Web Dev News - september 2018

Web Dev News: September 2018 Roundup

Here’s Our Web Dev News Roundup for September 2018

Code

  • PHP 7.4 Adds Support for Typed Properties

    PHP has introduced support for first-class property type declarations in PHP 7.4. The use of setter and getter methods are now no longer required for enforcing type contacts in PHP 7. This change intends to improve performance, better ergonomic usage, and cut the amount of required boilerplate code.

    Link: PHP RFC: Typed Properties 2.0 [PHP Wiki]

  • Ruby is now Serverless thanks to Apache OpenWhisk

    Ruby is now natively supported via Apache OpenWhisk. Sever-less actions can now be created in Ruby without using bash injection hacks or Docker.

    Link: Ruby goes Serverless! – Apache OpenWhisk adds native support for Ruby

  • How Dropbox rolled out one of the largest Python 3 migrations

    Dropbox now runs fully on Python 3, after a transition from Python 2 that began in 2015. In this first blog post of a series, Dropbox explains their reasons for moving to Python 3 and details aspects of the migration process.

    Link: How we rolled out one of the largest Python 3 migrations ever [Dropbox]

Database

Web dev news: Microsoft announces better Big Data support in upcoming SQL Server

  • Microsoft Announces SQL Server 2019 – Public Preview Available

    Microsoft has released the first public preview of SQL Server 2019. Several noteworthy features include: built-in Big Data capabilities, Always Encrypted added for secure encalves, automatic connection redirects based on read/write intent and new connectors for PolyBase to external data for MongoDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Teradata. No release date has been given.

    Link: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters [Microsoft]

  • New: Stop and Start Database Clusters in Amazon Aurora

    Amazon has added support for simultaneously stopping all instances of an Aurora database cluster for any period up to seven days. DB instance hours are not billed during this time. Hence, lowering costs for test and development environments. PostgreSQL and MySQL are supported.

    Link: Amazon Aurora Now Supports Stopping and Starting of Database Clusters [Amazon Web Services]

Data Security

Sabri Haddouche releases code that can crash crash Safari on iOS

  • Breaking WebKit: Restart any iOS device with 15 lines of HTML/CSS

    Security researcher Sabri Haddouche released code that can crash and reboot any iOS device on visiting a webpage. The bug exploits a weakness in the -webkit-backdrop-filter CSS. Apple is aware of the exploit.

    Link: Nasty piece of CSS code crashes and restarts iPhones [ZDNet]

Popular Discussion

  • Experts Discuss the Pros and Cons of Web Devs Managing Web Hosting for Clients

    Does managing the hosting for client sites offer an easy stream of recurring income for web devs? Can’t you just be a re-seller and offload the work to GoDaddy? Experts discus aspects of profit margin, problem clients, support issues, lack of expertise (web dev != sysadmin), and more.

    Link:  ELI5 – Plz explain why hosting a client’s website is a very very very bad idea [Reddit]

Misc

  • “Google keyboard app routinely eats 150 Mb. Is an app that draws 30 keys on a screen really five times more complex than the whole Windows 95?”

    Software engineer Nikita Prokopov weighs in with his views on modern software being bloated, buggy, and ‘unbearable slow.’

    Link: Software disenchantment [Nikita Prokopov]

If you have an article we should consider including in our October 2018 “Web Dev News” roundup, please submit it here.

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