2022.11.21 - Being Chinese

Title: 2022.11.21 – Being Chinese

Modular monolith & The Distributed Computing Manifesto & Scalable CSS

This Week’s Highlights

Deno 1.28: Featuring 1.3 Million New Modules https://deno.com/blog/v1.28
Deno maintains that modern JavaScript should be built with ES Modules and web‑standard APIs. This release does not change that. Importing npm modules is done through URLs in a standards‑compliant fashion—we continue moving toward a browser‑compatible future, where you’re using web APIs such as fetch, Request, and Response. Now, Deno is taking npm a step forward by allowing you to access your favorite modules in a modern, secure programming environment. Related: Run npm and Deno anywhere, Build a More Secure Web using npm with Deno.

The Distributed Computing Manifesto https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2022/11/amazon-1998-distributed-computing-manifesto.html
Today I’m publishing the Distributed Computing Manifesto, a canonical document from Amazon’s early days that reshaped the architecture of its e‑commerce platform. It outlines the challenges we faced at the turn of the 21st century and hints at where we were headed.

Build the modular monolith first https://www.fearofoblivion.com/build-a-modular-monolith-first
Even talking about building a monolith today is a bit taboo. Microservices dominate the conversation, and have for a few years. But they aren’t a silver bullet…

What’s so great about functional programming anyway? https://jrsinclair.com/articles/2022/whats-so-great-about-functional-programming-anyway/
This is a sample chapter from my upcoming book A Skeptic’s Guide to Functional Programming with JavaScript. Subscribe if you want to know when it’s released. It’s due soon, and early buyers will get a discount.

But, aren’t you folks web2? https://nadh.in/blog/web2-web3/
There’s a striking irony: many high‑profile figures and organizations that loudly champion decentralisation, web 3, and crypto have simultaneously amassed huge centralized fortunes from those very schemes. Have we collectively become so blind we can’t see it, or is it the gold‑rush‑induced cognitive dissonance?

The evolution of scalable CSS https://frontendmastery.com/posts/the-evolution-of-scalable-css/
A deep dive into the problems of scaling CSS on large projects and the evolution of CSS best practices.

In‑Depth Reading

43% Less Code With A Better Data Structure https://profy.dev/article/react-junior-code-review-and-refactoring-1
Here’s your chance to learn from these mistakes. The page offers a code review and a step‑by‑step refactoring journey. By using a better data structure, removing unnecessary state, and applying a few other refactorings, we boost performance, improve readability and maintainability, and shrink the component from 177 lines to 102 (not that line count is the ultimate metric).

The magical world of Particles with React Three Fiber and Shaders https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/the-magical-world-of-particles-with-react-three-fiber-and-shaders/
This article shares all the tips and techniques I’ve gathered about particles—from building simple particle systems with standard and buffer geometries, to customizing their appearance, controlling movement with shaders, and scaling the particle count even further. You’ll also gain a deeper understanding of attributes, a key shader concept I missed in a previous post but is essential for these use cases.

Single‑page applications, multi‑page applications, the history of Twitter tech, and a failed project https://whitep4nth3r.com/blog/twitter-tech-history-spa/#and-the-cycle-continues
While researching the WTF project, I uncovered fascinating historical details about Twitter’s tech stack and its evolution, leading to an interesting conclusion. Given the buzz around Twitter’s new ownership and its possible impact, I thought now would be a good time to share my findings. First, though, let’s define what we mean by an SPA.

Sapling: Source control that’s user‑friendly and scalable https://engineering.fb.com/2022/11/15/open-source/sapling-source-control-scalable/
We’ve spent the past decade building Sapling, a scalable, user‑friendly source‑control system, and today we’re open‑sourcing the Sapling client. You can now try its features using Sapling’s built‑in Git support to clone any of your existing repositories. This is the first step in a longer process of making the entire Sapling system publicly available. Related: Move faster, wait less: Improving code review time at Meta.

No architecture is better than bad architecture https://rogovoy.me/blog/no-architecture
One‑line summary: If you want to move fast, you have to postpone building the architecture, and if some of your code is crappy, at least make it “soft.” As always, thanks for reading this far.

Speeding software innovation with low‑code/no‑code tools https://stackoverflow.blog/2022/11/15/speeding-software-innovation-with-low-code-no-code-tools/
Low‑code/no‑code tools can help both developers and non‑developers.

The Generative AI Revolution in Games https://a16z.com/2022/11/17/the-generative-ai-revolution-in-games/
There hasn’t been a technology this revolutionary for gaming since real‑time 3D. Talk to any game creator and the excitement is palpable. So where is this technology headed, and how will it transform gaming? First, let’s define what generative AI is.

Ten Steps to “Code” — A Kind of Memoir https://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2022/11/Ten-Steps-to-Code.html
The second edition of my book Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software was recently published, and I’ve already discussed the changes. But people often wonder how a book gets written in the first place. Here’s that story.

Fresh Finds

Angular v15 is now available! Announcing Nuxt 3.0 stable Announcing TypeScript 4.9 Linking from GitHub to Mastodon Octoverse 2022: 10 years of tracking open source [Announcing Flutter Forward](https://medi

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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.