A 2024 JavaScript retrospective
December 19, 2024|
🎄 We’ve made it to the end of 2024! In this issue, we’re being reflective, leading with a few news items but then looking at what made 2024 special in the world of JavaScript, and covering some of the biggest things we linked to this year. Then we’re on a Christmas break for two weeks and will be back in your inbox on Friday, January 10, 2025, — yes, we’re moving back to Fridays for 2025! We hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. |
|
Complete Intro to React v9: New Project, Modern Stack — Join Brian Holt in building a pizza delivery app from scratch. Master hooks, TanStack Router, testing, and React 19 features in this comprehensive guide to modern React development. No prior React experience needed. Frontend Masters |
|
📄 Introducing TanStack Start – A new full-stack React framework powered by TanStack Router. Adam Rackis 📄 How to Create Multi-Step Forms with Vanilla JS and CSS Fatuma Abdullaho 📄 Summarizing Text with Transformers.js Raymond Camden |
|
🗓️ What Happened to JavaScript in 2024 |
|
The JavaScript world has had a busy 2024, as you’d expect for the world’s most used programming language (despite the threat of being split into two). We looked back over the year and remembered some things that occurred: |
|
|
🥇 Our Top Items of 2024 |
|
Next up is a walk through the top items we included in 2024, ordered by level of reader engagement. No editorial judgments here – these are the things you cared about most: |
|
|
1. Zach Saucier |
|
2. JavaScript Visualized: Promise Execution — A well-diagrammed article coupled with an (optional) 8 minute video that went into how promises work under the hood. Hugely popular as most of Lydia’s content tends to be. Lydia Hallie |
|
3. Is htmx Just Another JavaScript Framework? — Despite being five years old, htmx has seen a surge in popularity in 2023 and 2024, partly due to framework fatigue, but also as its simple HTML-oriented approach to adding functionality to pages appeals to a diverse group of developers. v2.0 landed in June. Alexander Petros |
|
4. Ecma International Approves ECMAScript 2024: What’s New? — In June, the Ecma General Assembly approved the latest ECMAScript / JavaScript spec, officially making it a standard. As with ES2023, it was a reasonably small step forward, but Dr. Axel rounded up what was new. Dr. Axel Rauschmayer |
|
6. Eloquent JavaScript: The Fourth Edition — Coming several years after the third edition, the latest version of what is, perhaps, the best ‘all rounder’ book for learning JavaScript arrived in March “adjusted to the realities of 2024 and generally touched up.” Marijn Haverbeke |
|
8. How Google Handles JavaScript In Its Indexing Process — At one point if you wanted Google to index your content it needed to be directly written in HTML and not dynamically rendered with JavaScript. Things have since changed, of course, but by how much? Zecchini, Moore, Siddle, Ubl (Vercel) |
|
🤗 Many thanks for reading JavaScript Weekly in 2024, sending in your links, and generally supporting us. We look forward to seeing you again early next year. Remember, we’re moving back to Fridays (long term subscribers may remember we used to go out on Fridays for the first several years) so we’ll be back on Friday, January 10. |
