The Evolution of Jamstack

Mathias Biilmann, CEO of Netlify and originator of JAMstack (which stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup), writes about the rise and future of Jamstack. He credits many of the technologies I've highlighted in recent reading lists as drivers of the progress being made.

What I see gaining real momentum are the “hybrid” frameworks like Next.js, Nuxt.js, and SvelteKit that allow developers to seamlessly mix pages pre-rendered at build time with other routes that are rendered via serverless functions.

Biilmann also discusses a new technique Netlify is working on for lazily building rarely visited pages:

At Netlify, we see a lot of promise in the idea of allowing developers to render critical pages at build time, while deferring other pages (like older blog posts, for example) to be built only when and if they are requested. We’re calling the approach Distributed Persistent Rendering or DPR. It’s an architecture for incremental builds that can be compatible across almost every framework and Jamstack site generator, from 11ty to Nuxt to Next.js.

The return of fancy tools

I liked this commentary by Tom MacWright on a current trend in software tools:

Technology is seeing a little return to complexity. Dreamweaver gave way to hand-coding websites, which is now leading into Webflow, which is a lot like Dreamweaver.

He also makes the good point that software that tries to do more often ends up influencing the output:

Webflow has buttons to add effects. It’s easy to add effects. Effects will be added, because there’s a button to add them. Everything for the next few years will slowly fade in as you scroll. I don’t know why. Stripe did it.

Ask HN: What lessons did you learn from your best or worst colleagues?

As with any Hacker News comment thread, I recommend mostly sticking to the top-level comments. A few of my favorite lessons shared:

Failures of people are as often due to the environment they're in as they are the people. That can be useful to not judge colleagues too harshly, and also to remind yourself you are good and capable when you find yourself in a job/role where you're unable to function. (source)

I learned from my best colleagues: success is about trust. Nothing pays better dividends than being humble, being right a lot, and doing good work. This builds allies and allies build careers. (source)

From the best: "Every if statement is death" was an adage of one. He encouraged me to think deeper about whether conditionals were really needed, and at what place they were needed. That mindset helped me write clearer and more easily testable code. (source)

50 Tips to Improve User Interface

A compilation of 50 tweets by Victor Ponamariov containing UI tips. I love these kind of bite-sized, practical design tips which can help even those without design education/experience pull off a competent UI.

TypeScript Generics for People Who Gave Up on Understanding Generics

This article (and the site in general) by a Vercel engineer is a great TypeScript resource. It makes no assumptions about what other concepts you may or may not already know.