Web development

Five Modern JavaScript Features That Make the Old Patterns Look Silly
I’ve been doing some reading on what JavaScript has been picking up over the last few releases, and the current batch is unusually good. Cleaner resource management, real Set math, lazy iterators, and a couple of small ergonomic wins that retire some genuinely tedious patterns. So this post is my attempt at summarizing five of the more interesting ones, what they replace, and where each one stands on browser support. I hope it helps if you’re trying to figure out what’s actually shipping versus what’s still a proposal.

1. Explicit Resource Management with using

If you’ve written C# or Python, this will feel familiar. The using keyword (and its async sibling await using) ensures a resource is cleaned up the moment the variable goes out of scope, even if your code throws. Under the hood it looks for Symbol.dispose or Symbol.asyncDispose on the object.

The old way meant remembering to wrap everything in try/finally:
```
async function fetchUser() {
  const db = new DatabaseConnection();
  await db.connect();
  try {
    return await db.query('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 1');
  } finally {
    await db.close();
  }
}
```
The new way:
```
async function fetchUser() {
  await using db = new DatabaseConnection();
  await db.connect();
  return await db.query('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 1');
}
```
No finally, no forgetting to close the connection on the error path. The cleanup is guaranteed.

Browser/runtime support: Chrome 123+, Firefox 119+, Node 20.9+. Safari is still pending.

2. New Set Methods

For years, JavaScript’s Set was basically a deduplicated array with a fancy name. If you wanted actual set math, you were converting to arrays and looping. Now the operations are built in and run at engine speed.
```
const userRoles = new Set(['read', 'write', 'comment']);
const adminRoles = new Set(['read', 'write', 'delete', 'ban', 'comment']);

userRoles.intersection(adminRoles); // shared roles
adminRoles.difference(userRoles);   // what admin has that user doesn't
userRoles.union(adminRoles);        // everything, deduped
userRoles.isSubsetOf(adminRoles);   // true
```
That’s it. That’s the whole job. No more new Set([...a].filter(x => b.has(x))) incantations. The full method set also includes symmetricDifference, isSupersetOf, and isDisjointFrom.

These shipped as part of ES2024 and have reached Baseline. Available in Chrome 122+, Safari 17+, and recent Firefox.

3. Iterator Helpers

Until now, .map() and .filter() only worked on arrays, and arrays load everything into memory. If you’re streaming a 50GB log file through a generator, calling Array.from() on it will introduce you to your operating system’s OOM killer.

Iterator helpers bring those same methods to iterators, operating lazily, one item at a time.

The old way:
```
function* infiniteNumbers() {
  let i = 1;
  while (true) yield i++;
}

const evens = [];
for (const num of infiniteNumbers()) {
  if (num % 2 === 0) {
    evens.push(num);
    if (evens.length === 3) break;
  }
}
```
The new way:
```
const result = infiniteNumbers()
  .filter(n => n % 2 === 0)
  .take(3)
  .toArray();
// [2, 4, 6]
```
It only computes what take(3) needs. You can chain on an infinite sequence and it just works.

These are part of ES2025. Firefox has shipped them, Chrome is in the process of shipping in V8, and Safari’s implementation is roughly half done.

4. Map Upsert

The naming bounced around (early proposals called it emplace, then upsert), but the final landing is getOrInsert(key, default) and getOrInsertComputed(key, callback). The idea is simple: stop doing the three-step “check, default, fetch” dance every time you group data.

The old way:
```
const wordMap = new Map();
for (const word of words) {
  const key = word[0];
  if (!wordMap.has(key)) {
    wordMap.set(key, []);
  }
  wordMap.get(key).push(word);
}
```
The new way:
```
const wordMap = new Map();
for (const word of words) {
  wordMap.getOrInsert(word[0], []).push(word);
}
```
This is the kind of thing every codebase has a groupBy helper for. The proposal reached Stage 4 in January 2026, so it’s officially in the spec, but engine implementations are still in progress as of this writing. Worth knowing about, not yet safe to ship without a polyfill.

5. Import Attributes

As ES Modules took over, importing JSON natively became a real need. The catch is that just letting import pull in a .json file is a security problem. If the server quietly serves JavaScript instead of JSON, the engine would happily execute it as code.

Import attributes fix that by making you declare the type explicitly. If the file isn’t what you said it was, the engine refuses.
```
import config from './config.json' with { type: 'json' };

console.log(config.databaseHost);
```
No more fs.readFileSync for config, no more require hacks in otherwise-modern codebases. Just an import that’s safe by default.

If you’ve seen the assert { type: 'json' } form in older articles, that was an earlier syntax that got renamed before shipping. The current keyword is with. Available in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari since April 2025, plus Node and Deno.

