10 Hallway Conversations in 2017 about Web Development

This article originally appeared on dormoshe.io

In the last five years, the web development zone overflowed with new frameworks, libraries, tools, languages and power factors. The web development field is gaining momentum and its evolution is being recorded in the history books. After the first half of the year, we can say that 2017 continues this path and is being written down as an important year.

In this article, we will arrange our thoughts and focus on the main interesting, important and valuable hallway conversations of the web development in 2017.

1. Yarn — The Killer of NPM?

The goal of Yarn is the same as of npm— to be a package manager for JavaScript. Yarn has been developed as a part of a collaboration between Facebook, Google, Exponent, and Tilde. With Yarn, we still have access to the npm registry. In addition, we can install packages more quickly and manage dependencies consistently across machines or in secure offline environments. Yarn enables us to move faster and with confidence when it is being used to share code. Probably, the improvements of Yarn will incorporate into npm in the future, so both users will benefit from the improvements of others.

NPM vs Yarn Cheat Sheet_Everything you need to know about Yarn package manager_shift.infinite.red

2. Angular 1, 2, 4

Angular is a widely-used framework in the JavaScript area. Google released Angular version 2 in September 2016, as a rewrite of Angular 1. Google choose the semantic versioning method for Angular. Six months after version 2, version 4 of the framework has released. Version 3 was skipped as part of technical skipping, because of the version of the router. Angular 1 is called AngularJS and Angular 2+ is called just Angular. It seems that Angular has successfully passed the test of the community and that a massive number of developers made their path to the new Angular.

Top 8 Resources to Explore Angular 4_Angular version 4 is out!_hackernoon.com

3. React Fiber — The Next Generation of React

React Fiber is an ongoing reimplementation of React’s core algorithm. It is the culmination of over a two years research that made by the React team. The main concern of the new React is scheduling. Scheduling is the option to pause, resume and cancel the update process in order to get high priority to other tasks — it’s also called Incremental Rendering. Animations are one of the tasks that will gain from this feature. It’s necessary because the human eyes recognize ‘lag’s in the animations if the update process is long. The plan is to put this rewrite into the hands of the developers once React 16.0 will be launched later this year. Unlike Angular, when Fiber will be released, the old React applications will continue to work as before.

Lin Clark — A Cartoon Introduction to Fiber @ React Conf 2017

4. Vue.js — A Real Competitor of React and Angular

A lot of words has written about the state of the front-end frameworks. You can see many new frameworks in the zone. Most of the developers use Angular or React. Vue.js is a progressive JavaScript framework that focuses on building user interfaces. It offers a lot of functionality for the view layer. The popularity of Vue.js and the attention of the community set Vue.js as something different. It’s not just another framework. Vue.js holds an integration of advantages from Angular and React. We need to keep eyes and open ears to what will be happened with this cool framework. The first official Vue.js conference will take place in June 2017.

Evan You Talk about Modern Frontend with Vue.js @ Laracon EU 2016

5. The power of Webpack

Webpack is a JavaScript module bundler tool. Its main purpose is to bundle JavaScript files for usage in a browser, yet it is also capable of transforming, bundling, or packaging just about any resource or asset. The Webpack Plugin system is extremely powerful and customizable. In order to use a plugin, you just need to require() it and add it to the plugins array. Webpack makes our experience more easy and convenient. Webpack’s core idea of a dependency graph is what makes it so powerful and useful. Webpack 2 & Webpack-CLI are now available. Angular-CLI and many products already use Webpack. It makes its path to be a consensus.

A Beginner's Guide to Webpack 2 and Module Bundling - SitePoint_This article was peer reviewed by Scott Molinari, Joan Yin and Joyce Echessa. Thanks to all of SitePoint's peer…_www.sitepoint.com

6. The Features of ES6

ES6 or ES2015 is the latest version of the ECMAScript standard. The previous update to the standard was in 2009. The Goals for ES6 provides better support for large applications, library creation and for using of ECMAScript as a compilation target for other languages. ES6 brings a massive number of features and improvements like promises, lexical block scoping, iterators, generators, modules, class declarations and destructuring patterns. The implementation of these features in the major JavaScript engines is underway now.

ECMAScript 6: New Features: Overview and Comparison_Support for constants (also known as "immutable variables"), i.e., variables which cannot be re-assigned new content.…_es6-features.org

7. Prepack — A Run-Time Optimizer

Prepack is a tool that optimizes JavaScript source code. Computations that can be done at compile-time, instead of run-time, get eliminated. Prepack is a partial evaluator for JavaScript. Prepack rewrites a JavaScript bundle, resulting in JavaScript code that executes more efficiently. It is under active development and still in very early stage. Prepack can be a “life changer”. It is backed by a stable company — Facebook. They want to integrate this tool in React and they have been worked on that for a while. There is a lot to do. The vision of Facebook is to leveraging Prepack as a platform.

Facebook’s Prepack — The Next Killer In The JavaScript Zone_In the last days, the social networks are stormy about Prepack. Probably you still haven’t heard about it. It’s…_hackernoon.com

8. Firebase For the Serverless Applications

Serverless architectures refer to applications that significantly depend on third-party services. Firebase is a mobile and web application development platform. Firebase is built on Google infrastructure and scales with you automatically, so you don’t have to worry about meeting user demand. Firebase lets you just code and it taking care of your backend and infrastructure. Cloud Functions, Real-time Database, Crash Reporting, Authentication, Cloud Storage, Hosting, Firebase Notifications and Android Test Lab are just a few of the features that go to makes your life happier. You also need to pay attention to the difficulties with Firebase like lack of local development option, limited JavaScript SDK and relations with NoSQL DBs. Easy integration with Firebase can be achieved with a lot of libraries like angularfire2, reactfire, and vuefire.

How to Build a Product Loved by Millions and Get Acquired by Google: The Firebase Story_Firebase is an astounding tool. Hundreds of millions of people use Firebase -powered apps. The company started as…_hackernoon.com

9. Redux — Unidirectional Data Flow

The web pages and content being wealthy, massive, long, and detailed. The traditional static HTML pages gave away for the dashboards and stateful dynamic pages. Now, it’s not sufficient to save the data just in an object. There is context between the page parts and this is a recipe for a mass. Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript applications. Redux architecture revolves around a strict unidirectional data flow. It was inspired by Facebook’s Flux and functional programming language Elm. Redux is one of the hottest libraries in front-end development these days. Redux got popular very quickly because of its simplicity. It’s familiar as the BFF of React, but it’s suitable not only for React. It can be used by any JavaScript framework. Angular still has libraries that implemented these concepts.

Dan Abramov Talk about Redux @ react-europe 2016

10. Microservices for Your Flexibility

Microservices is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services. Each of this services can focus on sub-domain of the application. This architecture enables the continuous delivery of large and complex applications. It also enables organizations to evolve its technology stack because each service is an autonomy and have a defined API for communication. Microservices improve fault isolation, eliminate long-term commitment to a single technology stack and make it easier for a new developer to understand the application functionality. The concepts usage expands and big companies like eBay, Amazon, and Netflix already use this architecture.

From Monolith to Microservices_How we’re rebuilding our infrastructure from scratch._blog.poki.com

Conclusion

The permutations in the web development are outward. We can’t get away from this changes. We need to embrace them and keep learning. Now you have a lot of contents for hallway conversations with your colleagues. You can dive deeply and explore these topics. The second half of 2017 will be wealthy and interesting — that’s for sure. So keep following…

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