October 2, 2020

Web in September - Mindless Newsletter by Agney

October is here and so is Hacktoberfest!

In it’s 7th year, Hacktoberbest is one of the most recognised open source celebratory events all time. If you are looking to participate for the first time, here are the basics:

To earn your Hacktoberfest tee or tree reward, you must register and make four valid pull requests (PRs) between October 1-31 (in any time zone). PRs can be made to any public repo on GitHub, not only the ones with issues labeled Hacktoberfest.

Make sure to checkout their site for more details.

Remote work update!

Most offices have been remote for really long now and we are hearing many companies are starting to call their employees back (please don’t!). We have reached such saturation that Remote work is now accused of killing a Three Trillion Dollar economy and survillence software is booming.

If you feel you are drifting apart from your collegues here’s three great solution oriented pieces I found on the web this month:

• How to host a virtual networking event - HBR
• Mentoring during a COVID-19 pandemic - Nature
• How to be an empathetic coworker during a pandemic - HBR

Fast Refresh for React

If you work on React, checkout the new Fast Refresh that’s coming to all your favorite boilerplates. It’s the advanced version of hot loader, works much better and preserves state. Takes just three steps to setup.

Releases

We sat through a Google Pixel 5 launch event this week. But other than the flagships, few other phones caught my eye this month.

• Surface Duo - Two screens but can both closing inwards.
• LG Wing - Two screen opening like a T
• Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Fold - First foldable Tablet.
• ZTE Axon 5G - First smartphone with under display camera.

I’m not going to be buying any of these anytime soon and neither should you. But we have seen this bland square boxes for so long, it’s nice to see some innovation.

• Vue 3.0 - The new Vue release by the anime name One Piece is out and it brings Hooks. Vue docs is one of the best in business and with this release, it’s redesigned to be better.
• Postgres 13 - Postgres has a setup that shouldn’t work, no company at it’s helm, run by community and yet it outperforms every other competitor out there. Lessons learned from running Postgres 13 lists some tips and feature lists from running the new version in production.
• New JSX transform - This comes with React 17 and now we don’t have to import React to every component anymore. (NextJS users are scratching their heads wondering what this is)
• Tables by Google - Every month now, I report on a Airtable clone, after Amazon and Microsoft, here’s Google. No Code for the win.
• Youtube Shorts - Everyone wants a piece of TikTok Magic 🎩. Tik Tok meanwhile attempting to avoid the US ban, gave us a look into what they want with their recommendation algorithm.

Tutorials

• Epic React - Kent C Dodds, author of React testing library and Downshift has released a new course for React. Check out his article on a React composition and usage for a viewpoint into how better component architectures can be designed with children API.
• Master Gatsby - Wes Bos - Wes Bos is one of most renowned JavaScript instructors out there and he’s back with a Gatsby course.
• How to write a good pull request? - Discusses base rules that make a good PR. This talk from Alejandro Lujan is highly recommended if you want to make a Great PR 😄.

In Other News

• Social Dilemma - Netflix started streaming this acclaimed documentary and it doesn’t disappoint. We meet some tech bros and hear what they think about the algorithms they made.
• Production Grade React apps - Most apps that we see actually see the code for are ToDos, this article lists links to some large scale open source apps that go in production.
• When you browse Instagram and find former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s passport number - One of the most simple but interesting vulnerability disclosure I have read.
• Microsoft - Bethesda deal - Does this mean Elder Scrolls and Fallout would go on to become XBox exclusives? Probably not.
• Accessible Comics - Web comics are loved across the Internet, but how do we make them accessible to a wider audience? comica11y is an experiment for the same.
• foo@bar.com - What happens when you own the email that every developer uses to fill mandatory email fields.

Looking ahead

• JAM Stack Conf - First week of October, It’s got a great line up and you can attend for free (well, the conference, you have to pay for the workshops)
• Master ➡ Main - Github is starting to rename master branches to main.