The Through-Line

What stands out across these five is that each one retires a pattern that’s been written into JavaScript codebases millions of times. The try/finally cleanup. The custom groupBy helper. The Lodash imports for set operations. The for loop with a manual counter because there was no .take() on generators. The fs.readFileSync for loading a config file in an otherwise-modern ESM project.

The language is quietly absorbing the utility belt, and the code that’s left looks a lot more like what we meant to write in the first place. Sign me up.

Sources
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May 13, 2026 / Programming / javascript / Web development

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Three CSS Features That Finally Let Us Delete the JavaScript
Every few years, CSS quietly absorbs something we used to need a JavaScript library for. This year, three big ones are landing at once: masonry layouts, scroll-driven animations, and styleable <select> elements. All three have a long history of clunky workarounds (Masonry.js, scroll event listeners, div-based fake dropdowns) and watching them become native CSS features is genuinely surprising progress for a single year.

Here’s what each one does.

Native Masonry Layouts

Pinterest-style grids, where items of varying heights pack together without awkward vertical gaps, used to require Masonry.js or one of its cousins. Those libraries measure every element, calculate positions, and use absolute positioning to slot things in. The result works but is expensive, fragile on resize, and hard to make truly responsive.

The native version is display: grid-lanes:
```
.masonry-grid {
  display: grid-lanes;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fill, minmax(200px, 1fr));
  gap: 16px;
}
```
Set up your columns the way you would for any responsive grid, switch the display value to grid-lanes, and the browser handles packing. There’s also a flow-tolerance property that controls how aggressively items can shift to fill gaps.

The naming has a history. The CSS Working Group debated for years between an earlier grid-template-rows: masonry proposal (which would have layered onto existing Grid) and a separate display: masonry value. The resolution, in early 2026, was a third option: a new grid-lanes display value that’s distinct from Grid but borrows its column/row sizing. So if you read older articles showing grid-template-rows: masonry, that syntax did not ship.

Safari was first to ship grid-lanes (Safari 26). Chrome and Firefox have it behind experimental flags as of early 2026.

Scroll-Driven Animations

Reading progress bars, fade-ins as elements enter the viewport, parallax effects. All of these used to require listening to the window’s scroll event and updating styles in JavaScript. Scroll events fire dozens of times per second, and if your main thread is busy doing literally anything else, the animation stutters. It’s the most common source of jank on the modern web.

animation-timeline: scroll() ties a standard CSS keyframe animation to scroll position instead of a time duration. The browser runs it on the compositor thread, completely independent of your JavaScript. Buttery smooth, even when the main thread is on fire.

Here’s a reading progress bar in pure CSS:
```
@keyframes grow-progress {
  from { transform: scaleX(0); }
  to { transform: scaleX(1); }
}

.progress-bar {
  position: fixed;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 8px;
  background: linear-gradient(to right, #ff416c, #ff4b2b);
  transform-origin: 0 50%;
  animation: grow-progress linear;
  animation-timeline: scroll(root block);
}
```
No event listeners. No requestAnimationFrame. No throttling logic. The animation is just bound to scroll position and the browser figures out the rest.

Customizable <select>

This is the one with the longest backstory. The native <select> element is rendered by the operating system, which means whatever the OS decides to give you is what you get. The dropdown picker, option styling, hover states inside the list, none of it has been styleable from CSS.

The workaround was div-based fake dropdowns built with JavaScript. Most of them broke keyboard navigation, screen reader support, or both. Accessibility regression in exchange for visual polish, every time.

appearance: base-select opts you out of the OS-rendered version and into a fully styleable structure with new pseudo-elements for the popup. To opt the popup itself in, you also apply appearance: base-select to ::picker(select):
```
.custom-dropdown {
  appearance: base-select;
  padding: 10px;
  border-radius: 8px;
  border: 1px solid #ccc;
}

.custom-dropdown::picker(select) {
  appearance: base-select;
  background-color: #1e1e1e;
  border-radius: 12px;
  box-shadow: 0 4px 12px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);
  padding: 8px;
}

.custom-dropdown option:hover {
  background-color: #333;
  cursor: pointer;
}
```
The ::picker(select) pseudo-element is the headline feature. The popup container is the thing every custom dropdown library was reinventing from scratch, and now it’s a styleable part of a real <select>, so native keyboard and accessibility behavior comes along for free.

Browser support is Chromium-only as of early 2026 (Chrome, Edge, Opera 135+). Firefox and Safari haven’t shipped it yet.

A Note on Adoption

Support varies by feature. Scroll-driven animations are the most settled, with stable support in Chrome and Safari and a flag-gated implementation in Firefox. display: grid-lanes shipped first in Safari 26 and is behind flags in Chrome and Firefox. appearance: base-select is Chromium-only, with no Firefox or Safari implementation yet. For all three, a @supports block with a sane fallback is the right pattern. Check caniuse.com before you ship.

