[September 2021] Web Developer Monthly Newsletter 💻🚀

39th 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 September 2021 as a Web Developer…

A Good CSS Rule 🖍

A nice and fun way to start off this month's newsletter. Here is a simple rule to follow for good CSS practice: You want enabling CSS selectors, not disabling ones. I like this rule.

Can't get enough of CSS? Here is how to make prettier shadows.

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):

CSS image filters for all your web projects
3D Transformer sounds cooler than what it actually does
Color and Typography for designers
Doodle Placeholders for all your doodle needs
Free HTML templates for your future websites and landing pages
3D icons and characters (there is a free option)

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 38 of the previous issues of this newsletter. That's a joke. Don't do that!

ES2022 Feature Preacher 👀

Here is a sneak peak of one of the new ES2022 features: class static initialization blocks. Say that fast 5 times. What does it do? For setting up the static part of a class, we only have static fields. The ECMAScript proposal introduces static initialization blocks for classes, which, roughly, are to static classes what constructors are to instances. Read all about it here.

React News 💎

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

React 18 is coming out soon. Are you eager to learn about it? Then check this out: Keep the React app responsive even during large screen updates with startTransition API introduced in React 18
We have already talked about this in last month's newsletter, but just a reminder that React Native has a whole cross-platform vision to be able to run beyond mobile... to the web, desktops, and VRs. You heard it here first: React Native is the future. Also, did you know that Twitter uses React Native for the Web?
For all your future data table needs with React, check this out.
Here is how to have graceful errors in your React app.

I Just Blued Myself 🧞‍♂️

Here is the answer to a question you have never wanted to ask, but now that you know about it, you want to find the answer right away. Why are hyperlinks blue?

Question of the Week 🔮

Why don't some services offer Google/Facebook/Apple/Twitter login? Namely Crypto exchanges? Think about why this may be and think about why you may not want to include these login options for your app. Once you have an idea, check out the answer. It's super interesting.

AVIF I Care 🤷‍♀️

AVIF, a child-wonder image format backed by industry giants, is finally reaching wide browser support with Firefox getting fully on board. This article investigates whether the successor to WebP lives up to its promise to obliterate JPEG and PNG and how to hop on the AVIF conversion train early with imgproxy. Read the full article here.

What is the Metaverse? 🧝‍♂️

A little off topic, but I really enjoyed this article about the Metaverse and why old farts like me don't fully love the ideas of NFTs, digital assets and all the other hypetrains, but why the new generation finds it normal. It still makes you wonder though...

HackerNews Advice 🕺

Maybe this is a new segment I do every month... let me know your thoughts? Here is my favourite advice/comment from HackerNews this month:

*"I run an Alexa top-2000 website. (Mangadex is presently at about 6000.) I spend less than $250 a month.

I have loads and loads of thoughts about what they could be doing differently to reduce their costs but I'll just say that the number one thing Mangadex could be doing right now from a cursory glance is to reduce the number of requests. A fresh load of the home page generates over 100 requests. (Mostly images, then javascript fragments.) Mangadex apparently gets over 100 million requests per day. My site - despite ostensibly having more traffic - gets fewer than half that many in a month. (And yes, it's image-heavy.)*

A couple easy wins would be to reduce the number of images loaded on the front page. (Does the "Seasonal" slider really need 30 images, or would 5 and a link to the "seasonal" page be enough? Same thing with "Recently Added" and the numbers of images on pages in general.) The biggest win would probably be reducing the number of javascript requests. Somehow people seem to think there's some merit to loading javascript which subsequently loads additional javascript. This adds a tremendous amount of latency to your page load and generates needless network traffic. Each request has a tremendous amount of overhead - particularly for dynamically-generated javascript. It's much better to load all of the javascript you need in a single request or a small handful of requests. Unfortunately, this is probably a huge lift for a site already designed in this way, but the improved loading time would be a big UX win."

Deno Surgery 🦕

Although we already do this in our Deno course, if you were lazy and didn't take that course (you should), here is a breakdown of the inner workings of Deno and why it is so awesome.

Oh and Deno 1.14 is here!

JavaScript Design Patterns 👨‍🎤

Just because I get asked this constantly "Any good resources for JavaScript Design Patterns?"... I finally decided to just link to this resource. Here are 20+ Design Patterns for all your needs... Probably just to talk about design patterns but not actually use them in your code.

New OWASP Top 10 🐝

What are the top 10 most important security vulnerabilities this year? The OWASP Top 10 2021 is all-new, with a new graphic design and an available one-page infographic you can print from their website. Interesting that Broken Access Control is now in the top spot.

New DevTool Feature 🦋

Here are some of the newest DevTool features in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox and Safari. Hopefully, it will make you want to try them out, and maybe will help you get more comfortable next time you need to debug a browser-specific issue.

Weekend Project Ideas 🧰

Have you heard of Conway's Game of Life? In this weekend challenge you will get to build this cool game using React. Check out the code and guide here!

5 Reasons to Learn Rust 🦀

We all know Rust is the new cool "C++" on the block. Have you ever wondered why you may want to learn Rust if you are a web developer? Well, here is your answer: 5 Reasons to Learn Rust.

Now that you are convinced, for those that love TypeScript here is how you can get into Rust too.

Business Consulting for Devs 📋

Every software engineer and IT person should do a stint in consulting.

I’m not talking about becoming one of those contractors who are billed out by their companies as “consultants” but are really just serial hired hands. I’m referring to a true consultant role, where you are paid to bring expertise, give advice, and drive technical change.

Read the full article here.

Building the Universe in JavaScript 🌌

Ever wondered if you can build the universe in JavaScript? Well, you can.

Universe Hates Computers 🎯

Speaking of Universe... Trust me on this... Watch this entire video. Learn about the crazy world that computers have to live in, and what the whole "bit flip" means. For any computer lovers out there, you will enjoy this.

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:

Electron 14.0 is here!
Gatsby 4.0 beta is here and it includes all the buzzwords you would expect. Fun fact, our website is built with Gatsby! You can see what's new in 4.0 with this video introduction.

News Around the World 🗺

Pandemic lockdowns accelerated cloud migration by three to four years. AWS and Azure are the big winners.

Big Tech News 🏢

Apple vs Epic is a big lawsuit happening that has many implications. Epic lost a majority of their arguments, but did win this one thing that you should care about. You can read about some of the implications here.
What else is new? Facebook is in hot water yet again after the Wall Street Journal released the Facebook Files. Stating "Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. That is the central finding of a Wall Street Journal series, based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research reports, online employee discussions and drafts of presentations to senior management."
Intuit acquired Mailchimp for $12 billion. No VC money was needed in building Mailchimp.

Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃

Don't trust anything that you plug into your computer...
Cool new modular laptop for all you hardware geeks.

Best Resource of the Month ✅

Something I have been preaching since I started teaching online, and this article does a great job articulating:

"What I’ve learnt through experience is that the number of languages I’ve learned or the specific frameworks I’ve gained experience with matters very little. What actually matters is my ability to up-skill quickly and effectively."

I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine.

You don't have to watch every single youtube video or read every single blog post to stay sharp and be at the top of your field. This is why I write this newsletter so you can slack off the whole month and just read this at the end of the month 😬.

Trick of the Month 🌗

This is an incredibly ingenious trick. Crazy what people can come up with.
Rendering anything as HTML checkboxes.
7 Useful VS Code extensions

Don't be selfish. 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.