The Dev Drop - Issue #12

Hey hey, devs!

What’s the word? Seriously? I haven’t been around in a few minutes ??…

Vacation is a good time to rest and clear your head. That is, unless you have kids, and then vacation is sometimes a grueling task of just keeping your children occupied while school and kindergarten are out for summer.

But, we’re not here to discuss my vacation, but rather dev news and interesting things around the web!

Lately, I can’t stop seeing 2 major themes that keep coming up:

1. AI tools
2. AI criticism

The latest tools in imagery and video are just mind-blowing. ??

I seriously think that Hollywood and the content we consume will change drastically in the coming years.

And that relates to what the critics have to say; there will hardly be any human-created content anymore, and that would make the AI-generated content crap (my TLDR; summary).

Anyhow, tangents aside — let’s get down to the Dad Joke of the day:

Why did the developer break up with their significant other?

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.

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Because they wanted a more "committed" relationship!

Our second knowledge center page is out ??! Check it out https://www.builder.io/m/knowledge-center/best-react-cms.

Trying to decide which UI component library you want to use for your project is not an easy task. This overview of 25+ UI component libraries might help out.

• If you're figuring out the best way to type your React props in TypeScript, Matt Pocock breaks down the pros and cons of using inline object literals, type aliases, and interfaces, offering a clear path for optimal performance and maintainability.
• Austin Gil made a tutorial on how to integrate AI into a Qwik application ??.
• Looking to learn more about web user experience? Nielsen Norman Group published a comprehensive guide of articles and videos on making websites user-friendly.
• Do you want to learn how 3D CSS illustrations are created? Ricardo Oliva Alonso’s CSS art in Codepen work is broken by Frontend Horse.
• Results from the State of CSS 2023 were published. Everyone has at least 99 problems with CSS, but a grid ain’t one.
• Do you know how people like giving advice about productivity or new methods and design patterns? So here are 15 terrible pieces of advice for web developers. Thank me later ??.
• Web performance is hard, indeed. Ayoub Alouane wrote “The Sisyphean Quest for Web Performance” from SPA to SSR, SSG, and more. Rolling that boulder up a hill…
• The legendary CSS guru, Adam Argyle, wrote about how to make your CSS design system type-safe.
• Malte Ubl, CTO at Vercel, had a great post about why all application migrations should be incremental. So if you’re just about to launch your site, rewrite to your newly created Next.js app, do it page by page.
• Jenna Smith dug deep in her post. She explored different ways of data fetching in your React applications. In this piece, she’s trying to challenge the established norms and make component fetching the exception.
• Bluesky, the newish decentralized social network that is built with React Native, has a new employee: Dan Abramov.

• Astro 3.0 was released with support for the View Transitions API, enabling advanced page navigation effects. The update also features image optimization, performance enhancements, and new SSR capabilities optimized for serverless environments.
• Astro's View Transitions weren't the only game in town; SvelteKit 1.24 also stepped up with an onNavigate lifecycle hook. This new feature simplifies the integration of the View Transitions API for fluid page transitions and allows for CSS-based customization.
• Building on Rome's foundation in web toolchain solutions, Biome is introduced as its official successor. Led by the same core team, Biome focuses on stability and feature enhancements.
• Novel is a smart AI-powered Notion-style editor by Steven Tey.
• You probably should be using pnpm instead of what you’re using now. Even Theo agrees (??).
• ModelFusion is a new AI library on the block allowing you to build multi-model AI apps, and whatnot with TypeScript. One cool thing is that it uses Zod to validate model responses.
• OpenCopilot is an open-source AI co-pilot for your SASS product. I couldn’t have known that from just the name…where’s the AI?
• Deno Deploy now has native support for npm.

That’s it for this time, y’all.

I’d go on another tangent, but I need to fuel myself with some more tangent material.

I’m pretty sure that won’t be a problem, as the web dev and JS ecosystem always deliver hot takes and spicy stuff to go all around.

Till next time — stay chill ???

Yoav.

P.S. - Thanks to Vishwas for holding down the fort for the last issue, and helping out with some points on this one! ????