What would you do with an empty day?
A number of packages that I used to use in Sublime Text have disappeared over the last few months including the DA UI package. Is this the VS Code effect?
What did you learn in 2018?
The new world order of JavaScript
There’s no denying that JavaScript is an excellent language for the web, especially the front-end of any web application. Without it, we can’t enjoy a user experience that challenges native applications.
However, I am not convinced that JavaScript is a language that is suitable for all parts of an application’s stack, all the time. There are benefits to using JavaScript depending on the requirements, but it feels like JavaScript is becoming the go-to language for everything.
Heydon Pickering’s post is an excellent read about this issue and full stack development and how this role is changing with the larger set of JavaScript tools and frameworks available, but it’s his point about separation of concerns that resonated with me:
We need to revisit the separation of concerns principle. We simple can’t afford for people to have to know everything just to do something. It’s good that we conceptualize designs in terms of self-contained components now, but that can be a mental model without being a technology-specific land-grab.
— Reluctant Gatekeeping: The Problem With Full Stack by Heydon Pickering
It wasn’t that long ago when front-end developers and designers worked with back-end developers on applications. There was a separation of the two roles and their focus, and each side had the knowledge to carry out their role. Front-end developers would work on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, crafting functional yet beautiful user-interfaces. Back-end developers would work on business logic and background processing.
With the rise of JavaScript though, we’re seeing a convergence of tooling onto a single language, and the roles of front-end, back-end and full stack developers becoming less about knowing the respective field and more about knowing JavaScript.
The new world of web applications is moving to JavaScript, and that’s great for the web as a platform. We can now build applications that rival that of native apps using a single language.
However, when faced with programming language choices in the stack, should developers be quick to default to JavaScript?
8 years using Ruby on Rails and today I just used the after_find callback for the first time. Every day is a school day.
Private repos for developers on GitHub’s free plan is a great move by Microsoft to match the likes of GitLab. I’ll need to check to see if I need that $7 Pro plan now.
I probably need to start thinking about imports now for Commonmarks. Pinboard and Pocket are probably the two exports that I need to focus on.
I must admit, I do miss freelancing. Skipping the commute into the office this morning would have been a good start to the day.
I am hoping to add RSS feeds to Commonmarks today so that I can hook up my bookmarks to Micro.blog. The plan is to have a public feed that the owner can control as well as a private feed that the owner can use themselves.
Just finished watching Bird Box on Netflix. Fantastic to watch but closing the blinds now. 😱