Stay ahead in web development: latest news, tools, and insights #56

weeklyfoo #56 is here: your weekly digest of all webdev news you need to know! This time you'll find 43 valuable links in 6 categories! Enjoy!

🚀 Read it!

• Some important learnings from my 20 years of engineering life: Ten learnings about engineering / engineering / 19 min read
• Why I’m skeptical of rewriting JavaScript tools in “faster” languages: It's about performance, contributions and debuggability / tools / 17 min read

📰 Good to know

• The future of Postgres?: Postgres and its great extensions will shape the future. / databases / 4 min read
• Software Engineer Titles Have (Almost) Lost All Their Meaning: Examining the Devaluation of Software Engineer Titles and Its Impact on Tech Industry Integrity / engineering / 7 min read
• Unlocking the Power of JSON Patch: JSON Patch is a standardized format defined in RFC 6902 for describing how to modify a JSON document. It was created to address the need for a simple, efficient, and standardized way to apply partial updates to resources, especially over HTTP. / json / 13 min read
• Promise.try(): New experimental function. / javascript / 7 min read
• How to fork: Best practices and guide / git, forking / 20 min read
• Introducing Express v5: A New Era for Node.js Framework: Finally the official blog post about express v5 / express / 10 min read
• State of the software engineering job market in 2024: A deep dive into job market trends, the companies and cities hiring the most software engineers, growth areas, and more. Exclusive data and charts / engineering / 13 min read
• How we built a new powerful JSON data type for ClickHouse: JSON has become the lingua franca for handling semi-structured and unstructured data in modern data systems. Whether it’s in logging and observability scenarios, real-time data streaming, mobile app storage, or machine learning pipelines, JSON’s flexible structure makes it the go-to format for capturing and transmitting data across distributed systems. / json / 23 min read
• What docs as code really means: What does docs-as-code really mean beyond the ability of building the docs from text files and versioning them using git? / docs / 6 min read
• Results of State of CSS 2024: See the survey results. / css / 6 min read
• Help us choose the final syntax for Masonry in CSS: I like how they want to get the community involved. / css, masonry / 36 min read
• Next.js 15: Next major release of Next.js / nextjs / 23 min read
• WebStorm and Rider Are Now Free for Non-Commercial Use: We’re excited to announce a change in our licensing model that we believe will benefit the developer community – WebStorm and Rider are now free for non-commercial use! / webstorm / 12 min read
• Smarter than 'Ctrl+F': Linking Directly to Web Page Content / text-fragments / 6 min read
• Do's and Don'ts of Commenting Code: What are the best (and worst) comments you can write in code, particularly when working on a project with a team including more developers? This article will show you what’s good (and what’s not!) so you can embrace best practices for commenting. / comments, engineering / 13 min read
• Chakra v3: Next major release of the popular UI components / ui / 8 min read

🧰 Tools

• Spare Cores: Harnessing the compute resources of the cloud to optimize efficiency and costs of batch and service tasks. / costs, cloud
• Wireit: Wireit upgrades your npm/pnpm/yarn scripts to make them smarter and more efficient. / npm, scripts
• Tailwind Gradient Generator: Effortlessly generate and customize gradients with user-friendly tools. Just select, copy, and paste the code—your Tailwind Gradient Generator does all the hard work for you! Perfect for vibrant designs. / tailwind, gradients
• vacuum: vacuum is the worlds fastest OpenAPI 3, OpenAPI 2 / Swagger linter and quality analysis tool. Built in go, it tears through API specs faster than you can think. vacuum is compatible with Spectral rulesets and generates compatible reports. / swagger, openapi
• Vale: A markup-aware linter for prose built with speed and extensibility in mind. / linter
• Civet: A TypeScript superset that favors more types and less typing / typescript
• Color Thief: Grab the color palette from an image using just Javascript. Works in the browser and in Node. / colors
• Rust Web Framework: Comprehensive framework for building web applications in Rust. / rust
• ryde: ryde is a single person, single file web framework for rust / rust
• Khoshnus: Craft Beautiful Handwritten SVG Text Animations / svg
• Toolpad: Full stack components and low-code builder for dashboards and internal apps. / react
• GenAIScript: Automatable GenAI Scripting / ai
• Medusa: The world's most flexible commerce platform. / ecommerce
• match-sorter: Simple, expected, and deterministic best-match sorting of an array in JavaScript / matching
• Vizzu: Library for animated data visualizations and data stories. / charts, animation
• Rsbuild: The Rspack-based build tool. It's fast, out-of-the-box and extensible. / tools
• Awesome Docs: A crowdsourced, open-source gallery for high-quality dev docs. / docs
• ApiHub: Your own API Hub to learn and master API interaction. Ideal for frontend, mobile dev and backend developers. / apis

🎨 Design

• The biggest font trends to look out for in 2025: From a sans-serif backlash to neo-retro revivals, our experts predict a diverse typographic landscape for the coming year. / fonts / 20 min read
• UX is a joke, and it’s inexcusable: Designer Mathew Wilson on why we should worry that bad user experience has become a punchline. / ux / 5 min read
• new CSS logo?: Nice to see the discussion and proposals about a new CSS logo / css / 39 min read

🤪 Fun

• Why does man print gimme gimme gimme at 00:30?: Nice easter egg in man command - unfortunately already removed. / cli / 13 min read
• Is my blue your blue?: Check how you see blue and green. / colors / 0 min read

📺 Videos

• Web3 Is Going Just Great: Best known for puncturing blockchain/crypto hype with her Web3 Is Going Just Great project, writer/researcher Molly White believes a better web is possible. / web3
• Writer/Researcher: Writer/researcher Erin Kissane is working to build better and safer networks for collective survival, with efforts including the COVID Tracking Project, a powerful 40,000 word analysis of Meta’s role in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, and current research into the culture and governance of the next wave of social networks. / covid

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