Web Developer Monthly August 2018

2nd issue! If you missed the first one click here. Scroll down to see what happened this month in the web developer world.

If it’s your first time here…

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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This month as a web developer…

1. New shiny things

A lot of exciting (depending on who you ask) new releases:

Babel 7 — Get ready for this… they are removing presets.TypeScript 3.0 — is out… still curious to see how popular it is in production if you remove the Angular users.Ghost 2.0 — If I was starting a blog today and didn’t want to use Medium, Ghost is what I would use.Vue CLI 3.0 — Whether you love it or hate it, you have to admire the direction the team is taking to make developing with this library so smooth.Jonny-Five v1.0 — I only added this library here because I think it’s incredible. Do yourself a favour, grab a Raspberry Pi, or an Arduino and use this library. It will make you a better developer.

Finally, because we’re on this topic, Uber created their own web framework, and Basecamp released a new version of their own library Stimulus. No, you don’t need to learn these. They are very specific to these companies but, hey, thought I would share anyway.

2. We’re a little more secure

React had a little sever side vulnerability, but got it fixed, so you can sleep easy now: https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/08/01/react-v-16-4-2.html

Let’s Encrypt is now trusted by all root programs (in plain english: just use Let’s Encrypt anytime you need to add the S in HTTPS on your website.) https://letsencrypt.org/2018/08/06/trusted-by-all-major-root-programs.html

3. Guess the 3rd most popular Mobile Web Browser

Smartphones pretty much run on two operating systems (U.S specific numbers): Apple’s iOS (65.5%) and Google’s Android (34.46%). Most people just use the default browser their phone uses. Apple’s Safari browser tops Google’s Chrome on mobile with 58.06% market share compared to 32.48%.

But third place? Facebook. Huh? With 8.82% market share, Facebook uses in-app browsing through their platform (sneaky sneaky). This means that browsers run by Google, Apple and Facebook account for 99.36% of mobile browsing.

Why do we care? Mobile browsing is increasing more and more taking away from desktop browsing. More info here.

4. Yet another performance article

In case you haven’t heard the news, performance is important. Here is an excellent new article from Addy Osmani: https://medium.com/@addyosmani/the-cost-of-javascript-in-2018-7d8950fbb5d4

The takeaway: Only send the Javascript that you need by using code splitting, tree shaking, and other popular techniques to minimize the amount of Javascript sent to the client.

5. CSS Grid Cheat Sheet

CSS Grid is definitely gaining a lot of popularity. Combining it with Flexbox, you can do a lot of things that used to be a pain. Here is a nice cheat sheet for CSS Grid http://grid.malven.co/

6. React Native to ❤️ or 💔

React Native is great! Right? Well, kind of… It really depends on what your goals are. A lot of anti React Native articles have come out lately but at the end of the day, you just need to pick the tool that is right for your project: https://www.itworld.com/article/3296736/react/react-native-javascript-framework-stumbles.html

7. Word to impress your friends: Idempotent

No longer will you have to pretend like you understand what this word means when other developers talk to you about it. This is the best explanation I have found on this topic: http://cloudingmine.com/idempotence-what-is-it-and-why-should-i-care/

8. Number 10 is the most important

Things that you will eventually learn, but also hard to learn without experience: https://blog.usejournal.com/10-things-you-will-eventually-learn-about-javascript-projects-efd7646b958a

9. Free GraphQL tutorial

No, GraphQL won’t replace REST, but it’s good to know when to use it and how to use it. This is a great writeup of how to set up a GraphQL Apollo server:https://www.robinwieruch.de/graphql-apollo-server-tutorial/

10. No College Degree? No Problem.

Something we have all known for a while: having a college degree does not automatically make you a great employee. Knowing how to code and work with others does. https://www.axios.com/google-apple-college-degree-hiring-a290bca8-65a7-4de2-8fa9-d93b4c30457a.html

11. The idea of GitOps is emerging

A new idea around production is coming out and I am a fan: https://www.weave.works/blog/gitops-operations-by-pull-request

Best Resource of the Month

My favourite resource this month — WebAssembly is a tough thing to understand at first and many articles have tried to explain what it is. Will it kill Javascript? No, silly!… listen to these 2 interviews… You will come out of the other end finally understanding what WebAssembly will do for the web (and others):

Listen to this then this.(Available as Podcasts)

Code Trick of the Month

<a href="https://medium.com/media/17cec26b3b7b993f8a47c0866fd83ebd/href">https://medium.com/media/17cec26b3b7b993f8a47c0866fd83ebd/href</a>

Have free wifi whenever you’re travelling around the world: Wireless Passwords From Airports and Lounges

What are your thoughts about this month’s events?

See you next month….

Thank you for reading this far. If you enjoyed this post, please share, comment, and press/hold that 👏 a few times (up to 50 times). . . I will keep doing these if there is enough interest!

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• The Complete Web Developer in 2018: Zero to Mastery
• The Complete Junior to Senior Web Developer Roadmap (2018)