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Sami Keijonen has written this good article about accessibility and why it matters. Accessibility matters because we, the people, want to use the web. Working towards an inclusive web helps us achieve that goal.

In this article author shares his thoughts on why accessibility is important; from empathy and what is simply “good business”, through to selfishness and accessibility laws.

“Would you build a bridge that only a specific type of car can use?” – Andrea Fercia

Amongst other things he discusses why inclusive web design is good for business and includes some statistics:

• 20% of people rely on an inclusive web and accessibility
• 50% of people benefit from an inclusive web and accessibility
• Everyone benefits from a website being usable

He also touches on legal aspects and law requirements in EU, US and other countries. Lengthy article with plenty food for thougts.

Mike Tabor posted tutorial how to install LAMP server via Centmin Mod and take advantage of free SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt and also leveraging free DNS from CloudFlare.

Centmin Mod LEMP stack auto installer for an optimized Nginx, MariaDB, PHP-FPM & CSF Firewall stack for CentOS 6 & 7 developed by George Liu (eva2000). Nginx & PHP version management, adding Nginx vhost sites and Wordpress auto installer with Wordpress caching via a shell menu based

Centmin Mod has several benefits, the first being it installs a LEMP stack (Linux, NGINX, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP), then optimizes the installs, and secures the server.

Article then descibes in detail:

• How to setup CloudFlare
• Installing Centmin Mod
• Adding a vhost and WordPress install using Centmin Mod

If you need simple vhost management for your virtual machines, this article ahs everything you will need.

Marius Schulz short into into TypesScript weak type detection with code examples. A type is considered weak if all of its properties are optional. More specifically, a weak type defines one or more optional properties, no required properties, and no index signatures.

The main goal of weak type detection is to find likely errors in your code that would otherwise be silent bugs. Starting with TypeScript 2.4, it’s now an error to assign anything to a weak type when there’s no overlap in properties.

Another benefit is that the TypeScript language service can give us auto completion suggestions because the type annotation tells it what type of object we’re creating.

Author then describes:

• Workarounds for weak types
• The Limits of weak type detection

The article is part of “TypeScript Evolution” series of blog posts with 27 parts so far. Author also provides TypeScript course where you can enhance your knowledge more.

Preethi Ranjit popular article dealing with what quantum computing is in simple terms. We now know that a quantum mechanics and computing combination exists and suddenly this is inside everybody’s scope of interest.

Qubits are represented using quantum particles like electrons and photons. While quantum particles possess properties like spin and polarization which can be used to represent data. For example, a qubit spinning upward can be 1 and downward 0.

The concept of Quantum Computing is one of the many uncharted territories of science by us non-scientific peeps. The author considers:

• Traditional computers and bits
• The limits of transistors
• Dives into qubits, superposition and entanglement
• Difficulties and uses of quantum computers

And much more. Plus interesting charts and images complement this article.

Xiaoyun Yangn take on why we should consider (or not) functional programming. We build complex programs with many moving parts. Programs are expected to be reliable, responsive, and error resistant.

Functional programming promotes better code reusability and modularity, which is made possible by treating functions as composable primitives and something that describes behavior in the abstract (i.e., without binding it to actual use cases or data).

Author covers the topic in length, including:

• Why functional programming now?
• Functional programming design patterns, incl:
  • Loop pattern
  • Types
  • Monads
  • Monoid

The most visible benefits of functional programming are developer productivity, program correctness, scalability. Good read!

Bobby Calderwood - distinguished Engineer at Capital One - excellent article on micorservices and whether organizations should adopt, refrain from, or abandon microservices architecture. But more importantly what style of microservices would map most closely to the needs of the organization?

Author then touches on (at least) two styles of microservices:

• Famous Death Star diagram - small services calling each other synchronously, usually via HTTP
• Functional programming analogy
  • Commander pattern
  • CQRS and Event Sourcing
  • Single (logical) writer

Death Star style view of microservices shares much in common with object-oriented programming: encapsulated data access and mutable state change are both achieved via synchronous calls. However, when the object-oriented analogy is extended to distributed systems, many problems arise.

Author also compares and contrasts the FP-style of microservices with the ubiquitous OO-style along several important dimensions: data access patterns, orchestration patterns, handling failure, write-time and read-time latency, reasoning about state over time, and dealing with side-effects. Excellent article!

Christian Heilmann blog post full of advice to new programmers who just learned JavaScript. JavaScript has evolved from being a “toy language”, “real programmers” laughed at into the language that powers the web and beyond.

JavaScript is everywhere

It means that the versatility of JavaScript can be its own undoing. JavaScript runs everywhere.

Author further lists:

• Resources where you can learn about JavaScript
• Learning browser developer tools
• Moving from console.log() to breakpoint debugging
• Linting – prevent bugs by not writing wrong code
• Finding an editor that makes you more effective

And much more. Good reading.

Oliver Rochford published short article on cybersecurity maturity and it’s failings. The article touches on some interesting points. Especially on how vendors, investors and the media rely on flawed statistics, surveys and a fair dose of wishful thinking in assessing the security maturity of the average enterprise, projecting market growth and product viability.

Author describes his experience, at Gartner and as a penetration tester. For example, he never conducted a project where he needed more than off-the-shelf open source tools and known exploits to breach an organization.

Three main failings considered in this article:

• Relying on prevention
• Relying on technology
• No management buy-in

Good security, and especially effective monitoring, requires people and processes.

Heather McGough piece about how Netflix began as a shoestring startup bolstered by a group of passionate entrepreneurs with a crazy idea, and persistent Lean Startup experimentation ensured the company didn’t fail.

The article walks you some mantras:

• Anything can be an experiment
• Define the important metrics
• Create business partnerships
• Don’t quit after the first (or 101st) try

With Lean Startup, you sometimes invalidate your idea and prove you should stop trying because there’s a better way or better idea. Continuous innovation means working through experiments to find the best way of doing something and then saying, “I bet we could do one better.”

Dave Rupert blog post which is complenetary to his book about Atomic design. A lot has been said about creating design systems, and much of it focuses on establishing foundations for color, typography, grids, texture and the like.

As the craft of Web design continues to evolve, we’re recognizing the need to develop thoughtful design systems, rather than creating simple collections of web pages.

The lengthy article brings insights on:

• What is Atomic Design
• What are Atoms, Molecules, Organisms
• What are Templates and Pages and how it all fits together

Atomic design provides a clear methodology for crafting design systems. Clients and team members are able to better appreciate the concept of design systems by actually seeing the steps laid out in front of them. Interesting reading!