Things I've Discovered & Have Been Thinking About Lately

Change is constant, especially on the front-end side of web world. Embrace it - if you don’t want to keep on learning then you’re in the wrong career. On an average day I think more about the front-end than I do sex, especially as we rapidly move into the innovative modern world of never ending JavaScript.

The world of JavaScript development can be frustrating, but it excites me for the most part. Here’s some of the things I have randomly discovered and have been thinking about that might be valuable to you:

Code Complexity

Actively fight code complexity: As a senior developer or tech lead it’s extremely important to ensure you keep a check on the quality of your code - avoid complexity like the plague, and ensure your team shares knowledge.

Tree Shaking

Tree shaking is a JavaScript improvement that is getting attention lately - simply, it’s just a way to clean up your bundling process by excluding code you’re not using. It started out with the Rollup project.

Webpack 2

Webpack is working on Webpack 2, one of the most interesting features in Webpack 2 will be support for native ES6 modules without first transforming into CommonJS modules. As a matter of fact you can mix all three module types (AMD, CommonJS & ES6).

Ohh, btw tree shaking won’t work with CommonJS.

Angular 2

If you’re a React person, keep a watchful eye on the Angular 2 and TypeScript ecosystem - more jobs ask you for Angular skills than anything else (unless you’re looking for niche stuff). Keep a watchful eye on the enterprise.

RxJS

I really feel the need to go Reactive and RxJS is a set of libraries for composing asynchronous and event based programs using observable sequences and fluet query operators. This is worth taking a look at and perhaps even learning some of the operators - one step above promises that return only one value right …

Conferences

I attended the Angular 2 Workshop and found it wonderful. More than learning just new things about Angular 2, I loved interacting with developers and learning what stack they were using.

If you have the opportunity go to a JS conference.

Speech Recognition in the Browser

This demo is unbelievable. Add this to your app’s free text search.

React

This is the best React tutorial I have looked at and took away more than enough to be productive.
Of course, it’s only the V and not the whole picture. No pun intended.

SlateJS

A completely customizable framework for building rich text editors. Checkout Medium Editor and Draft.js as well!

…and there you have it. I’ve been thinking about dedicating a post every month on my thoughts - let’s see if I have the time.