Codestories Newsletter #108: Great Tools to Help You Build

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Learn to inspire, ideate, and develop across platforms and take inspiration from this collection of new and trusted resources from across the web.

Dawid Janiga
Software Architect Frontend

🏆 Weekly Highlights

• How a product engineering mindset can empower software developers
• Should you obey the ten commandments of egoless programming?
• Get pitch-perfect audio performance
• Scooting a path to better sustainability
• Is stoicism the philosophy you need?

🔥 News

Feature overview and tips for using React 18 (React Blog)

The React team gives a detailed overview of all the new improvements in React 18. Get a full overview of everything to be found in this new release.

A take on WebGL Grass (Faraz Shaikh)

A freelance developer creates an immersive experience rendering grass in the browser.

Elon Musk buys 9.2% of Twitter (The Register)

The Tesla and SpaceX founder spends plenty of time on the network. Now he owns a sizable chunk of company shares.

Gov.uk got rid of jQuery (Matt Hobbs v2.0)

The United Kingdom’s government shows the case study of removing jQuery dependency from all of their applications.

✅ Must-reads

What a product engineering mindset can teach software developers (Netguru)

Can giving the software developer a more active role earlier in the process produce better results? The answer may be yes — find out why.

Creating the effect of transparent glass and plastic in Three.js (codrops)

Create convincing transparent, glass-like, and plastic-like materials in Three.js. Find out how to use these fabulous features that are easy to get started.

The ten commandments of egoless programming (Coding Horror)

Need a good starting place for your programming journey? These “commandments” give strong advice with the right amount of humor.

A methodology for building apps as a service (The Twelve-Factor App)

This is a robust set of rules to create safe, reliable, and elastic SaaS applications.

🌱 Sustainable Tech

Bolt whizzes ahead with fifth-generation scooter (Tech.eu)

The Tallinn-based company plans to deploy over 20,000 units of its new scooter across Europe this year. The Bolt 5 is in 170 countries as the company seeks to reduce car dependency.

Germany to invest €4 billion in “natural climate protection” (DW)

Embracing several biodiversity efforts and technological initiatives, the European nation is focused on landscape renaturation, trees for cities, and land preservation.

💡 Developer's corner

What's the difference between product and feature teams? (Silicon Valley Product Group)

What’s the best model for team effectiveness? Dive into this original take on what it means to have an empowered team.

Inventing on principle (Bret Victor)

Look how one of the most inspiring creators in history presented principles on invention ten years ago. The vision has held up well.

Feature Toggles, aka Feature Flags (martinfowler.com)

If the only thing you use to customize the software to user needs is feature toggles, you might benefit from using dynamic configuration. This article explains it in greater detail.

Theatre.js

The Theater can easily animate anything in the browser: DOM, 3D, text. Theatre.js is like Adobe After Effects, but for web and it’s open-sourced.

🛠️ Tips & Tricks

Netguru Hangout: The Frontend Universe (Netguru)

Want to see how to control Philips Hue lights with DJ controls? Check out our on-demand video.

WebAssembly/Rust Tutorial: Pitch-perfect audio processing (Toptal)

Did you know you can play sounds in the browser with native-like latency using WebAssembly and Rust?

Can I rely on the web to build my app (What Web Can Do Today)

Ever wondered what the limitations of WebAPIs are today? Find out all that you can (and can’t) do.

A lightweight library delivers augmented reality on the web (AR.js)

Print a QR code, scan it with your smartphone, and render 3D models in augmented reality with AR.js. Check out how to make it work.

🎙️Quote of the week

“We don't learn from doing things well, we learn from mistakes. We learn new processes, when our existing ones didn't work well. We learn new skills, when our existing skills fail us. Our personal growth, and the growth of those around us, depends on our ability to make mistakes and recover from them.”

Dave Anderson,
former Technology Director and General Manager at Amazon, in Stoicism is not just for emperors and hipsters.