π-Shaped Devs, Lazy Git, and 40-Year Diaries

#webdev #weeklyfoo #javascript #node

Den Delimarsky says T-shaped is dead—π-shaped is the new career moat with two deep spikes on a broad base. Meanwhile, JavaScript keeps getting better at fundamentals with Error.cause for cleaner error handling, and Bartek Płotka shows us that consistency, discoverability, and vim keybindings are how you build devtools people actually love!

Also in this issue: Jynn Nelson envisions terminals for the next 200 years (thinking beyond today's constraints), Charles Cook reminds us you're the driver not the passenger when crushing collaboration to ship faster, and OpenAI drops GPT-5.1 for developers. Alvaro Duran explains the understandable consensus protocol actually understandably (finally!), while Zed makes your editor your office with built-in collaboration.

Eric Richardson delivers the Electron vs Tauri comparison without the hype, Nicolas Charpentier warns us that not every hook is a silver bullet (know when useTransition actually helps!), and Noah Gibbs distills 40 years of wisdom into pure career gold—it's not a sprint, it's a diary!

On the tools front: Snapchat open-sources 8 years of production UI framework with Valdi, MutativeJS brings undo/redo at 10x speed storing only diffs (every app needs this!), svelte0 turns text prompts into Svelte 5 + Shadcn apps (vibe coding meets real framework!), and there's a comprehensive framework comparison that developers actually need!

Enjoy!

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Find the 14 highlighted links of weeklyfoo #111:

The Forty-Year Programmer

by Noah Gibbs

In 2024, I'll have been a programmer for 40 years.

🚀 Read it!, engineering, career

You Need To Become A Full Stack Person

by Den Delimarsky

I'll start off by saying that I am not at all an AI doomer - by any stretch.

📰 Good to know, ai, engineering

Error chaining in JavaScript

by Matt Smith

Cleaner debugging with Error.cause

📰 Good to know, javascript, error-handling

The (lazy) Git UI You Didn't Know You Need

by Bartek Płotka

Lazy approach to Git tools

📰 Good to know, git, lazygit

the terminal of the future

by Jynn Nelson

This post is part 6 of a multi-part series called the computer of the next 200 years.

📰 Good to know, terminal

Collaboration sucks

by Charles Cook

Be the driver

📰 Good to know, engineering, collaboration

Raft Consensus in 2,000 words

by Alvaro Duran

Understanding the Understandable Consensus Protocol

📰 Good to know, raft, algorithms

Zed Is Our Office

by Joseph Lyons

Collaboration Built into Zed's DNA

📰 Good to know, collaboration, productivity, zed

Electron vs. Tauri

by Eric Richardson

Comparison of Electron and Tauri frameworks for building desktop applications

📰 Good to know, electron, tauri

Don't Blindly Use useTransition Everywhere

by Nicolas Charpentier

Lately, I have been looking into React's useTransition hook because I keep seeing posts about how great it is for improving the user experience in React applications.

📰 Good to know, react, hooks, performance