TLDR WEB DEV 2024-09-17

Join the team behind Sentry's JavaScript SDKs for a live session

chock-full of practical tips on how to make debugging more tolerable. Stick around for the live Q&A [4]!

REARCHITECTING CORE SERVICES AT X

X's Core Services team rearchitected the read path for Posts by splitting the read and write path of Tweetypie, a core service, into two separate services. They did this because of the service's resource intensity, unbalanced read and write traffic, and code complexity issues caused by its monolithic nature. The new architecture uses X's distributed ecosystem and has resulted in a highly performant Tweet Entity Service capable of handling millions of operations per second.

THE STATE OF ES5 ON THE WEB

A Google engineer examines the current state of ES5 on the web, challenging the traditional practice of transpiling to ES5. Data shows that many popular websites unnecessarily bundle ES5 helpers with ES6+ code, leading to unnecessary bloat. Instead, it's better for developers to shift towards "Baseline Widely Available" features, which benefits both library authors, who can focus on publishing modern code, and website developers, who can tailor browser support to their specific needs through their build tools.

MODERN DATA-FETCHING IN REACT

Data-fetching in React has shifted from client-side fetching in traditional SPAs to server-side fetching using frameworks like NextJS and Remix. The React team advocates for server-side data-fetching due to its efficiency and the complexity of client-side approaches. This post goes over using React Router loaders, Tanstack Query, and React Server Components for handling data in React.

MENTORSHIP: UNDERRATED PERK OF BIG TECH (REDDIT THREAD)

Working at a Big Tech company offers rare mentorship opportunities that are often overlooked. This developer shares how they learned a lot from experienced colleagues at their Big Tech company, like the engineer who revamped Facebook's newsfeed. Mentorship isn't always a structured program, but rather about proactively reaching out to people for advice and guidance.

WHY SCRUM IS STRESSING YOU OUT

Sprints in Scrum can lead to chronic stress due to their constant nature, lack of autonomy, and insufficient time for preparation. Traditional Waterfall methods have waves of high-pressure periods balanced with more reasonable periods. The ongoing, medium-level stress of sprints, in contrast, can be more damaging.

HOW TO LEAD YOUR TEAM WHEN THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE

Datadog solution brief

REACT-CALL

react-call provides a simple and flexible way to imperatively call React components from anywhere in an application, even outside of React. This makes it ideal for scenarios like confirmations, notifications, popups, and more. It also lets devs present UI, wait for user interaction, and receive response data.

ADZE

Adze is a universal logging library for TypeScript and JavaScript that can run in any JS runtime without configuration. It supports both server and browser environments. Adze has first-class TypeScript support, a chainable API, log listeners, middleware support, log annotations, and various log formats.

JAQT

jaqt is a JavaScript library that uses native array functions to provide a query engine inspired by GraphQL and SQL. It lets devs perform complex data transformations while still writing JavaScript (instead of SQL).

AMAZON TELLS EMPLOYEES TO RETURN TO OFFICE FIVE DAYS A WEEK

Amazon is requiring its corporate employees to return to the office five days a week. It is also flattening its corporate structure by reducing the number of managers and increasing the ratio of individual contributors. The new policies will come into effect on January 2, 2025.

ORACLE, IT'S TIME TO FREE JAVASCRIPT

This is an open letter signed by prominent figures in the JavaScript community that urges Oracle to release the "JavaScript" trademark. They argue that Oracle has abandoned the trademark through non-use, as they haven't built a product using the mark and haven't actively protected it. They are calling on Oracle to relinquish the trademark to the public domain, and warn that they will challenge its ownership through a petition for cancellation with the USPTO if Oracle doesn't comply.

DEPLOYING DREAMS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT A SUMMER INTERNSHIP WITH VERCEL

A summer intern at Vercel shares his experience working on various projects. He improved the Support Center, implemented citations in the new v0 AI system, and created the "v0 Brain" initiative. His internship involved full autonomy, intense but rewarding work, and learning from industry leaders.

THE HTTP QUERY METHOD

This Internet-Draft defines a new HTTP method, QUERY, which allows for safe and idempotent requests that can carry request content, providing an alternative to GET and POST methods for performing queries.

CSS NANO

CSSNANO is a tool that compresses CSS files for production environments, reducing their size by removing unnecessary whitespace, compressing identifiers, and purging redundant definitions.

THE PRAGMATIC PROGRAMMER FOR MACHINE LEARNING

This online book focuses on software engineering practices necessary for the effective implementation of modern data analysis and machine learning.

UNLEARNING LEETCODE

Writing simple, readable code is more considerate, durable, and ultimately more satisfying than writing complex code.

AI-WRITTEN CODE BANNED FROM CODEFORCES: WHAT'S CHANGING?

Codeforces, a popular online programming platform, has banned the use of AI-generated code in its competitions.