spend it somehow.
TikTok saga continues in the US. Nobody is really sure what is going on there and the news changes every day. So for now here is an article that will probably become outdated very soon.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

Two massive black holes just rattled earth after 7 billion years. Carry on with your day.

Want to become a Linux sysadmin just because the title sounds cool? Well here is a free tutorial.

How the earth looked back in the day.

Best Resource of the Month ✅

Pace, people, prestige, profit and learning. Sometimes in this fast paced world, we are looking for a fast rise to the top and a daily status check on how successful we are. But perhaps shifting your mentality may benefit you in the future. Here is a reminder for you: A forty year career. This article goes over one of my favourite recipes for success: compound learning.

Once you are so valued at your company, they can't live without you, then maybe you should learn how to negotiate your salary.

Trick of the Month 🌗

How to hack people who post pictures of their boarding passes on social media. Just kidding. Don't do that. Still, this is what happens to people that share too much.
List websites by the technologies used.

See you next month everyone!

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

Web Developer Monthly 💻🚀

Andrei Neagoie