WeAreDevelopers Dev Digest

Issue 148 - It's the end of the year as we know it…

WeAreDevelopers World Congress 9-11/7/25 - get 15% off using code devdigest

Hello fellow developer, well, that's a wrap of 2024. Overall, we had 50 editions of the Dev Digest with 2081 links and resources for you this year. To celebrate this and give bit of behind the scenes information we had a live session where we chatted about how we pick content, what worked, and what didn't. Check the recording here:

You can play with the archive yourself and either get all the links on one page, or browse each newsletter and the links. We might also talk about the script we wrote to generate this archive. But first, here's something for you to do:

CODE100 Challenge - Dev Digest ASCII barcharts

We also want you to show us your coding chops in a new CODE100 challenge. This time you get the dataset of all the Dev Digest issues and we want you to turn it into an ASCII bar chart. You can send us your results via this form and - if you want to use JavaScript to solve it - we even created a codepen for you. As always, we will pick 2 winners for the CODE100 final at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in July.

What's happening in AI

Security and Privacy

Unsafe for work - what's the deal with Rust and 'unsafe'?
Hunk Companion WordPress plugin exploited to install vulnerable plugins
Misconfiguration Manager - learn how not to mess up
BlueSky's domain-as-identity is vulnerable to impersonation.
LastPass 2022 hack meant millions of dollars got stolen.

Software Development

With the year ending, let's take a look at all the "wrapped" and "State of…" reports.

CSS Wrapped 2024 - beautiful report by Google Chrome on the newest CSS features
New to the web platform in December, Baseline 2024 - web platform news
State of JS, State of AI, State of Node.js Performance, State of Web Game Development and State of React Native.
Web Almanac - HTTP Archives' annual report full of interesting insights!
Git wrapped - create your own "what I did in Git this year" report
And a CSS Wishlist for 2025

Tips, Tricks and Tools

AI Model Comparison could save you some money by comparing different model costs
Nodriver - a browser remote script to challenge Puppeteer and Playwright
Helium - a Python library for automating browsers.
The world's largest DNS records database
Ctrl+Alt+Cheat - VS Code extension embedding cheatsheets
name-fixer - if you need to clean up a lot of names in UPPERCASE or WhAtEverCAsE

Procrastination corner and Wonderful Weird Web

Shopping List Haiku generator - if you want to make your trip to the supermarket artsy.
Emoji 1997 SVG Icons - SVG versions of the first batch of emoji.
Discover history through OldMapsOnline - see who attacked whom and when.
Color Gum is a lovely, relaxing game.

Career and Culture:

Amazon’s RTO shows why workers get so mad about mandates - we're grown ups.
Working with engineers that focus on doing fancy shit - new features vs. fixing things.
Measure What Matters - stop drowning your developers in messages.
How I ship projects at big tech companies - it's all about navigating red tape
Using fake deadlines without driving your engineers crazy - always add 20%

Are you looking for opportunities or fancy a change?

Companies to check:

More jobs here: Remote positions - Germany - Austria