#ritter.digital - Newsletter #22
Stefan Ritter
Mission: Ideen in innovative Apps verwandeln. Weit über 50 App-Projekte in den letzten 12+ Jahren erfolgreich umgesetzt. Vom Weltkonzern bis Start-Up. CEO @ Ritter Mobile Technology GmbH
Welcome to this week's AI & Dev Digest! We're kicking off 2025 with groundbreaking developments in AI, including the WEF's optimistic projection of 78 million new jobs by 2030 and Mistral AI's release of their enhanced Codestral 25.01 coding model. Beyond AI, we're diving into major mobile development insights from industry leaders like Shopify and B&Q, exploring the latest web development frameworks and tools, and examining how companies are adapting to the evolving tech landscape. Whether you're a developer, tech leader, or simply passionate about innovation, this week's roundup offers valuable insights into the technologies shaping our future.
As always, feel free to like, share, and discuss with your network. Here are the stories that caught our attention:
AI News
#1 - AI could create 78 million more jobs than it eliminates by 2030
The WEF's Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects AI will create a net gain of 78 million jobs by 2030, despite 40% of companies planning some workforce reductions. While certain roles like postal clerks and legal secretaries are expected to decline, most companies are focusing on human-AI collaboration, with 77% planning retraining programs and actively seeking workers with AI, cybersecurity, and technological expertise.
#2 - Mistral AI Unveils Codestral 25.01: Enhanced Code Generation Model
Mistral AI has released Codestral 25.01, an upgraded version of their coding model that operates twice as fast as its predecessor and leads performance benchmarks for its size class, particularly in fill-in-the-middle (FIM) coding tasks across 80+ programming languages. The new version outperforms other major coding models in benchmarks like HumanEval and MBPP, and is being rolled out through IDE plugins and enterprise deployments while also being available through various cloud platforms.
#3 - Awesome Open (Source) Language Models
The "Awesome Open-Source Language Models" repository, curated by the Allen Institute for AI, offers a comprehensive list of open-source language models and related resources. Developed for the 2024 NeurIPS tutorial on opening the language modeling pipeline, this collection includes links to various models, datasets, and tools essential for researchers and developers working in natural language processing. The repository aims to promote transparency and accessibility in language model development, providing valuable insights into pretraining data, model architectures, and adaptation techniques.
#4 - Nvidia's Expanding AI Investment Portfolio
Over the past two years, Nvidia has significantly increased its investments in AI startups, participating in over 80 deals to expand the AI ecosystem. Notable investments include CoreWeave, a cloud provider specializing in GPU-accelerated workloads, and Perplexity AI, an AI-powered search engine. This strategic approach positions Nvidia at the forefront of AI innovation, fostering the development of technologies that complement its hardware solutions.
Mobile App Development
#5 - Rebuilding B&Q's Mobile Apps: A Modern Development Journey
In 2024, Abid Ghani and his team at Kingfisher PLC undertook a comprehensive rebuild of B&Q's mobile applications. Transitioning from a centralized, white-label solution to a decentralized, market-specific approach, they employed modern technologies like Kotlin Multiplatform and GraphQL APIs to enhance adaptability and responsiveness to customer needs.
#6 - Compose Multiplatform is real
PhotoApp explores building the same app across various development tools to compare implementation and outcomes. The app includes a loading screen, an image list screen, and a details screen, with tools like Flutter, React Native, Kotlin Multiplatform, and more achieving full functionality. Recent insights from Compose Multiplatform showcase its growing maturity, enabling seamless cross-platform development. This project offers valuable comparisons for teams selecting frameworks for mobile apps.
#7 Five years of React Native at Shopify
Over the past five years, Shopify has successfully transitioned all its mobile applications to React Native, achieving significant productivity gains and enabling developers to work seamlessly across iOS, Android, and web platforms. This strategic move has resulted in faster feature delivery, with apps now boasting sub-500ms screen loads and over 99.9% crash-free sessions. Shopify continues to utilize native code when it's the optimal tool for specific tasks, ensuring a balanced and efficient development approach
领英推荐
#8 - Enhancing Social Sharing in Marathon with Expo
In a recent blog post, Josh Pensky details how the Marathon app team improved social sharing features using Expo. They implemented shareable URLs for content like shows and episodes, facilitated by Expo Router, allowing users to easily share links across platforms. Additionally, they created custom share images using the react-native-view-shot library, enabling users to share visually appealing content on social media. The team also developed a custom share sheet to integrate with platforms such as Instagram Stories, X (formerly Twitter), Threads, and Bluesky, enhancing the app's visibility and user engagement.
Web Development
#9 - Building an AI agent for your frontend project
Ivaylo Gerchev’s tutorial demonstrates how to create an AI-powered FAQ generator using OpenAI, BaseAI and Langbase. It covers building the agent locally, deploying it, and integrating it into a frontend project, showcasing how developers can easily implement AI to enhance user experiences. This guide highlights the accessibility of AI tools for improving web applications.
#10 - 2024 Making Beautiful API Keys
AgentStation's blog post, "Making Beautiful API Keys," discusses their development of the uuidkey package to generate visually appealing and functional API keys. By encoding UUIDv7 identifiers using Crockford Base32 and incorporating symmetrical formatting with dashes, they produce keys that are secure, globally unique, sortable, and performant in PostgreSQL. This approach enhances readability and aesthetics, improving the user experience for developers. The open-source uuidkey package is available for those interested in implementing similar solutions.
#11 - 2024 Web Almanac: Comprehensive Analysis of the Web's Evolution
The 2024 Web Almanac, published by the HTTP Archive, offers an in-depth examination of the current state of the web, encompassing 19 chapters that explore various facets such as page content, user experience, publishing, and distribution. This edition highlights significant trends, including the increasing adoption of modern web technologies, advancements in security practices, and the growing emphasis on performance optimization. The report serves as a valuable resource for web professionals seeking data-driven insights into the evolving digital landscape.
#12 - A CSS Wishlist for?2025
In a recent article on CSS-Tricks, Juan Diego Rodríguez reflects on the significant advancements in CSS throughout 2024, including cross-document view transitions, scroll-driven animations, anchor positioning, and the ability to animate to height: auto. Looking ahead, Rodríguez and his colleagues express a desire for features such as conditional if() statements, native CSS mixins, inline comments, and broader browser support for anchor positioning in 2025.
Tools and Miscellaneous
#13 - UK founders are no longer the best-paid in Europe
In 2024, startup founder salaries across Europe increased notably, with French founders leading the way. Pay raises were observed at most funding stages, and product-focused roles gained prominence amid the AI boom.
#14 - SurveyJS: Flexible Open-Source Form Builder
SurveyJS provides open-source JavaScript libraries for creating dynamic, JSON-based surveys and forms. With features like a drag-and-drop form builder, customizable inputs, real-time data analytics, and PDF generation, it supports seamless integration with frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue, making it a versatile tool for developers.
#15 - Streamline Your Development with Railway
Railway is an infrastructure platform that enables developers to provision infrastructure, develop locally with that infrastructure, and deploy to the cloud seamlessly. It simplifies the development workflow by integrating infrastructure management and deployment into a single platform.
If you found these insights valuable, we encourage you to like, share, and discuss this newsletter with your colleagues. Your support helps us continue delivering the latest trends and innovations right to your inbox. Let’s keep the conversation going and continue exploring the ever-evolving world of digital tech together!