Every Monday we round up some of the last week's top posts, comments, and tweets. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment. â¤ï¸
how-to https
Everyone knows that https always comes along when you copy a link...but what does it actually mean and how does it work? Rui Figueiredo explains how asymmetric key encryption makes the whole thing possible:
Pay attention, because there's very little on the web left that https doesn't touch:
Worst Decision Ever
Jose Gonzalez relates a story from his early career as a bootcamp TA, where he created an HTML/CSS tutorial that in retrospect, he thinks he should have published online. The conclusion: put your thoughts into a blog! (Preferably on dev.to 😉)
Dev.to's own Andy Zhao, who also TA-ed at a bootcamp, agreed that it took some guts to write up his first post, but that he was glad he did it.
Agreed! Writing/blogging has been such a good outlet for me.
My first blog post was on dev.to, and it took A LOT to write it up. I had no ideas what to write, but the more I avoided doing it, the more I would (probably) regret it. And I am already really happy I did :)
I'm on a New Level
Personal growth as a developer doesn't always feel continuous: you reach a certain level of expertise and then have to find ways to improve your skills or else risk stagnation. Kim Arnett lists eight ways to keep...developing:
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The article received tons of comments from users who appreciated the motivation:
This is great! Lately I've been feeling a bit stuck in my career and with being the only developer on a project I have no idea what I need to learn or where I need to improve. The biggest takeaway for me from your list is to really put yourself out there and look for people you can really learn from which both things scare the hell out of me! 🙂
Shellin' Out
Being more efficient from the command line is something that all devs can appreciate, which is probably why Bhaskar Karambelkar's write-up on bash shell tricks was so popular:
If you think you're exempt from getting better at bashing, think again:
In Abstract Terms
Abstraction is one of those core computer science concepts that most developers have a decent grasp of but might have trouble putting into their own words. Enter Eric Normand, who summarizes the idea:
Some commenters had their own favorite definitions as well:
I really like Dijkstra's definition (explanation) of abstraction. An abstraction will hide some of the stuff but not all. Only the ones that is related to the target domain of the abstraction should remain. Other irrelevant ones should be hidden. Preliminary examples are domain specific languages. But they are far from perfect at this point.
Go fetch!
Phil Nash, one of dev.to's top contributors, shared his exploration with the background fetch API:
The background fetch API allows a developer to perform and control fetches to large files or lists of files outside the context of a single page. This can increase the likelihood of successful uploads and downloads and allow the service worker to cache the results too.
Keep reading!
Lucky Number Seven
Becoming a better developer — or a better anything really — is about maintaining good habits. BinarForge lists seven useful habits for programmers
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That's it for our weekly wrapup! Keep an eye on Dev.to this week for daily content and discussions...and if you miss anything, we'll be sure to recap it next Monday!
Top comments (4)
Woah, nice to see my very first post here. That was completely unexpected.
Thanks everyone for loads of great work and keep it up!
hmmm sounds like you should keep blogging
Wow, this was a great week. Hard to pick a favorite, but I'd definitely commend @kimberlypilbeam for an awesomely useful and well-written post.
D'awe shucks, thanks Ben! There was a lot of great content this week - Thankful for this post because I did indeed definitely miss some. :D