WDRL — Edition 241: Doodles, Chrome 70, Print Link Lists, JavaScript == CO2, and Data Scientists

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Hey,

it’s an interesting concept to compare JavaScript with CO2 and yet a very valid one. Alex Russel who works for the Chrome team and has a lot of insights into the current state of the web says that using too much JavaScript or using it exclusively (without progressive enhancement / graceful degradation) will have the same effect as too much CO2 for the ecosystem on planet earth — the ecosystem falls apart. And while we also need a certain fair amount of CO2 on the world to live, we need JavaScript on the web. It’s that fine line that makes the difference — not too much and not none.

I feel that with the native browser APIs that we have these days we have a great opportunity to build great web services without bloating them too much and without relying only on JavaScript. We can enhance native elements with Custom Elements API easily via ES6 Classes, with so little code that it seems ridiculous to build all that on your own in a third-party framework. Coincidentally, the Github engineering team has published how they dropped jQuery now entirely and what they now use instead — native JavaScript and small, lean code that is progressively enhancing their platform — with less code, better maintainability and more stability.

News

• Chrome 70 is now in beta and brings shape detection as an origin trial that allows us to perform QR code reading, face detection or text recognition in images. The Web Authentication API got some updates, referrerpolicy for <script> elements. This version will also deprecate Custom Elements v0, HTML Imports, and Shadow DOM v0.

Generic

• Alex Russell’s “The "Developer Experience" Bait-and-Switch” is a great piece that explains the toxic environments we currently build for the web and why JavaScript can be compared with CO2 — both are needed in small portions but if there’s too much of it, it’ll put the entire ecosystem (the web) at risk. A thoughtful article that I can only recommend everyone here to read, spread and remember next time you start building a new web application.

Web Performance

• The upcoming PostgreSQL 11 has some interesting performance improvements and Dimitri Fontaine shares what difference they can make.

Accessibility

• Eric Bailey on the importance of manual testing for accessibility of websites while automated testing can help you finding the basic, generic issues.

JavaScript

• Adrian Roselli shares how we can build link lists at the end of a page for print styles.

Go beyond…

• I love the concept of doodling and while I do it only irregularly, it always fascinates me. Doodle Addicts is a platform that collects doodles from people all around the world and is a nice gallery to get inspiration from.
• Jonny Brooks-Bartlett wrote an interesting article on why so many data scientists are leaving their jobs. The job inititially sounds quite interesting and like a good bet these days. But most of the times, expectations don’t match reality, politics and ethical decisions are extremely difficult and sometimes you can’t just do what you think but need to do what your employer expects from you. A challenge that not everyone wants to do for a long time.

—Anselm