WeAreDevelopers Dev Digest

Issue 177 Blockchain, jQuery and a prompt playground

Hello fellow developer, and we're back! The WeAreDevelopers World Congress is over and we now work through the hundreds of video recordings to bring you the best and brightest insights on the Watch section soon. If you attended the event and got a ticket, you can already watch all the videos in the official conference app. If not, patience is the key and here are some resources to tide you over. 

One of the subjects that got a massive dent in the last few months is Blockchain. Overhyped and advocated for by annoying tech bros and Bitcoin chancers, we got bored of it. The good news is that less of a hype this means people who care about the tech can now use it to make it productive, like Brian Whippo of the Algorand Foundation. We sat down with him and learned how to solve real-world problems using Blockchain.

Have you ever used payments in your WebApp? “Enjoyed” the 402 error? Read about new ways of solving PAYMENTS, AI, or STABLECOINS? 

Did we check the bingo buzzwords you were looking for? Join us in our “402 Payment Required” with Brian, Head of DevRel to unveil that these are nothing but real technologies solving real problems.

What's happening in AI

• Does AI hurt Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity?  (Analysis)
• AI is Killing the 5-Year IT Project
• Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists
• The hidden cost of AI reliance
• Writing alt text with AI

Security and Privacy

• 2.3M Chrome,and Edge users infected  by web scraping Browser extensions.
• JavaScript string slice() considered harmful
• State of DevSecOps - and - what is a Detection Engineer?
• Leaked APP_KEYs on GitHub make 600 Laravel Apps vulnerable
• “Localhost tracking” explained. It could cost Meta 32 billion.

Software Development

• Parsing 1 Billion Rows in Bun/Typescript Under 10 Seconds
• 10 Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages
• JavaScript scope hoisting is broken
• Is it still worth using jQuery in 2025?
• Managing the State of Your Promises

Tips, Tricks and Tools

• Animated SVGs that feel like GIFs
• Langfast - try LLM prompts in the browser.
• CallFS - a High-Performance, Distributed REST API Filesystem
• jsonrepair- repair invalid JSON documents.
• ANSI Escape Codes

Procrastination corner and Wonderful Weird Web

• Classic Web on Mastodon
• How does a screen work?
• Get the location of the ISS using DNS
• Dial Up Modem Sounds, from 300 bps to 56K

• I messed up my Google PM Vibe Coding Interview
• Stop forcing AI tools on your engineers
• Community is Motivation on Tap
• Managers use AI to decide who to promote and fire - does yours?
• 2025 SEO/GEO predictions

Companies to check:

• Cloud Full Stack Developer at ALDI DX
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Product Owner at Riverty
• Team Lead Quality Assurance at Technoly
• Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Developer at ING Deutschland
• Requirements Engineer at ROSEN Technology and Research Center

More jobs here: Remote positions - Germany - Austria