The Spinneret: Issue #2

In My Words (and others)

I published more in June than I have in any other month. That is largely because many of them were short, fundamental articles to support a few larger topics I'm currently working on. They are part of a WTF series, in which the goal is to concisely explain core concepts of web development. Here are the new articles in the collection:

• WTF is Component-Driven Development?
• WTF is CSS?
• WTF is HTML?
• WTF is JavaScript?
• WTF is Node.js?
• WTF is NPM?
• WTF is a Package Manager?
• WTF is React?
• WTF is the Single-Responsibility Principle?
• WTF is a Web Component?

Big Oops!

I've also begun a series called #BigOops which will tell stories of developers' biggest mistakes, all for our entertainment and learning. It'll be somewhat infrequent while I establish what it really looks like, but there are a few stories to start:

• Introducing: Big Oops
• Big Oops: Just a Few (Old) Notifications
• Big Oops: I Need a Little More Time

A Bit of Advice

Last month was also marked by some sadness, as I experienced someone leaving my team for the first time. And it hurt a little more because he was a dear friend, so I'll get to see him a little less now. Before he left, I asked him to share some words with the team.

I also took a minute to share advice I received when starting out, which I find valuable to this day.

Shop Talk

I had a lot of little conversations last month, some of which will lead to new content, others which may not.

Internal Tooling

My team has been discussing developing internal tool to help with moving more efficiently. I already have a handful of articles I've been working on in support of that. Expect to see those released throughout July and beyond.

Jamstack Conf Recap

I asked my team what they found most valuable from Jamstack Conf Virtual. These were the talks they highlighted:

• Netlify Build plugins, which Netlify CEO Matt Biilmann mentions in the keynote address.
• Christian Nwamba gave a really excellent talk about how the Jamstack approach is beneficial to emerging markets and how it solves some issues related to being in Africa.
• Multiple team members seemed excited about RedwoodJS, created by GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner.
• The outcomes of the State of the Jamstack were interesting to one developer, in particular its usage at the enterprise level.
• Our CTO loved the edge handlers talk, citing that it could be the answer to personalization.
• While only for Nuxt, Prismic's slice machine caught the attention of one dev who wants to keep an eye on its progress.

If you missed any of the talks, you can view them all here.

Personal Site

I (finally) started building my personal website. It's been a long time coming, but I dug in. I decided to go with Gatsby for the static site generator, Tailwind CSS to help with styling, and Netlify for building and hosting. I'm enjoying it so far and am hoping to launch the home page near the end of July or early August.

Resources & References

When I don't have many references to share, I usually jump over to this month's edition of Jackstacked, which has references to great articles like this one, on sharing various vendors to use for deploying and hosting Jamstack sites.

What The Buzz!

GitHub's Dependabot is in full swing and it is amazing. Sometimes annoying, sure, but always for a good cause. It notifies repo owners of recommended dependency updates when there is a security vulnerability identified. You should take advantage of it (if you're using GitHub).

In lieu of other boring news, here is a tweet that gave me a chuckle:

ASMR for developers pic.twitter.com/KGF3H8nY5z

— Cassidy Williams (@cassidoo) June 24, 2020

I found this one funny, too, although I'm sure I'd seen it elsewhere before:

New Tools

• I found yet another headless CMS.
• I began using Buttondown to distribute my newsletter (i.e. this article). I like how simple it is. It's pushed me to not do much with the design but just get the content out there, and there's something to be said for that approach. But, we'll see how it goes.
• I've been using Notability to make little sketches that I can then import into posts, like this one. I draw with the Apple Pencil on the iPad, then open the note on the Mac, convert it to an image, crop, and ... There's probably a better way to do all of this, but it's working for now, and it's been a relief to readers to break up my articles with some imagery.