2022.02.21 - Building for the 99% Developers

Title: 2022.02.21 – Building for the 99% Developers

This Week’s Highlights

Building for the 99% Developers https://future.a16z.com/software-development-building-for-99-developers/
It matters to talk about the 99% Developers because these are the developers building the software that powers our lives—insurance, health care, retail, and banking, just to name a few. It’s not only small companies that can’t easily adopt the processes of modern, tech‑first firms; it’s most companies that were not built around technology and that have decades of legacy software practices firmly in place. Many of these companies move around quite a bit of money. Many of these companies handle a lot of our personal data. If technology innovations are not benefiting these software teams, we’re losing out on a lot of meaningful improvements to everyone’s quality of life. In this piece, I’ll present some truths that both enterprise software buyers and builders can embrace to dispel harmful myths and improve developer experience for all.

Supercharge your event‑driven architecture with new Cloud Functions (2nd gen) https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/serverless/introducing-the-next-generation-of-cloud-functions
We are introducing Cloud Functions (2nd gen) into public preview, Google Cloud’s next‑generation Functions‑as‑a‑Service product. This next‑generation version of Cloud Functions comes with an advanced feature set giving you more powerful infrastructure, advanced control over performance and scalability, more control around the functions runtime and triggers from over 90 event sources. Further, the infrastructure is powered by Google Cloud’s cutting‑edge serverless and eventing infrastructure, Cloud Run and Eventarc. Related: Announcing Netlify Graph: A faster way for teams to develop web apps with APIs, Best of both worlds: Serverless Cloud + Next.js.

Why is UX design at Airtable different? https://blog.airtable.com/ux/
A Q&A with Head of Research Andy Warr on Airtable’s UX strategy and the pandemic’s effect on his field. Related: Task management vs. project management: What’s the difference?

Free DataViz Tools & Resources https://policyviz.com/2022/02/14/free-dataviz-tools-resources/
A colleague recently asked me for any publicly available, free resources they might use to up their data‑visualization game. There’s obviously a huge world of great resources to help you become an effective data communicator. Personally, certain blogs, tools, and resources bubble to the top and I regularly suggest them to people. I also keep an eye on a few news organizations for their data‑visualization work—I’ll publish a follow‑up post soon with the ones I follow most closely. Related: Should we give awards for data visualizations?.

Thoughts On Markdown https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/02/thoughts-on-markdown/
Markdown in all its flavors, interpretations, and forks won’t go away. However, it’s important to look at emerging content formats that try to encompass modern needs. In this article, Knut shares his advice against Markdown by looking back on why it was introduced in the first place, and by going through some of the major developments of content on the web. Related: GitHub – Include diagrams in your Markdown files with Mermaid.

In‑Depth Reading

Implications Of WordPress Joining The Block Protocol https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/02/implications-wordpress-joining-block-protocol/
In this article, Leonardo Losoviz discusses some potential consequences as well as positive outcomes of WordPress joining the Block Protocol.

React – The Missing Parts https://acko.net/blog/react-the-missing-parts/
Question the rules for fun and profit.

Some Reasons for Disliking React Hooks https://blog.bitsrc.io/some-reasons-for-disliking-react-hooks-80f1e18eb9b3
React hooks were introduced in React 16.8. Their aim, as described in the React documentation, is to let you use state and other React features without writing a class. Shortly after the announcement I looked at them, and I’ve been running through the following cycle ever since: I disliked hooks, mainly because they were new, and it’s probably human nature to be skeptical of new things, although most developers (including me) are probably too skeptical.

Deep Dive into React Native’s New Architecture https://medium.com/coox-tech/deep-dive-into-react-natives-new-architecture-fb67ae615ccd
“2022 is going to be the year of the New Architecture in open source.” Since the release is just around the corner, this is a good time to understand what changes are taking place under the hood and how they might affect your React Native app. This article aims to cover the most important changes brought by the re‑architecture. Related: Calling Windows APIs from React Native just got easier.

Why Are Hyperlinks Blue? https://css-tricks.com/why-are-hyperlinks-blue/
Last year, Elise Blanchard did some great historical research and discovered that blue hyperlinks replaced black hyperlinks in 1993. They’ve been blue for so long now that the general advice I always hear is to keep them that way. There is powerful societal muscle memory for “blue text is a clickable link.”

Why Is Python So Popular? https://blog.sentry.io/2022/02/15/guest-post-why-is-python-so-popular
Even in the face of these limitations, Python not only survived but thrived. Indeed, nearly 50 % of developers use Python in some fashion, a number exceeded only by JavaScript and HTML/CSS. And just last year, Python was named the Programming Language of the Year in the TIOBE Programming Community Index, moving up from the third spot in 2020. So why is Python so popular?

What Does It Mean to Listen on a Port? https://paulbutler.org/2022/what-does-it-mean-to-listen-on-a-port/
This story explores some concepts in computer networking, inspired by Michael Nielsen’s idea of discovery fiction. Code samples can also be found in this repo. Excerpts use OpenBSD‑flavoured netcat on Debian Linux; behavior and IPv6 support may vary by version.

Machine Learning Becomes a Mathematical Collaborator https://www.quantamagazine.org/deepmind-machine-learning-becomes-a-mathematical-collaborator-20220215/
Two recent collaborations between mathematicians and DeepMind demonstrate the potential of machine learning to help researchers generate new mathematical conjectures.

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Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.