Web Developer Monthly 💻🚀 April 2019
10th issue! If you missed the last eight months, check them 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 going to be focused on keeping 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?
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What you missed in April as a web developer…
Some common Design Patterns 🏺
Here is a great overview of some of the most common Design Patterns in JavaScript. You’ve probably used some of them without even realizing it. Enjoy!
Free Tools For Web Developers ✂️
Some tools and assets to help you build your next project since we are such good friends by now:
- Convert your Web App to a Desktop App in a couple of minutes
- Free SQL learning cards
- SEO improvements by finding out who links to your website
- Awesome, customizable, icons
- Library that lets you use 360 view images for your website
- Nice and clean resume template
- New free font from the US government (no, seriously)
Stackoverflow Survey 📈
Probably one of the best (in terms of sample size) survey for developers to notice some trends in the industry. Big takeaways: People job hop to earn a higher salary and Python keeps getting popular and is now the 2nd most loved language (it’s why I’m releasing a course on it in a few months).
Make sure you check out the Technology section for the most interesting parts of the survey. Fun fact: Python just passed JavaScript as the most “questioned” language on stackoverflow.com. Don’t worry JavaScript isn’t going anywhere.
7 Javascript tricks 🧙♀️
A nice little article that shows you some useful tips and tricks when using javascript that may come in handy sooner than you think: https://davidwalsh.name/javascript-tricks
React News 💎
It wouldn’t be a monthly recap without some React news. What crazy things did they get up to?
- react-redux 7.0.1 was just released. They are now using React hooks underneath the connect() function.
- Create react app 3 was just released with added support for Hooks, TypeScript linting and a few others: https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/releases/tag/v3.0.0
- Do you want Dan Abramov to just walk you through how Hooks works? Well then, you can just watch this. The man is a PR machine.
Node News 🙊
Really exciting news. Node 12 is now out with async stack traces, improved worker threads and many other features. The most exciting part, however, is the ES6 modules support. It is still experimental but looks like this is going to make a lot of people happy: https://medium.com/@nodejs/introducing-node-js-12
Control your home from the web 🛰
Mozilla is trying to create a standard for monitoring and accessing your IoT devices through the web. They created WebThings and although I am way more excited about this than the average joe, I think this is one of the best ways to learn and create your own little projects that can be added to your portfolio to wow future employers. Automate everything around your home!
Browser Updates 🖥
WebKit which runs under the hood of the Safari browser was just updated to 12.1 bringing browsers closer to parity. Also, Microsoft Edge released their first Canary and Developer version after adopting the Chromium open source project (which uses Google’s V8 engine). Check out the previous month’s newsletter on this topic if you are confused by this.
Ruby ❤️ Types
Ruby, a language focused on productivity and ease of use, is adding optional types that can be used for Ruby version 3. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean everything will be strongly typed in Ruby now. Seems like a lot of dynamic languages (*cough* Typescript) are embracing optionally having types these days.
I’m adding this here only because you will get mad otherwise 🤷🏼♂️
I’m not a big fan of a giant resource that links to other resources that no sane person has the time to go through in a lifetime. However, this is a good thing to bookmark and have in the back of your pocket in case you have some questions: Front End Developer Handbook. If you have actually gone through everything in here, congratulations, you are insanely impressive and dedicated.
Web Components will kill React, Angular, Vue 🥾
HA! Gotcha. Check out this great thread on this topic. My 2 cents: Web Components aren’t going to be doing much in 2019 to React, Angular and Vue since the reason people use these frameworks and libraries is for more than “reusable components”. Threads like these are great to read to understand both sides of the topic instead of watching another youtube video on HOW WEB COMPONENTS WILL KILL REACT.
Angular 8 is coming out 🛡
For those that say I don’t cover Angular enough in this newsletter, here is my offering to you:
- What to expect with Angular 8 (Ivy rendering engine?!)
- A great writeup of the path that Angular has taken through history.
CSS Challenge 🌇
Want to upgrade your CSS skills? Maybe you want to demonstrate your dominance over others when it comes to CSS? You’re in luck. There is a website just for this: https://cssbattle.dev/
Big Tech News 🏢
- Google Chrome ~75 now comes with lazy-loading the <img> tag.
- Apple now notarizes your app on the app store. Their direction for more security and quality control will have a long positive impact for them.
- Can Facebook catch a break? By this point, this is just getting repetitive: Facebook uploaded 1.5million people’s email contacts for public viewing.
Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃
We received the very first image of a black hole. But to be even more impressed, watch this video which explains why the image of the black hole looks the way it does. Finally, to bring this topic back into programming, here is how computer scientists were able to mimic a giant telescope to take this picture.
Best Resource of the Month ✅
Technically this was not written in April, but I read this in April so it still counts…so GET OFF MY BACK.
This is an important read: You are not Google
Trick of the Month 🌗
Do you ever wonder how speakers are able to make such clean looking slides when doing a tech talk? Well, they use something like Spectacle (they just released a new version)
See you next month!
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