WeAreDevelopers Dev Digest

Issue 186: Vape coding, NPM under attack and how to make your boss listen

WeAreDevelopers World Congress 8-10/7/26 - get 15% off using code devdigest

Hello fellow developer, NPM under attack by a self replicating worm and malicious VS code extensions should get you worried about what you install and run on your device. So check out your setups. And in more bizarre news, Albania appoints AI bot as minister to tackle corruption as it is hard to bribe a bot, believe me, I tried. But let's check out what else is on offer, starting with the end of software as we know it.

Chief Product Officer Paul Adams of Intercom walks you through new ways of working and building software in the AI era. He'll offer practical tips and lessons learned from helping reinvent Intercom from a 13 year old incumbent who ripped up its existing strategy and processes to transform into an AI-native company. Check it out!

What's happening in AI

• Greener AI - what matters, what helps, and what we still do not know
• How people actually use ChatGPT vs Claude - (research paper in PDF)
• Models are competent at writing prompts for themselves and each other
• Letting the Machines Learn
• Google Chrome Web AI demo collection

Security and Privacy

• Self-Replicating Worm Hits 180+ Software Packages
• 'WhiteCobra' floods VSCode market with crypto-stealing extensions
• When AI nukes your database: The dark side of vibe coding
• UK kids hack their own schools and found a phone ban workaround,
• CVSS Was Built for Code, Not AI Agents. Now AIVSS Closes the Gap

Software Development

• Purposeful animations
• UTF-8 is a Brilliant Design
• Don’t Let AI Make You Lazy: Why Coding Fundamentals Still Matter
• React Won by Default – And It's Killing Frontend Innovation
• Linus Torvalds: How to Write "Garbage Code"

Tips, Tricks and Tools

• Image processing and manipulation in JavaScript.
• mdream - convert any site to clean markdown & llms.txt
• attempt - a CLI for retrying fallible commands
• Markdown to HTML & HTML to Markdown Converter Tools
• tunnelmole - share local server

Procrastination corner and Wonderful Weird Web

• Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape
• Bring Impossible Products to Life
• How pizza delivery patterns became a window into military operations
  

• How to present to executives
• How to Align Dev and Security Teams
• Interview hack: ask candidates why you should NOT hire them
• What is developer marketing?
• No, you don't want to hire "the best engineers"

Companies to check:

• DevOps / Datenbankadmin. Schwerpunkt Oracle at Techniker Krankenkasse
• Lead Engineer AI Products Accelerator at Hubert Burda Media
• (Senior) Platform Engineer at MARKT-PILOT
• Digital Product Manager - Automation Services at WALTER GROUP
• Head of Development at aedifion

More jobs here: Remote positions - Germany - Austria