Gnarly News November 2022

The software development landscape is constantly changing. As a software consultancy, it's our responsibility to keep our finger on the pulse of the industry. Here are some headlines that caught our attention recently.

Vercel Releases Next.js 13

Next.js Conf delivered an exciting new version this year - Next.js 13. This version "lays the foundations to be dynamic without limits". Sounds promising, and is also slightly vague. There are a few features that are still in beta (e.g. the app/ directory) and one that is still in alpha (see Turbopack below 👇) but there are a few stable introductions including a new image component and a revamped font system, among others.

Introducing Turbopack: Rust-Based Successor to Webpack

A Rust-based successor to Webpack, Turbopack, was released this month and generated a lot of buzz in the community. I mean, it boasts itself as being 700x faster than Webpack so how could it not? The documentation was not as comprehensive as our team had hoped but it's still early yet. We're looking forward to seeing how this develops in the coming months. Oh, and did we mention that the alpha version comes out of the box with Next.js 13? 👆

Shopify Gets Remixed

In a fascinating turn of events, the Remix team and Shopify have joined forces. I was initially puzzled by this decision, especially given that the e-commerce goliath has already built their own front-end solution: Hydrogen, their "stack for headless e-commerce". And that product just reached v1.0.0 in June 2022! So what's the deal? Well, if you dig a bit, you'll see that the Hydrogen team was encountering an issue combining React Router and React Server Components - a problem they can circumvent with a little help from Remix. Given that context, Shopify's investment in Remix amidst an ocean of JavaScript frameworks makes a whole lot more sense.

The Rails Foundation + $1 million

Earlier this month, The Rails Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining a healthy technical ecosystem, was launched. Eight organizations including Github and Shopify to name a few, have pledged $1M in funding to expand documentation, marketing, education, and events. This is super exciting news for Rails engineers everywhere! The commitment from a few major players means longevity, which challenges the age-old "is Rails dying?" question that we've been reading about and discussing for years. Cheers to the future!

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• Royce Threadgill

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