But the direction is clear. Three of the most common reasons we used to pull in JavaScript are becoming native CSS features. Better performance, less code, and accessibility you don’t have to rebuild from scratch.

I’ll take that trade.

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May 12, 2026 / Web development / Css / Front-end

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CSS Finally Got Inline Conditionals
I’ve been digging into some of the newer features landing in CSS, and inline conditionals with the if() function jumped out as one of the more interesting ones. The idea of writing a condition right next to the property it affects, instead of opening a separate @media block ten lines away, sounds useful. So this post is my attempt at summarizing what I found. I hope it helps if you’re trying to figure out what if() actually does and where it fits.

What It Actually Does

The shape is condition, colon, value, with an optional else branch:
```
property: if(<condition>: <value>; else: <fallback>;);
```
You evaluate something, you get back a value, and the property uses that value. The else: branch is optional. If you leave it off and the condition fails, the property falls back to its inherited or initial value.

That’s it.

What makes it powerful is what you can put in that condition slot. Three kinds of queries are supported: media() for viewport and device conditions, style() for custom property values on the element, and supports() for feature detection. The same things you’ve always been able to ask CSS, but now you can ask them inline, right next to the property they affect.

Theming Without the Yo-Yo

Dark mode is the most obvious win.
```
.card {
  background-color: white;
  color: black;
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
  .card {
    background-color: #333;
    color: white;
  }
}
```
And here’s the same thing with if():
```
.card {
  background-color: if(media(prefers-color-scheme: dark): #333; else: white;);
  color: if(media(prefers-color-scheme: dark): white; else: black;);
}
```
The logic lives next to the property. You don’t have to hunt down a separate block to figure out what happens in dark mode. When you change the light color, the dark color is right there staring at you. That’s a real maintenance win, especially in a stylesheet that’s been touched by five different people.

Variants Without Modifier Classes

This is the example that makes the case best. Component libraries are drowning in modifier classes. .btn-primary, .btn-danger, .btn-success, on and on. Every one of them is just a different background color and maybe a border.

With if() and a custom property, you can collapse the whole thing:
```
.button {
  padding: 10px 20px;
  border-radius: 6px;
  color: white;
  background-color: if(
    style(--variant: danger): red;
    style(--variant: success): green;
    else: blue;
  );
}
```
```
<button class="button">Submit</button>
<button class="button" style="--variant: danger;">Delete</button>
```
No JavaScript reading props and toggling class names. No BEM modifier soup. You set a variable, the CSS reacts. The component owns its own logic.

Feature Detection Inline

The same pattern works for graceful degradation when you want a newer feature with a fallback:
```
.element {
  display: if(supports(display: grid): grid; else: flex;);
  color: if(
    supports(color: lch(75% 0 0)): lch(75% 0 0);
    else: rgb(185 185 185);
  );
}
```
This used to require a dedicated @supports block with the property repeated inside. Now it doesn’t.

Observations

A few things are happening here that go deeper than syntactic sugar.

The first is bloat reduction. A component that used to need a base class plus four modifier classes plus a media query block can be one selector. Multiply that across a design system and the savings get real.

The second is encapsulation. A component’s stylesheet can carry its own logic without relying on a JavaScript framework to compute the right class name and shove it into the DOM. The CSS engine is doing the work, natively, and it’s a lot faster at this than your render loop is.

If the logic lives where the value lives, you don’t context-switch to figure out why a property has the value it does. You read the property, you read the condition, you understand it, you move on.

That’s the same reason inline error handling beats a separate try/catch block ten lines away. Co-location is a maintenance superpower.

Browser Support

Browser support is still narrow. Chrome shipped if() in version 137, but Firefox and Safari haven’t followed yet, so this isn’t something to drop into a production stylesheet without a fallback. The pattern is to declare a plain value first and then override with if(), so non-supporting browsers ignore the line they don’t understand:
```
.card {
  background-color: white;
  background-color: if(media(prefers-color-scheme: dark): #333; else: white;);
}
```
The syntax has also shifted through CSS Working Group drafts, so older articles you find about if() may show a comma-ternary form that no longer works. Check MDN before copying anything.

But the direction is right. CSS has been quietly absorbing more and more of the work we used to push to JavaScript, and if() is one of the bigger steps in that direction. I’ll probably keep poking at it.

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May 11, 2026 / Web development / Css / Frontend

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JavaScript Finally Gets a Real Date API
When has working with dates ever been easy? Every language has its own version of the same headaches: time zones, parsing, leap years, arithmetic that does weird things at month boundaries. JavaScript just had some quirks layered on top, extra cruft left over from when the language was first created. Third party libraries like Moment.js or date-fns had to fill in the gaps.

