Top picks — 2018 March
Prototyping, Libraries on Sketch Cloud and an official iOS UI kit in Sketch 49
There are plenty of tools that try to compete with Sketch but we all know that the winner is only one and the latest update just proves my point. Prototyping — an essential feature to help UX designer to sell their ideas to restive clients just landed in Sketch. It is fantastic in its simplicity! No useless bells and whistles. Just works! Shared libraries on the cloud is another game changer. Apple team worked really hard to share iOS UI library with all Sketch users. Whenever something changes from Apple side, the changes are going to be reflected on your project in no time. Living in a dream! On top ot that massive performance improvements and bug fixes landed in 49. Biggie!
React v16.3.0: New lifecycles and context API
New version of one of the most popular front end frameworks just landed and it is full of exciting features. Time slicing is a new way to ensure that high-priority updates don’t get blocked by a low-priority update to always provide a responsive feeling of an app. Another news is a set of tools to help developers building beautiful async applications. The best intro to those features has been presented by Dan Abramov at JSConf Iceland few weeks ago. New context API colloquially called a Redux killer allows us to pass data across milti-level component projects with ease. Wes Bos published a great into to new Context API on his YouTube channel.
C++ Core Guidelines
I mentioned in my personal 2017 review that one of my aims for 2018 is to learn a new low-level programming language. Decision has been made and I have chosen C++. I spent with this language few weeks by now and the more I learn it the more I understand the core concepts of a JavaScript (the only language that I am fluent at). C++ Core Guidelines is a fantastic helper on my early journey (and probably will be on a later stage). Created mainly by designer of C++ Bjarne Stroustrup, really comprehensive and easy to understand.
This is a set of core guidelines for modern C++, C++17, C++14, and C++11, taking likely future enhancements and ISO Technical Specifications (TSs) into account. The aim is to help C++ programmers to write simpler, more efficient, more maintainable code.
Stackoverflow Developer Survey Results 2018
Another year, another round of shocking results. From front end developer perspective: JavaScript rules the world, Visual Studio Code dominated the market, Angular still the most popular but React is the most wanted framework. Give it a quick scan — there are tons of things that you will find interesting.
Working with the new CSS Typed Object Model
As part of the Houdini spec, Google Chrome 66 comes with CSS Typed Object Model. Exciting, isn’t it? Web dev goes crazy with a strictly typed languages and CSS is slowly becoming one of them. Personally I really like this idea and finally something that should be represented by number, will be a real number. Unit conversion and value manipulation done as expected, better optimization for performance under the hood and definitely less errors — just to name a few benefits of typed CSSOM (CSS Object Model).