07.01.2021 View in browser
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Codestories newsletter

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Dear Subscriber,

We have just closed 2020. Many of us thought ‘finally!’ as it’s been a tough time in crucial aspects of our lives. But at the same time, it was a very interesting year in the digital and technology areas. It forced many of us to make a leapfrog towards digitalization as a lot of the things we used to do physically suddenly became unavailable or could be considered an unnecessary health risk. The digitalization work is far from being done, though. Yes, we did reach a new level, where nearly all companies have reached ‘digital hygiene,’ but people’s digital experience readiness and expectations also evolved. Let’s have a closer look at a few areas:

  1. Online shopping – many of us won’t come back to shopping malls once we’ve tasted fully home deliveries. At the same time, grocery delivery or even click-and-collect solutions have not yet gone mainstream in many countries. Many of them due to the low availability and convenience of these services.
  2. Remote education – this is one of the ‘forced areas.’ Schools have been closed for physical lectures in many countries. Even though before the pandemic it seemed that 100% remoteness was not possible for many schools/education systems – it was fine! That being said, there is still a lot of work to be done on the software tools side.
  3. Telemedicine – on one hand this space got a big push and now nearly all the visits can be done remotely. On the other hand, the software readiness for this is in a terrible state, and that destroys the experience. Many providers are lacking basics like an ability to have a video call or share documents and photos with a doctor, instead of relying on a voice call.

2021 is going to be (again) a digitalization focused year – buckle up for new digital experiences.

Marek Talarczyk, CEO of Netguru
Marek Talarczyk
Netguru CEO
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🏆 Weekly Highlights

  • The top 10 digital transformation trends of 2020
  • US risks green tech leadership as Europe makes play with COVID-19 stimulus
  • It’s time to build a better future
  • Real estate challenges for the next 5 years
  • Digital Transformation is about talent, not technology

🔥 News

Ruby 3.0 released (Official Ruby site)
The new release of Ruby promises to be three times faster than Ruby 2.0, along with many other performance improvements.

Microsoft previews native Edge browser for Apple's M1 Macs (Computerworld)
The canary channel of Edge is the first version of Microsoft’s browser to be optimized for Apple’s new ARM-based Macs.

Introducing zero-bundle size react server components (React Blog)
The team introduced React server components, with a detailed preview for the community of all the latest changes.

The top 10 digital transformation trends of 2020 (Forbes)
What were the leading trends from the past year? Learn about the technologies that brought about the most impact.

✅ Must-reads

Why Do People Make Open Source Software? A Developer's Motivation (Netguru)
What’s behind the drive for diving into open source projects? Netguru’s Krzysztof Pietraszek looks at what makes open source work so appealing.

Assessing your team's development maturity levels (ITNEXT)
How to track the journey of your development team and what it means for the success of shipping products.

10 mistakes I made as a newbie self-taught developer (gitconnected)
A young developer takes an honest look at strengths and shortcomings during the ramp up of his career.

MDN web developer needs assessment update (Mozilla MDN Web Docs)
Mozilla has released the second iteration of its global study of developer needs across the web.

The 2020 web almanac (HTTP Archive)
Check out the HTTP Archive for a detailed report on the state of the web, built from considerable data and analysis from web experts.

Where will Vue go in 2021? (Vue Mastery)
A compilation of the major announcements, updates, and news from the Vue community in the last year and a preview of what’s to come.

A beginner's guide to the micro frontend architecture (sitepoint)
Learn about a micro frontend, which is an architecture pattern to build scalable web applications to grow with the development team alongside good scalability.

🌱 Sustainable Tech

Meet the Fiskers, the billionaire power couple taking on Tesla (Forbes)
A profile of famed car designer Henrik Fisker and wife Geeta Gupta-Fisker as they seek to challenge Tesla for dominance in the electric car market.

Swappie raises funds to sell more secondhand iPhones across Europe (TechCrunch)
The Finnish company has become a major refurbisher and reseller of iPhones.

US risks green tech leadership as Europe makes play with COVID-19 stimulus (S&P Global Market Intelligence)
European countries are taking the lead in investing in green technology as part of their strategy to boost economic growth stemming from COVID-19.

💡 Get inspired

Dreams and disasters in 2020 (React Podcast)
A look back at the challenges of 2020 from how it impacted dev work to passionate initiatives like a Kickstarter project.

Building Basecamp's new email service (Full Stack Radio)
This podcast episode dives into building a new email service while shipping only 40kb of JavaScript to the client.

It's time to build (Andreessen Horowitz)
A case for how our societies must band together and aggressively build their way through the multiple crisis we face.

Digital Transformation Is about talent, not technology (Harvard Business Review)
The ability to adapt to a more digital future depends on developing skills for the future and looking at numerous ways that data can inform such decisions, this author argues.

⚙ Tips & tricks

Understanding the Vim language (JavaScript in Plain English)
Want to tackle this command line text editor? This article walks you through steps to go towards mastery and favorite plugins.

You might not need a backend (The Startup)
Do you really need a backend solution for a graphical application? This piece discusses the merits of taking a more innovative approach.

How to render your main content faster (web.dev)
There are any number of factors that can bring about a poor user experience. This post discusses slow server response, content rendering, and many other roadblocks to fast content performance.

How to increase CSS-in-JS performance by 175x (ITNEXT)
Don’t allow a performance bottleneck to slow things down. This post offers several tips for speeding up your projects.

Everything about callback functions in JavaScript (Dmitri Pavlutin)
The callback function can be tremendously useful for JavaScript developers. Gain strategies on synchronous and asynchronous callbacks alongside other tips.

👀 Must-sees

🎥 Videos

Real estate challenges for the next 5 years (Netguru)
We chatted with Adi Pavlović, Director of Innovation at Keller Williams Realty, on what the industry will look like down the road.

The state of Ruby 3 typing (Soutaro Matsumoto)
A lead Ruby engineer on the alternative to a static type checker that’s shipping with Ruby 3.

Data Fetching with React Server Components (Facebook Open Source)
A video companion into the latest research into zero bundle size React server components.

🖼 Design of the issue

Design of the issue – animations by LottieFiles

2020 year in motion by LottieFiles. Watch these top 2020 animations here.

🎙 Quote of the week

“The biggest barrier to corporate innovation is lack of vision - the absence of leadership with a vision, and the courage to challenge the old ways of thinking and adopt new ones as well as sharing this vision with the stakeholders of a corporation, encouraging and enabling collaboration and participation.”
Quotemarks icon.

Martina Beszedesova, Producer at Empire Entertainment Japan, sharing with Netguru on the topic, "Why does innovation fail?"

☕ After hours

What patients like, and dislike, about telemedicine (Harvard Business Report)
Patients have been appreciative of the flexibility in remote doctor visits. But there are still some areas with work to do.

Tesla's German Gigafactory Has a Lizard Problem (Entrepreneur)
First it was snakes, now lizards. Environmental hazards keep delaying construction of Tesla’s forthcoming German Gigafactory.

America lost 138,833,045 hours of sleep on election night (Sifted)
The data confirms it – election night was a restless one for many Americans. Check out how these researchers reached that conclusion.



Sincerely,
Codestories Team
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Netguru is a consultancy, product design, and software development company founded in 2008.
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