The flat design revolution that characterized much of the 2010s is over, sort of. After spending years with radically flattened UIs that completely avoided simulating real-world objects, we’ve started to see the tide turn back with design languages that embrace some real-world metaphors. Our interfaces of today still carry many of the same hallmarks as those of flat design. There is still a focus on typography, minimalism and a focus on content over UI chrome. …

Microsoft’s first smartphone in years comes with a plethora of surprising facts. First, it runs Android making it the very first Microsoft hardware device not running a Microsoft operating system. Second, it's a dual-screen device at a time when most manufacturers are trying to innovate with folding screens. Third, it comes with notable omissions such as lacking NFC, wireless charging and multi-camera setup. Lastly, it does all this for the price of $1,400. That’s a decidedly flagship price for a phone missing some crucial flagship specifications.

Of course, the Duo is also no ordinary phone. Early reviews of the Surface Duo’s unique dual-screen hardware have been incredibly positive, with many reviewers noting its impressively thin design and smooth 360-degree hinge. However, reviewers have been instructed not to review the device turned on just yet and that’s understandable considering the Duo’s numerous limitations will become clear once it’s actually being used as a phone. …

I recently discovered a new frontend framework called Crank. The framework was born out of the author’s disillusionment with the complexity of recent React APIs. Similar to React, Crank uses JSX and follows a functional component model. Unlike React, however, it rejects React’s steadfast belief that rendering should be “pure”. With that, Crank is able to make use of standard JavaScript patterns like async functions and generators to support complex rendering scenarios such as rendering stateful components or asynchronous rendering. That is, just by leveraging native JavaScript behavior, you lose the need for complex dedicated APIs like React Hooks or React Suspense. …

Update (12/3/19): AWS announced a new feature known as Amazon RDS Proxy that makes using RDS databases with a serverless backend significantly easier. This isn’t covered below but it’s a great option to consider in addition to the solutions discussed here. This blog post from the Serverless Framework blog does an excellent job of summarizing it.

Additionally, AWS has rolled out major improvements to how AWS Lambda functions work within VPCs meaning cold start times under a VPC should be significantly better than they have been in the past.

At its best, serverless computing can make your life as a developer significantly easier. You have no servers to maintain, monitor or scale, meaning you can focus on your application and not the infrastructure it’s running on. But you also face the reality that serverless presents its own limitations and challenges because of its unique architecture. Nowhere is this more apparent than with databases, many of which integrate rather awkwardly with serverless architectures as a result of their decades-old design, made for a different world. …