Our top 5 topics in august by the tech practice circle

Summertime = vacation time. And we also need a well-deserved vacation. Nevertheless, some subjects were surfed and shared by our developers. This time, topics from the following areas are included: Open source, Rocket science, Tailwind, Chrome DevTools features, and Quality Assurance.


Javascript is rocket science after all! Working on complex systems, with endless lines of javascript and websites with millions of users a day, can be pretty exciting. If something goes wrong and a service is down for a while, that’s bad and not the user experience we want to provide for our users. Fortunately, though, we don’t do rocket science. So it was surprising for us to learn that the James Webb Space Telescope uses Javascript to control the telescope. Read the details in the article from the verge. It made me kind of proud that being a javascript developer can be rocket science.


Use Tailwind Without Tailwind In the article, Helmuth highlights the benefits of using tailwind, or what you can learn by taking a closer look. Tailwind is not part of our preferred tech stack, but it’s great to have the opportunity to look over the edge. As you can imagine, the reaction and attitude regarding Tailwind have been somewhat divergent. That’s the great thing about being able to disagree.


Chrome Devtools Recorder Recording user flows is a totally exciting feature. Not only can you record and replay flows to debug your application, but you can also export them and share them with others to track the exact error. This improves bug descriptions immensely. You can also export them with the respectively installed plugins in formats of common testing and performance tools. The individual recorded steps can of course be manipulated and additional ones added.


“uncurled” by Daniel Stenberg Daniel Sternberg writes about his experiences from over 30 years in the open source world. The inventor of Curl and open source enthusiast of course makes his work freely available and invites collaboration by using GitBook. Recommended reading for all who are interested in open source that wants to get an insight into his attitude, projects, what he thinks about funding, and how the open source world has changed over time.


5 Effective Steps to Align Testing with DevOps Our Quality Assurance team is already top notch and I read many things that are already implemented at Mercedes-Benz.io. Nevertheless, the article gives some interesting impulses on how to set up your QA team and your processes.


I would also like to draw your attention to the articles published on our blog by our esteemed colleagues.

Ricardo Brilhante has written an excellent text about AGILITY: IS FAILING AN OPTION? I don’t want to foreshadow how he answers this but we have “The Failure & Innovation Award” in our company for a reason.


We also have another part of the ARTICLE WRITING series, this time with a part about: FEEDBACK AND HOW WE INTEGRATED IT WITH A DEVELOPER </STYLE> Have a read and learn how to deal with feedback while writing and how we support that at Mercedes-Benz.io.


A heartfelt thank you to all who encourage discussion and distribute wisdom by sharing these stories. Hang loose and stay curious! Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash.

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The top five articles of January from tech practice

We hope you had as good a start to the new year as we did. In the new year, we have news fodder again and therefore prepared small snacks for you to digest. #

UPCOMING CONFERECES

– Not only reading but attending conferences is also a great way to absorb new knowledge. Getting a good overview of upcoming conferences and finding the right ones for you is important. Dev.events created a helpful list from different tech areas. The list can be filtered by country and preferred technology. Pick the right one for you.


FOR ALL DILIGENT DIAGRAM ARTISTS 

– there is an extension for draw.io diagrams for visual studio code. This is worth its weight in gold if you want to manipulate values and diagrams programmatically or collaborate with others.


NOT ONLY VISUAL STUDIO CODE IS EVOLVING 

–  Jetbrains is also working on improving the user experience. That’s why they have a new editor currently in the preview phase called Fleet. The IDE promises lightweight, flexibility, collaboration, language inclusion, and much more. Check out the features in detail or subscribe to the updates once the IDE is available after the preview phase.


THE HISTORY OF THE <div> ELEMENT 

– the article shows the misuse and spans the arc to the semantically correct use of elements. Of course also the resulting advantages in terms of accessibility.


A NEW FUNCTION structuredClone() 

– will soon be supported by most browsers. It creates deep copies of objects. This blog post explains how it works.

BONUS
Are you still using git stash, new branch, and git stash apply then? Optimize your workflow and check out git switch.

ARTICLES BY MB.IONEERS
Hido has written another great article on the topic of remote work. There he illuminates this with a psychological eye and gives you tips to use at home. Check it out.

Andre wrote an article about what has been concerning us for a long time. He offers a solution on how to realize the execution of multiple versions of a stencil design system without conflicts. Check it out.

Enjoy reading and stay curious.

TECH PRACTICE: TOP 5 ARTICLES OF OCTOBER

For us, it is important to share interesting tech articles related to programming and our work environment.

In our October list, you find valuable insights from the areas of frontend development, mobile development, and quality assurance. Get inspired by the news we have gathered for you!

THE TOP FIVE OF OCTOBER:

1. An Interview With Elad Shechter on “The New CSS Reset”
2. This article discusses the benefits of Shift Left Testing in the software development lifecycle and the key considerations on how to maximize the success of a product by using this approach.
3. VS Code introduces a lightweight version of vscode.dev that runs entirely in the browser. Coding can thus also be done via a smartphone. Clicking on the “.” button in any public repository will open the vscode browser version for comfortable multi-editing of the files. What do you think, will you make use of it?
4. Apple introduces Tech Talks 2021, live online sessions for developers offering the opportunity to talk directly with Apple experts for receiving personal advice.
5. In this article, you find exciting and fun things we can do with CSS for common UI challenges.

BONUS

1. Netflix developers are pretty good at writing articles on their own tech blog. Have a look. 
2. This article in particular is recommended for people who want to get to grips with image formats in a very excessive way.

Stay curious.

A big thank you to Claudio, Gabriel, Ruben, and Christian who regularly share interesting news with us.