May Monthly Recap: A Project I Loved Working On

Grace Miller — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 19:06:35 +0000

May was a really exciting month for me at Prismic. 🤸‍♀️

A few years ago, I transitioned from a career as a writer and editor to web development through a full-stack coding boot camp. It’s been a fun, but sometimes difficult journey. I have definitely struggled with imposter syndrome and more, but I’ve also found a lot of excitement in the fact that there’s always something new to explore as a developer.

My work at Prismic has been an amazing way to bring both the content part of me and the developer part of me together. And in May, we launched a project that brought that synergy to a new level. 📈 I got to work with our team to bring my enjoyment of new things in web dev together with content creation in the best way: a coding challenge newsletter that helps you explore new tech.

The best part about it, though, was the way that our team made this newsletter idea into something even better than I could have imagined on my own. After years of freelancing, that kind of collaboration adds a special sprinkle of joy to my work here. ☺️

But enough about me. Here are some of the awesome pieces that our writers published in May! 👇

The Jamstack Ecosystem vs. WordPress: Why and When to Switch

WordPress. It’s a dominant force in the world of web development, to be sure. But when innovations are on the horizon, the sheer number of users on a platform doesn’t necessarily make it the very best solution available. In particular, comparing the Jamstack ecosystem (plus a headless CMS, of course) with WordPress can reveal a number of benefits for different projects. Coner did a great job of covering this comparison, and it’s worth a read whether it’s you or someone you work with who needs to be convinced that it’s time for a switch.

15 Awesome Web Development News Sources

As much as I love keeping up with new things in development, it can honestly be a bit overwhelming at times. I really love the list of resources for web development news that Coner put together here. There’s something for everyone, no matter how you prefer to keep up with the news.

The Optimized Dev Newsletter

This is it! One of the most enjoyable projects I’ve ever gotten to work on. To quickly recap, it’s a coding challenge newsletter that helps developers explore new tech each month to stay on the leading edge of web development. You’ll see the first-ever challenge solution below, since we post the solution each month after our subscribers have had time to try it out on their own. Next month, we’re going to dip into Svelte!

Trying Vue as a React Developer: A Quick Introduction

So, when I talk about scaffolding in The Optimized Dev newsletter, this is what I mean. May’s challenge was all about trying out Pinia, which is set to be the default state management library for Vue 3. Not all of our subscribers are Vue developers, though, so we wanted to be sure to provide a little extra support so they could still join in the fun. Anthony’s quick introduction helps React developers understand the differences they’ll notice when trying Vue.

6 Ways Slice Machine Empowers Developers to Build Better Websites

Here at Prismic, we have a developer tool that we’re pretty fond of called Slice Machine. I think we love it so much because it really reflects something that we value as a company, which is delivering a great developer experience. Essentially Slice Machine is our tool for creating reusable components (Slices) for content teams to use in Prismic’s editing interface. It helps you by creating the models that Prismic’s API needs to configure the editor and store/send data, while also helping you with the boilerplate of coding components and connecting them to the API. There are a lot of benefits when using this tool, and I could keep talking about it for a while 😂 but Angelo did a great job highlighting them, so I’ll let you read it from him.

Give Pinia a Try: Build a Confetti Clicker Game with Us

If you want a try-before-you-buy preview of the Optimized Dev Newsletter, this tutorial is the solution to May’s coding challenge. Our subscribers built Pinia’s Party, a confetti clicker game that used Pinia to leverage stores. Lucie did a great job of making this a truly fun project to help devs explore state management in Vue, and more specifically the default library for state management in Vue 3, Pinia.

How Do APIs Work?

I love this blog post. If you’re just getting into web development and you’re wondering what APIs are and how they work, Sam has given you a great place to start. There are great analogies, helpful illustrations, and a nice overview of all of the questions you might have starting out.

I’ll be back next month to share what we’ve been working on and what I’ve been learning from all of the awesome people I get to collaborate with. In the meantime, happy coding! 🚀

An April 2022 Recap

Grace Miller — Fri, 13 May 2022 21:59:34 +0000

One of the coolest things I’ve observed while working at Prismic is seeing how our headless website builder frees devs to do more of what they enjoy. When devs master building with Slices (aka website sections), they can ship a custom website builder experience to their content teams, and then spend their time building and optimizing. They’re not constantly bogged down with requests from content teams or, worse still, broken stuff to fix and maintain.

With that in mind, we’re creating content that helps developers step into and explore something they love to work on: optimization.

I get to work with awesome developers to pull this content together, and I’m really proud of all they’ve been doing. Our new motto is that the Prismic blog is a place where devs can go to optimize their skills, stacks, and careers. Here’s a quick round-up of what we published in April:

6 Thoughts on Building a Career in Web Development

Okay, this one came out a little before April, but how could I know about a blog with career advice from Cassidy Williams and not share that with you? From community to your personal brand, she shares some awesome insights based on her experience building a career in tech.

12 Discovery Questions to Ask Freelance Web Development Clients

Especially at the outset of a freelance career in web development, one of the most challenging things to do is manage clients. Asking the right questions when starting a project can help the whole process run a lot smoother. Thanks to Coner for sharing these great questions!

14 Actionable Tips for Developer Productivity

If you haven’t heard of Alex Trost and Frontend Horse, you’re lucky to have stumbled on this post. He’s one of the most productive and hardworking developers I’ve met, and the tips he shared in this post are things you can immediately do to improve your productivity — in a healthy way.

How to Choose the Best CSS Framework: Understanding Metrics and Context

Have you ever wondered how different parts of development evolved to where they are today? Anthony Campolo gave us a tour of CSS framework history, and it provides an excellent context for understanding which option might work best for you and your project.

How We Helped Bring You the New Nuxt 3 Link Component

Lucie is our resident Nuxt Ambassador and all-around developer extraordinaire. She spent the first part of this year bringing her RFC for <NuxtLink> to life and shared a bit about her experience in this post. We’re all really proud of the work she’s doing, and I can’t wait to see what she does next!

Part 3: Striving for Accessibility When Building Components for a CMS

Accessibility is a topic that’s near and dear to me, and when Alexander Dubovoy proposed a series on it, I was thrilled. As developers, we have a unique perspective of the need and requirements for accessibility on the web. This is the third installment in a series on working with accessibility in Next.js, which takes developers through the unique concerns that arise when we hand websites off to a content team at the helm of a CMS.

There are many more exciting things ahead of us, from a coding challenge newsletter to a bit of a makeover for our blog. I can't wait to share more next month!

DEV Community: Grace Miller

May Monthly Recap: A Project I Loved Working On

An April 2022 Recap