JavaScript Jam Live on Wednesday
This week, we'll be having another open mic to discuss the JavaScript news of the week. Last week, we talked about the Stack Overflow 2023 Developer Survey and I forgot to hit the record button! Whoops 🤦!!
Stories of the Week
Announcing Svelte 4
Svelte has officially announced the stable release of Svelte 4, marking a significant update to the JavaScript framework. This release aims to exploit advances in Node.js and browser APIs and sets the stage for Svelte 5. Svelte 4 brings significant improvements in performance, including reduced package size by approximately 75%, faster hydration code, and reduced dependencies.
It also offers enhanced DX with intuitive and consistent authoring plus improvements to transitions, preprocessors, and web components authoring. The svelte.dev site has been overhauled, with updated docs, tutorials, and enhanced REPL. Migration from Svelte 3 to Svelte 4 is expected to be relatively straightforward, with tools available to help with the process.
The Next Phase of Eleventy
Eleventy, the popular tool for HTML-based web development, has announced it will transition away from full-time development and return to being a side-project due to the end of sponsorship. I considered both "RIP Eleventy" and "Eleventy on the Decline" as headlines for this article, but in the end I kept Zach's phrasing of, "The Next Phase of Eleventy."
He doesn't say it outright, but it appears that Netlify's full time support of Eleventy via employing Zach has changed and Zach is now working independently again. The project's stewardship and ownership remain unchanged and despite these changes, Eleventy emphasizes that users of the tool don't need to take any immediate action.
The project is proud of its achievements, including the stable 2.0 release and almost 60,000 repositories on GitHub, but going forward it will have to make difficult prioritization decisions and potentially deprecate some official plugins. It's conducting a community survey to inform these decisions and invites interested companies to contribute to the project's development and maintenance.
Podcasts of the Week
- PodRocket - Svelte 4 with Geoff Rich
- PodRocket - Matteo Collina on modular monoliths, Platformatic, and Pino
- PodRocket - GitHub Copilot with Rizèl Scarlett
- Modern Web Podcast - What’s All the Hype Around Signals with Ben Lesh and Ryan Carniato
- React Round Up - Bootstrapping Application with Bun with Peter Osah
- Web Rush - Scaling BackEnd APIs with Bornwell Matembudze
- SyntaxFM - Why Netlify bought Gatsby, GraphQL Data Layer, and Headless CMS with Dustin Schau
- Whiskey Web and Whatnot - Web Browsers, Level Up Tutorials, and Sentry with Scott Tolinski
- DevtoolsFM - Extism and Dylibso with Steve Manuel and Ben Eckel
One More Thing
Aiden Bai and Tobiloba Adedeji joined us to discuss and demo Million.js, the new, blazingly fast virtual DOM framework that aims to be fully compatible with React. We cover why Aiden created Million, what makes it unique, how Toby heard about Million/got involved in the project, and Scott's advice to Aiden and Toby on growing community.
JavaScript Jam on the Web
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