Last Friday’s Dev Digest edition had an XXX puzzle. That’s because we're coming to Amsterdam and that's the flag of the city. It was also full of links and things to learn from, so here’s what you missed. You can always sign up for the newsletter to get this earlier in your inbox. 150k+ subscribers can’t be wrong.

News and articles

Apple now supports other browsers than Safari on iOS devices in Europe ending a long monopoly bad for web interoperability. This means  changes to Apple's software publishing rules you should be aware of. This news was very welcome in the web developer community as we don't want to have a situation where web pages are only available in the EU. As someone who worked during both the browser wars and advocated for web standards my whole career, this is excellent news. We need more open distribution and fewer closed gardens.

The results of Interop 2023 are out. Interop is an annual alignment of different browser makers to agree on what should be working the same across different engines. For us as developers this means that we don’t need to know which browser fails in which way - something that should have gone a long time ago. Now all browser makers agreed to get started on fixing the differences.

AI code generation is a huge topic. I myself am a big fan of GitHub Copilot and used it from the first beta onwards. A research into GitHub Copilot usage shows that it makes us more effective, but produces low quality code. Other research shows that AI generated code is less secure as assistants deliver positive results at all cost. 

For a higher up view, the Register interviewed Simon Willison, inventor of Django, and found that AI generated code still needs a human touch. I worked with Simon at Yahoo back then and he is an amazingly insightful person. So that interview is well worth your time. 

The question about code quality also was on Florian Bellman’s mind. He goes even further and laments that you are never taught how to build quality software in this fast paced market. This rings true. All “best practices” I worked on think long term and limit the effort needed to implement them. The market, however, wants things immediately and has no qualms discarding them quickly, too.

In terms of web development, Adam Argyle has 5 CSS snippets every front-end dev should know in 2024. This seems to be an annual tradition now and here are some good ones you may not know yet but could safely use. Balanced text, the has() selector and nesting are my favourites. The lack of nesting in CSS probably drove a lot of people to use Sass when they didn’t need any of its other features.

The web is world-wide and people of all backgrounds and languages use it. Good idea to brush up on how  to account for Internationalisation with CSS and HTML.

Do you like a good read? The Concise TypeScript Book gets you started embracing the “JavaScript that scales”

Code and tools

In the “Code and tools” part the first bit I wanted to invite you to was to come to CODE100 in Amsterdam 29/02. We need people to attend and enjoy the networking opportunities and we even have some competitor slots left. Competitors can win immediate prizes and get to the finals in Berlin in July with a chance to go home with 10,000 Euro. It’s a live coding competition on stage and to see what kind of thing you might have to solve, check out the CODE100 XXX challenge! 

Fabrice Bellard has an incredible track record including FFMPEG and JSLinux. Now he gives us QuickJS, a small and simple embeddable JavaScript engine. Also, no need for styles on that page. HTML is beautiful! 

fsx: filesystem API for JavaScript tries to take the pain out of file handling in JavaScript.

Security matters

In security, one thing that is nasty is  malware embedded in images on Ars Technica and Vimeo. Binary formats always have the option to embed dangerous things, and this was pretty clever.

When you leave your browser console open and you see things failing its often because of CORS. Making sure that JavaScript is only executed in a verified environment is important as it prevents code injection. But CORS can be a tough nut to crack.. Jake Archibald's How to win at CORS is an oldie but goodie to get you started and understanding CORS has comic vikings and what does not get better having those?

Is Your Password Secure is an app to check robustness and crack time of passwords. You also get helpful warnings and suggestions for stronger passwords. No, ‘password456z’ isn’t clever and ‘beefstew’ isn’t ‘Str0g/\nofF’.

Videos and talks.

I added a few videos and one I really enjoyed is 100 Years of Fictional UI (11m)  analysing interfaces in different TV shows and movies. I admit that when I use a Q-Tip to clean my ears I keep it a bit longer inside and pretend to be Uhura on the bridge of the NCC-1701.

If you wonder about what talks you’ll see at WeAreDevelopers World Congress, I liked Lorenzo Pieri’s  The year 3000, a brief history of Web Development (25m). Why not come and present something similarly entertaining? 

The professional world 

Lots was happening in the job world. France fines Amazon $35 million for spying on their workers, over 25,000 tech people lost their jobs in January which is great for the stock of tech giants but may show a worrying trend.The good news is that MIT found out that AI won’t steal as many jobs as expected - because humans are cheaper.

And something for the road…

Math Crossword is a way to waste some time each day and practice calculus. Think Wordle but for math issues. And if you ever wondered how to read QR codes without a computer, here’s a long and detailed article on that.

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