The Best of Better Programming (January 9–15, 2021)

The best things we published this week

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Hey everyone,

This is going to be my last newsletter for a few weeks as I’ll be taking paternity leave Monday to spend some time with our new forthcoming family member!

Fear not, dear reader, you’re in great hands. This week I wrote an introduction post to our interim editor, long-time Better Programming writer, Anupam Chugh. Please give him a big welcome!

Without further ado, here are the best articles we published this week:

JavaScript:

1. What’s New in Node.js 15 by Jennifer Fu — Leading us off this week is Jennifer Fu, talking about what’s new in Node 15, new features, bug fixes, and more!
2. The Future of React: Server Components by Donovan So — Donovan takes a look at what server-side React will look like. I’m pretty excited for this, myself.
3. A Memory-Friendly Way of Reading Files in Node.js by Kasper Moskwiak — Kasper joins the newsletter this week to teach us how to read gigabytes of data in Node.js without memory leaks. Seems useful!
4. A 2021 Roadmap to Learning React by Michael Chi — Finally, if you’re just starting with React, Michael Chi is here to teach you how to start and where to go to become a React master this year.

Software Engineering:

1. 4 Unusual Ways to Improve Your Programming Skills by Szymon Adamiak — Szymon has a fun list of ways to improve that aren’t what you may think. My favorite is #3 — restrict yourself. I have some fond programming memories getting off of a plane where I didn’t have reliable internet, having built something awesome without any prior idea how to do it. It usually just required using the docs I had on my machine and a lot of trial and error but I definitely got better on that flight.
2. 5 Noncoding Skills That’ll Set You Apart as a Developer by Fernando Doglio — It’s easy to think that being a good developer is all about writing clean, concise code, but it’s so much more. Fernando is back this week to explore that.
3. Is PHP Still Relevant in 2021? by Burak Karakan — “X Is Dead. Long Live X!” Should you learn PHP in 2021? Sure! Thousands of companies use it, communities are large and active. Wordpress is still massive, powers much of the internet, and is built on PHP. Don’t get caught up in the hype of TypeScript, Swift, Dart, or whatever your coworker is pushing on you this week.
4. Introduction and Strategies To Handle Challenges in Caching by Aastikta Sharma — Caching is famously a tricky part of being a developer. Many of us have been there, wondering why something just won’t clear the cache or maybe dealing with a bug due to unexpected cached data. Aastikta is here to teach us more about caching.
5. Understanding the Factory Method Design Pattern by Carlos Caballero — Carlos is back this week to teach us about a useful design pattern — Factory. Does it make sense to use in your project or codebase? You be the judge!

Interviewing:

1. How to Build an LRU Cache in Less Than 10 Minutes and 100 Lines of Code by Sun-Li Beatteay — Sun-Li is here this week to talk about a famous interview question, building a cache. If you’re studying for a technical interview, this may be worth a read!

Python and Data Science:

1. Getting Started With Asynchronous Programming in Python by Yong Cui — Yong is back this week to talk about async programming in Python, how you should be thinking about it and the particulars of doing it in Python.
2. Distributed Task Queues With Django, RabbitMQ, and Celery by Louis de Bruijn — Louis is new to the newsletter this week, talking distributed systems and how to properly use queues with Python, Django, RabbitMQ, and Celery.

Misc:

1. K8s: Vanilla All the Way by Luc Juggery — Luc is back this week, talking about the Vanilla Stack in Kubernetes and why it might make sense to take a look at for your K8s setup.
2. It’s 2021 — This Is Where Your Focus Should Be in Tech by Allen Helton — Finally, Allen is back this week to talk about standardizing your APIs, automating everything, and generally becoming more API-centric. Definitely worth a read if you’re paying down API tech debt.

Exciting Career Opportunities From Better Programming Jobs

BetterProgrammingJobs.com continues to grow this week! If you're an employer or your company is hiring, you can post a job for free and promote it to this email list of 75,000+ devs next week for just $100.
Featured Career Opportunities:
* Icebreaker is hiring a Full-Stack Product Engineer:
Icebreaker is an awesome video chat platform for short, time-based conversations with fun questions to help you get to know the person you're chatting with. 
Want to help build the future of community, culture, and connection? Want to join a remote team of awesome humans (& some dogs & a cat)? We’re hiring a Full-Stack Product Engineer!
Apply to Icebreaker

* Sunroom is hiring a Founding Senior Engineer:
Sunroom is on a mission to create joyful, safe, and shame-free sources of income for womxn. They've just started building their first products, and they’re looking for their founding engineers.
You'll work to build the core product, working directly with the CTO to create more economic opportunity for womxn and enabling them to become entrepreneurs!
Apply to Sunroom

That’s it for me this week. I’ll miss writing these to you all when I’m gone.

Have a great weekend.

Stay safe, healthy, and please wear a mask,
– Zack Shapiro and The Better Programming Team