April Engineering Monthly Round-Up

With Q1 behind us, we’re looking forward to all the new releases, articles, and more that are headed our way. Last quarter, we saw some incredible growth happening in the tech world. AI tools are coming out faster than ever. We attended WebExpo here in Prague and expanded our knowledge about product and development, and we even had our own internal Engineering Event with an Intro to Cypress. So let’s take a look at what we were reading, watching, and discovering this past month.

News & Exploration  

LangChain

While AI tools are being developed, we as developers need to stay on top of the updates and use the tools that are available to us. You might be wondering how people are easily able to do that. Well, we found the framework they are using. Check out the JavaScript version and the original Python version on GitHub.

Web Workers

JavaScript is a language that can be really source-heavy, and with Web Workers, not only can this load be shared better, but heavier computations can also be done on the side without affecting users' performance. At OAK’S LAB, we’ve all done heavy stuff on our client-side JavaScript, but this blocks the main thread of JavaScript. So, to prevent that, use Web Workers. Here’s an example for you.

Why React Renders?

To get a deep understanding of the things we are using, it's always nice to remember and share with everyone the main part of how React works. If you are confused or if you are a visual learner, here is how you can get a better understanding of React Rendering in an interactive guide form.‍

PostgreSQL Slip-Ups

We use PostgreSQL every day on all of our projects, and we need to be sure that we are using all the features and benefits correctly. When working with PostgreSQL, some of the functionalities might be overused or underutilized. Here are 9 things to keep in mind in order for you to improve your PostgreSQL skills.

Think twice when installing the package!

Open Source is a great community to use things that are already created so no one needs to create them again and again. But this might come with the cost of malicious scripts, so we need to be aware of these things. NPM packages that we install every day might be evil! There are various ways any NPM package can hurt you, so before you install the next NPM package read this.

Node.js 20 is available

Node.js is our main JavaScript runner on the server, and we are constantly checking the updates. This one is big. It's great to see what has changed and what's coming. Node.js has grown a lot over the years, and it feels like Node.js 10 was just released a week ago. And now with Node.js 20 you can have executable outputs, and it has its own test runner! Check it out.

Optimize your resource loading

Web performance is necessary for all of our applications and marketing platforms. We need to make sure the things we built are loading fast and that we can be efficient on what and in which order we are loading. When your application is loading multiple scripts, or even when a landing page is loading Google Analytics and HubSpot, they are 3rd party scripts that have a big effect on your page load. But, you can optimize that by using "fetch-priority." Learn how.

Read & Watch

• Draw The Box Smaller 📚
• Secure your Nextjs 13 Application 📚
• Two types of Software Engineers 📚
• Your Framework is Fine 📺

A Final Challenge

We’re closing it out with another engineering challenge!

Let's see what your JavaScript reading skills are. Imagine you are reviewing a PR that has the following code. Can you spot the error?

Our Jobs

Do you want to shape the future and help build companies from scratch? Here is a list of job openings available right now at OAK’S LAB.

• Senior Frontend Engineer (React), Prague, Remote
• Tech Lead, Prague, Remote
• Senior Full Stack Engineer (Node.js / React), Prague, Remote
• Senior Backend Engineer (Node.js), Prague, Remote

That’s the end of the April 2023 Engineering Monthly Round-Up. Thank you for reading, and we hope you've enjoyed the articles, videos, and insights we shared. We look forward to seeing what this year brings our way. If you have any comments, suggestions, or other interesting material to share, please feel free to comment below or send me an email directly at ugur.oruc@oakslab.com. Thank you again, and we’ll be back next month.