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Hey there !

As always, this week’s picks are designed to inspire and help you become a more informed full-stack web developer! Bo Ingram’s breakdown of how Discord handles trillions of messages offers a fascinating look at scaling systems. If you love fonts, check out Departure Mono—a free, lo-fi monospaced font perfect for adding a unique touch to your projects.

For benchmarking JavaScript, mitata is a tool you’ll want to explore. Josh W. Comeau also shares how he built his latest blog, packed with creativity and technical insights. Erik Bernhardsson’s take on writing code for humans really resonated with me, and it’s a must-read if you care about clean, maintainable code.

And if you’ve ever fought with YAML in JavaScript, Phil Nash’s humorous piece will hit home!

Happy coding and learning!

— Your editor, Luciano!

PS: Last week I had the pleasure to attend the AWS Community Day in Rome with a new talk about AWS organizations. If you are curious about this topic, you can check out my slides online.

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works“

— Douglas Adams , Author

How Discord Stores Trillions of Messages — Engineer Bo Ingram shares insight into how Discord shoulders its traffic and engineered its database to support an incredible number of chat messages. Your application probably doesn't need to scale to the same numbers, but I found these kinds of articles fascinating because you learn how things are designed incrementally. Discord didn't just build this architecture from day one, but they constantly revised it as they kept hitting limits. There are definitely a few lessons to be learned here! I hope you'll like it! Read article

Departure Mono — If you have been following this newsletter for a while, you know I have a soft spot for fonts! Last week, I discovered Departure Mono, a FREE and open-source monospaced pixel font with a lo-fi, techy vibe. I think this could be a great choice to spice up your next web project! Read article

mitata: benchmark tooling that loves you —  If you want to benchmark some JavaScript snippets, mitata seems like a very good option. It allows you to define a benchmark file (just a plain JavaScript file you can run with Node.js) where you can import the mitata library, execute your code (multiple times), and describe how to plot the resulting data. View Repository

How I Built My Blog (Josh W. Comeau) — Josh is one of the most creative web developers you can find on the web (his work has been featured in this newsletter countless times)! Josh recently launched a brand new version of his blog, and in this post, he shares how it’s built! It examines the tech stack and describes how all of the pieces fit together, as well as dig into some of the more technical details. Read article

It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans — In this article, Erik Bernhardsson dives into the art (and struggle) of writing code that's not just for machines but for humans too. As someone who spends countless hours reading and maintaining code, I found Erik’s perspective really resonated with the challenges we all face—code readability, clarity, and maintainability. If you’ve ever found yourself wincing at the messiness of old codebases or battling to make your own code more understandable for others (and your future self), this is a must-read. Erik doesn’t just point out the problems, he also reflects on what we can do better. This piece will make you think twice the next time you type a line of code. Read article

From Gatsby gridlock to Astro bliss: my personal site redesign — Earlier this year, I made the leap from Gatsby to Astro for my own blog, so this article really hit home. The author walks us through their own migration process and sheds light on why Astro is becoming a go-to for developers who want faster, more streamlined websites. If you're thinking about switching or just curious about what Astro has to offer, this article is packed with insights on the benefits, challenges, and what it takes to make the move. It’s a compelling read that will resonate with anyone exploring modern web frameworks. Read article

The yaml document from hell — JavaScript edition — Phil Nash brings us a hilarious yet painfully relatable take on the chaos that can emerge when dealing with YAML in JavaScript. As someone who's had my share of YAML-induced headaches, this piece made me laugh and cringe in equal measure. Phil dives into some of the more obscure quirks of YAML, showing how something so seemingly simple can spiral into a nightmare. If you've ever battled with YAML files or are curious about its tricky nuances, this article will have you both entertained and enlightened. It’s a fun read that turns frustration into humor! Read article

Rust in Action

by Tim McNamara

Rust in Action introduces the Rust programming language by exploring numerous systems programming concepts and techniques. You'll be learning Rust by delving into how computers work under the hood. You'll find yourself playing with persistent storage, memory, networking and even tinkering with CPU instructions. The book takes you through using Rust to extend other applications and teaches you tricks to write blindingly fast code. You'll also discover parallel and concurrent programming. Filled to the brim with real-life use cases and scenarios, you'll go beyond the Rust syntax and see what Rust has to offer in real-world use cases.

Sometimes, more is more! 🤯

• Web Components Are Not the Future
• The Frontend Treadmill
• A Comprehensive Guide to Node.js Addons
• New standards for a faster and more private Internet

👋 That’s all for this week. See you next Monday!

Greetings from your full stack friends Luciano & Andrea