At our companywide town hall, we announced our free book program, Pluralsight memberships, and many other benefits we’re providing for consultants as they work to improve their skills and grow their careers. Learning and growth is our #1 focus, and I want that to be clear at every level of our business, including what we share with you in these newsletters.
In this issue of our newsletter, we cover new technologies and tools that you may not have heard about, and why you’ll want to know more about them as you grow your engineering practice. Web Practice Lead Sandro Pasquali starts us off, looking at how the ambitious WebAssembly effort is transforming web development.
It’s an old idea but still a good one: think different. Keep the conversation going—share your mindblowing development epiphanies with us @GetInRhythm or in the comments below.
Thanks and Keep Growing,
Gunjan Doshi
CEO, InRhythm
WebAssembly Will Change the Way You Code
InRhythm (3 min.)
“WebAssembly(WASM) lets you compile C++, Rust, and other languages into a format that you can run in the browser, using JavaScript as the bridge. Neat, right? There’s a lot to this subject and our Web Practice Lead Sandro Pasquali has put together a 101 for you. C++ running in the browser? Your dreams have come true.”
Yew
Github
“Yew (pronounced ‘You’) ‘is a modern Rust framework inspired by Elm and ReactJS for creating multi-threaded frontend apps with WebAssembly.’ You heard that right: a new framework for building web applications, written in Rust, offers a JSX-like template syntax and all the advantages of a compiler. I know there’s a little fatigue around frameworks, but this is pretty interesting stuff.”
Kotlin
First, there was Scala and now there is Kotlin to mix it up for Java developers. A new language from Jet Brains (makers of fine IDEs, like IntelliJ), it focuses on making asynchronous, non-blocking programming easier through coroutines (Hello GO!) plus much more. It’s taken the world of Android development by storm, so it may be worth a look—your FOMO sense is tingling for a reason.
CouchDB | PouchDB
“CouchDB offers ‘seamless multi-master sync, that scales from Big Data to Mobile, with an Intuitive HTTP/JSON API and designed for Reliability.’ I’m a big fan—anyone can run a local Couch, and sync it with whomever, whenever. No master, no quorum, no slaves. Offline first? CouchDB has your back. Combined with PouchDB—a client-side ’emulation’ of CouchDB—you can sync client-side data with a real CouchDB instance, build offline apps on mobile, and much, much more.”
AWS IoT Kit
Github
“You’ve heard about the Internet of Things, right? Beacons? Raspberry Pi? Arduinos? Sensors? Lightbulbs you can remotely change the color of anywhere you are? IoT is growing to encompass more devices and device categories than ever, so it’s worth wrapping your head around; this SDK helps you get started. Using AWS and the MQTT protocol, you’ll be sending bleeps and bloops between tiny little things in no time. Everything big is little again.”
Microservices as an Evolutionary Architecture
ThoughtWorks (6 min.)
“‘Architecture isn’t an equation but rather a snapshot of an ongoing process.’ The folks at ThoughtWorks continue to provoke discussion by suggesting that there is a new responsibility all of us irresponsible software architects should take on—to think about systems almost solely in terms of change—as evolutionary. This allows for more experimentation, agility around management, dynamic business processes, and more. You’ll be creating ‘Fitness Functions’ to identify the ‘Last Responsible Moment’ before…well, I’m not sure when.”
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