Code & Curiosity by Maximilian Schwarzmüller

More money is thrown at AI models, that seem to become more capable & cheaper. Is it "Game Over" for us humans?

2024 is (almost) over. And it's been a difficult year for web devs. At least for some. At the same time, it's been a year that saw multiple big releases - like React 19 and Angular 18 & 19. But what else?

It's been a rough 1.5 years for (web) developers. Layoffs, AI and the general economy are all not helping. So....should you still learn how to code?

As always, backwards-compatible (though there is one big breaking change!) but packed with features!

TailwindCSS is an amazing CSS framework that changed how many (most?) web developers style their websites. But vanilla CSS also developed quite a bit over all those years. And it has certain advantages over TailwindCSS.

Astro is a really amazing web framework. But it seems as if not that many developers are actually using it. That's too bad!

You can see AI as a threat or embrace those tools to boost your productivity!

When will React 19 stable be release? And why is its release delayed? Max takes a closer look in this episode.

Generative AI had a huge impact. And it's probably only getting started. Or maybe it isn't ... maybe it'll have less of an impact than many people think. But it definitely has one huge problem right now, in my opinion.

In (web) development, there's always something new to learn. And, yes, this can feel overwhelming. But it's actually amazing!

We spend a lot of time writing code. Therefore, your development environment should be set up to make you as productive as possible. But you can also overdo it...

Of course, as a developer, you write code. Therefore, you must know the language and libraries you're working with. But what about other tools? Git? Docker? The Command Line?

Express.js dominates the Node.js framework landscape. It seems as if almost every Node.js developer is using it. But why is that the case?

Building a SaaS (or any web-based project) has never been easier. There are plenty of frameworks and technologies to pick from. But which one is best? Can the JavaScript ecosystem keep up with Laravel etc?

The Remix team announced that they would pause working on Remix and instead focus on bringing all core Remix features over to React Router. Because Remix already was essentially "React Router++".

Two major frameworks (yes, React is a library .... ) and two major versions. Here's my opinion on both!

Node.js allows you to run JavaScript outside of the browser. So does Bun, Deno and some other JavaScript runtimes that emerged over the last couple of years. All these runtimes were created to solve certain problems that were introduced by Node.js. But should you make the move away from Node.js?

You're preferring const over let? Think again! You're using Angular? Is that a joke? You get the point ... I really hate that part of social media and the "developer world". What about you?

In my early days as a web developer, I got started with HTML, CSS, JS and PHP. Nowadays, modern fullstack JavaScript / JSX code can kind of feel like that basic PHP code I wrote back then. But is it really the same?

With Next.js 14, the "App Router" became fully stable, since the last missing piece - "Server Actions" - were marked as stable. I've worked with it for multiple months now. Would I recommend it?

There's an endless amount of programming languages out there. And new ones are released frequently. So ... how many should you learn and know?

There's been some debate whether services like Vercel and Netlify are overpriced and you should use a VPS for hosting websites instead. The answer is a solid "it depends", but there are some obvious decision factors you should consider.

As you're growing as a developer, it's easy to introduce unnecessary complexities and abstractions into your code. But you might not always need the most modular and flexible code. Most of the time, simpler is better.

HTMX is a JavaScript library that essentially extends HTML and allows you to send AJAX requests (and handle responses + update the UI) without writing any JavaScript code. It's amazing!

As a (frontend) JavaScript developer, you got plenty of options and alternatives. You can learn Angular, React, Vue, Svelte, SolidJS and many other frameworks and libraries. But is that good or bad? That's what Max discusses in this episode.