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# Dev Digest 139 - Soft and hard queries

**By:** [Chris Heilmann](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@chris-heilmann)

**Published:** October 28, 2024

## News and Articles

Let's start with **Amelia Wattenberge** r's excellent essay [Bridging the hard and the soft](https://wattenberger.com/thoughts/hard-and-soft) talking about humans and data. Do you sometimes also miss [aspects of the early web](https://speckyboy.com/early-web/) like a lack of big data and freedom to create without numeric goals? Also, did you know that testing your design could be as simple as [taking off your glasses](https://dataanddesign.substack.com/p/if-you-want-to-test-the-fundamentals)? **Tim Kadlec** worries about the [The Growing "Contentful" Gap](https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2023-04-23-growing-contentful-gap/) in web performance and **Terence Eden** rediscovered that [dict: was also a protocol](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/09/http-ftp-and-dict/), much like _http_ or _ftp_. Also, if you ever wondered [why TCP needs 3 handshakes](https://www.pixelstech.net/article/1727412048-Why-TCP-needs-3-handshakes), it's not a gang thing. The **OWA** demands that Google must allow 3rd party browsers to [install Web Apps in Android](https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/google-must-share-the-ability-to-install-web-apps-in-android/). **Sentry** shows [how to make your web page faster](https://blog.sentry.io/how-to-make-your-web-page-faster-before-it-even-loads/) before it loads and [how to create faster APIs](https://sentry.io/resources/faster-apis-better-experiences/) by debugging next,js. **Tony Alaribe** takes on the myth that [every web app needs to be an SPA](https://htmx.org/essays/you-cant/) and more. **Discord** share how they [reduced Websocket traffic by 40%](https://discord.com/blog/how-discord-reduced-websocket-traffic-by-40-percent) and and **Frederick O’Brien** hails [spreadsheets as having timeless power](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/09/timeless-power-of-spreadsheets/). The **Microsoft Edge** team asks you to [watch the browser performance with extensions](https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2024/09/19/extension-performance-detector/). And to end with some security topics, [Cybersecurity burnout](https://eyal-estrin.medium.com/cybersecurity-burnout-is-a-real-risk-38cc2a6c9667) is real and the reason may be the [Data Breach disclosure conundrum](https://www.troyhunt.com/the-data-breach-disclosure-conundrum/). And when it comes to attack techniques, did you know about [encrypted archives](https://textslashplain.com/2024/10/02/attack-techniques-encrypted-archives/)?

## Code and Tools

CSS can now [animate to height:auto](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/css-ui/animate-to-height-auto) without any tricks and [intermittently hide a header when scrolling](https://www.bram.us/2024/09/29/solved-by-css-scroll-driven-animations-hide-a-header-when-scrolling-up-show-it-again-when-scrolling-down/). And check [this guide on CSS anchor positioning](https://css-tricks.com/css-anchor-positioning-guide/) if it flummoxes you. HTTP is getting a new [Query](https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-httpbis-safe-method-w-body-05.html) method, [Bun supports V8 APIs](https://bun.sh/blog/how-bun-supports-v8-apis-without-using-v8-part-1) without using it, and there is an explainer for [Richer Text Fields](https://open-ui.org/components/richer-text-fields.explainer/). It seems that [terminal colours are tricky](https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/10/01/terminal-colours/) and there are techniques to [create a great UX for shell scripts](https://nochlin.com/blog/6-techniques-i-use-to-create-a-great-user-experience-for-shell-scripts). Writing an own HTML parser [lets you discover some weird things](https://dbushell.com/2024/10/01/html-parser-conundrum/) and if you got enough of those high-level programming languages, here's [a friendly introduction to assembly](https://dbushell.com/2024/10/01/html-parser-conundrum/). And last, but not least, learn [how to build a button component](https://piccalil.li/blog/how-i-build-a-button-component/).

**Some tools for you:**

- [Boa JS](https://boajs.dev/) - An ECMAScript engine written in Rust
- [Jira.js](https://github.com/MrRefactoring/jira.js) - interact with Atlassian Jira API
- [Pipet](https://github.com/bjesus/pipet) - hacker tool to scrape and extract data
- [Offline Movie Browser](https://falkus.co/2024/09/offline-movie-browser)
- [Ultrafocus](https://github.com/plutov/ultrafocus) - block distracting websites to boost productivity.
- [Doggo](https://github.com/mr-karan/doggo) - Command-line DNS client for humans

## Cool code demos

[
 ![Colourful wipe effect](https://wearedevelopers.imgix.net/public/magazine/articles/487/images/6704087c34225589a3d4b3f1_wipe.gif)
](https://codepen.io/Chester/pen/LYKWMxO)

[
 ![animation of css properties](https://wearedevelopers.imgix.net/public/magazine/articles/487/images/6704087cd7224912ff592a25_scroll.gif)
](https://codepen.io/argyleink/pen/ZEdrzJZ)

# Talks and Videos

![Mete-Atamel](https://wearedevelopers.imgix.net/public/magazine/articles/487/images/6704087b22451ec051fc3902_Mete-Atamel.png?w=720&fit=max&dpr=2&auto=format)

Mete Atamel of Google shows us things he learned when building GenAI powered Apps - which by now is all of them [Check it out](/videos/1156-lessons-learned-building-a-genai-powered-app)!

**Other videos and talk write-ups of note:**

- **Luís Ventura** - [Why did I Break Production? (30m)](/videos/1171-answering-the-million-dollar-question-why-did-i-break-production)
- **Darrel Idiagbor** - [Building a Hybrid Voting Platform (22m)](/videos/1163-empowering-democratic-processes-building-a-hybrid-voting-platform)
- **Karan Shetti** - [Leveraging AI Tools to Craft Fully Functional Apps! (5m)](/videos/1169-nocode-livecode-leveraging-ai-tools-to-craft-fully-functional-apps)
- **Fili Wiese** - [Mastering robots.txt for GenAI and Search Marketing (31m)](/videos/1165-command-the-bots-mastering-robots-txt-for-generative-ai-and-search-marketing)

## Work and Jobs

Here's a list of [unfortunate startup pivots](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1836130892575838674.html), information [what your job ad says about you](https://www.talentstuff.com/blog/what-your-job-ad-says-about-you) and [what to tell people who are on-call](https://ntietz.com/blog/what-i-tell-people-new-to-oncall/). Furthermore, learn [how to pay down tech debt](https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/paying-down-tech-debt-further-learnings/), [why blogging is still cool](https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2024/09/25/why_i_still_blog_after_15_years/) or that you can choose between [being competent in many things or excellent at one](https://www.trevorlasn.com/blog/specialist-vs-generalist-choosing-your-career-path).

## Procrastination Corner / Wonderful Weird Web

- [Feed the Cookie Monster](https://stevegardner.hatch.one/cookie)
- [A complete implementation of Tetris in a SQL query.](https://github.com/nuno-faria/tetris-sql)
- [Measure DC currents with your Apple watch.](https://github.com/jp3141/AppleWatchAmmeter)
- [An Honest Privacy Policy](https://www.myriadfacets.net/posts/honest-privacy-policy)



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