Web Developer Monthly 💻🚀 July 2019
13th issue! If you missed the last few months, check them all 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 July as a web developer…
How To Be A Code Review Master 🧙♀️ 🧙♂️
Learning how to work with others in a team is often a skill that is not practiced by developers (or at least not prioritized). From my experience, Code Reviews were some of the biggest factor in team friction and miscommunication. Trust me... this is something you should read to become a better developer that employers (and coworkers) love.
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):
- Some free icon illustrations. And also this
- Did you ever want your own IKEA font? Well now you have it
- A nice little tool for working with API requests
- Really pretty patterns for your web projects
- Process your images with this free tool
- Transform HTML to JSX, and many many more transforms.
- Freelancers, here is a way to calculate the rate you should charge clients
- Want to work for the big tech firms? This site can help.
JavaScript Global Scope 🔮
A great article on how javascript global variables work and why we need something like the globalThis keyword proposal which may be coming soon to the official language.
Babel 7.5.0 🎩
New version of Babel gives you a standardized way to use Dynamic Imports and also the new feature people are getting excited about: F# style operator (but you should probably wait until you start using it as it is only stage 1 right now). Read more about it all here.
Privacy News 🌋
Firefox released their preview for a secure mobile app experience when browsing the web. They are also experimenting with something called DNS over HTTPS.
Youtube is shutting down some channels that show “hacking techniques”. Some big discussions around this topic with no right answers.
2 billion user records were exposed through a company that helps run smart home devices. And then Capital One joined the party as well.
Zoom was doing something creepy by opening up a server on your machine (Mac) and keeping it open. A researcher called them out on it. Apple then was all “nah… not on my watch Zoom”, and pushed an update to disallow this shady behaviour.
Google photos is kind of making your photos public….oopsie.
Everyone is aging themselves by using the FaceApp. But maybe be careful.
And now that you are completely creeped out and can’t trust anyone, here is a nice article on how one programmer secures their data online.
React News 💎
It wouldn’t be a monthly recap without some React news. What crazy things did they get up to?
- If you were ever curious on how react-redux works, this slide deck will help you.
- Next.js’s next version of their next framework. Next 9.0.0! What will they come up with next?
- A cool new animation library to use for your React projects. This looks really neat.
- Facebook released a new Javascript engine Hermes specifically to improve performance for react-native apps.
- A fun little project you can build: Chat app using React hooks and sockets.
- Oh and Electron 6.0.0 is out.
Higher Order Functions Explained👩💻 👨💻
Higher order functions are an important concept in programming. If you are still confused by them, this article does a great job of getting you comfortable with the topic. Or you know, just do my Advanced JS course.
Vue.js < Quasar 1.0.0 👁 👀
I don’t usually like getting too excited about new tools that still need to prove themselves, however this article actually shows you some of the ways the current systems for building frontend applications can be improved. Some nice ideas in here.
Angular + React Performance Quick Tips ⚡️
Yet another article on performance: Nice and quick guide on improving performance for your Angular or React apps from Google. They should be including the Vue.js guide soon as well. I’m guessing cat pictures and performance optimizations articles are now 90% of the internet.
Global News For Developers 📰
Two big stories this past month:
- Kazakhstan made all their residents download a certificate so they can monitor all internet traffic over HTTPS (So their government can monitor all encrypted traffic).
- Github had to block certain developers from nations with sanctions from USA: Iran, Syria, Crimea.
Node.js Security Issues 🗿
Ok, this is an article about Osgoode, a new platform for building APIs (+more), but it’s actually disguised as a great article to see some of the short comings, or perhaps, the improvements that could be made in Node.js.
While we are on this topic, this incident has triggered more discussions around current NPM security issues.
JavaScript SEO 🎯
Here is a nice article and video to help you understand how JavaScript SEO works. Yes, even client side rendered applications can have good SEO according to Google and the google bot.
The Downside of Object Oriented Programming 🧱
Before you read this article, keep in mind that there are no absolutes (majority of the time) in programming paradigms. There are always pros and cons. This article does a great job highlighting the cons of OOP and why you should be careful in some instances.
JavaScript Past and Future 🔋
Want to learn how it all got started? This podcast, and this youtube video will be a nice starter to give you a bit of JavaScript history knowledge.
Then learn about what the latest ES2019 features we have coming to the language.
Big Tech News 🏢
- Facebook along with some researchers built a new AI that beats professional poker players in a 6 player poker game. This is pretty huge and may have interesting applications that Facebook is interested in: Dealing with humans that don’t always act rationally or honestly. Oh and they also got a $5billion dollar fine. Pretty typical month for Facebook…
- Amazon warehouse workers are getting replaced by robots. But amazon will invest over $700 million to provide up-skilling training programs for one in three of its employees across the U.S. Jobs aren’t going away, knowing how to work with machines and software is becoming more and more important (aka, if you’re reading this newsletter you’re on the right career path)
- France and the rest of Europe is going to start taxing the big US tech companies. You can’t always play by your own countries’ rules when you are selling to everyone all over the world. Expect more discussions around these topics over the coming months.
- Neuralink (another Elon Musk’s company) unveiled its plans to implant paralyzed patients with electrodes that will let them work computers with their minds.
- Microsoft invested $1billion in OpenAI. Betting on the path to AGI.
Completely useless to your career but still great 🙃
Become an astronaut for a day… or two. Also a great demo of how many creative things you can do on the web today.
Best Resource of the Month ✅
What is a frontend developer? This article was written a few months ago and I cannot believe I missed it. It is a must read for any web developer looking to understand the current landscape and issues surrounding frontend development (and more). Seriously. Go and read it. Once you are done that one, read this.
Trick of the Month 🌗
Watch Netflix at work by making it look like you’re on a conference call. Sorry for ruining your productivity...
OK, so I don’t completely ruin your productivity: This chrome plugin allows you to browse the web faster by preloading links when you hover over them (can have pros and cons).
Still there? See you next month!
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