Those days are over. Now we have the Temporal API.

Why Date Was Broken

Let me give you the short version of why Date is the way it is. It was inspired by Java’s java.util.Date from the 90s, which Java itself eventually deprecated. JavaScript inherited the design and never let it go.

The problems are well-known at this point:

Mutability. Pass a Date to a function and that function can change it underneath you.
```
const myDate = new Date('2023-01-01');
function addDays(date, days) {
  date.setDate(date.getDate() + days);
  return date;
}
addDays(myDate, 5);
console.log(myDate.toISOString().slice(0, 10)); // '2023-01-06'. Surprise, your original is gone.
```
Time zone confusion. Date stores milliseconds since the Unix epoch but formats itself in the user’s local time zone. Working in any other zone means reaching for moment-timezone or date-fns-tz.

Parsing roulette. new Date("2023-01-01") and new Date("Jan 1, 2023") can return different things depending on the browser and the assumed time zone.

Math that lies. Adding a month to January 31st? Date rolls it forward to March 3rd because February doesn’t have 31 days. That’s not a bug exactly. It’s just Date being honest that it doesn’t really understand calendars.

What Temporal Actually Fixes

Temporal is a new global object designed from the ground up to address all of this. The design choices are worth walking through because they’re opinionated in the right ways.

Everything is immutable

Every operation returns a new object. Your original data stays put.
```
const start = Temporal.PlainDate.from('2023-01-01');
const end = start.add({ days: 5 });

console.log(start.toString()); // '2023-01-01'
console.log(end.toString());   // '2023-01-06'
```
Different types for different concepts

This is the part I find most interesting. Date tries to be everything, a timestamp, a calendar date, a wall clock time, all at once. Temporal splits these into distinct types and forces you to pick:
- Temporal.PlainDate: a calendar date, no time, no zone. Birthdays, anniversaries.
- Temporal.PlainTime: a wall-clock time, no date.
- Temporal.PlainDateTime: date and time, no zone.
- Temporal.ZonedDateTime: fully zone-aware and calendar-aware. The one for global apps.
- Temporal.Instant: an exact point in time, like epoch milliseconds.
- Temporal.Duration: a length of time.
Making you pick the right type up front is the whole game. Half the bugs in date code come from pretending a Date is one thing when it’s actually another.

Time zones and calendars built in

Temporal natively understands IANA time zones (America/New_York, Europe/Paris) and non-Gregorian calendars (Hebrew, Islamic, Japanese). No external library needed.

Math that respects the calendar
```
const t = Temporal.PlainDate.from('2023-01-31');
const nextMonth = t.add({ months: 1 });
console.log(nextMonth.toString()); // '2023-02-28'
```
It clamps to the end of the month instead of rolling over. That’s almost always what you actually wanted.

Comparisons and Diffs

A couple of quick ones, because these are the operations you do constantly.

Comparing two dates:
```
const t1 = Temporal.PlainDate.from('2023-01-01');
const t2 = Temporal.PlainDate.from('2023-01-01');
console.log(Temporal.PlainDate.compare(t1, t2) === 0); // true
```
No more getTime() dance to compare primitives. There’s an actual comparison function.

Finding the difference:
```
const start = Temporal.PlainDate.from('2023-01-01');
const end = Temporal.PlainDate.from('2023-12-31');
const diff = start.until(end, { largestUnit: 'days' });
console.log(diff.days); // 364
```
No more dividing milliseconds by 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 and hoping DST doesn’t mess you up.

Should You Use It Yet?

Check your runtime. Browser and Node support has been landing, but you’ll want to verify Temporal is available where you’re shipping, or use the official polyfill while you wait.

For most date and time work, this replaces Moment.js and date-fns entirely. Moment has been in maintenance mode for years. Temporal gives you the good parts of those libraries as a standard, immutable, well-typed API.

Date will stick around forever for backwards compatibility. But for new code, use Temporal. The API is better, the semantics are saner, and less bug-prone.

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May 10, 2026 / Programming / javascript / Web development

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Why javascript:void(0) Needs to Stay in the Past
A few months ago, I ran across a javascript:void(0) in the wild. I’m not going to get into the specific context because it doesn’t really matter, also it gets a bit too personal for this blog post. But I took a screenshot, thought “huh, that’s weird,” and promptly forgot about it.

Then I was scrolling back through my screenshots and found it again. So here we are. Let’s talk about javascript:void(0) and why you shouldn’t be using it in 2026.

Here’s the screenshot that started this:

What Does It Actually Do?

If you’ve never encountered this pattern before, here’s the quick version. void is a JavaScript operator, so not a function, and its only job is to evaluate the expression next to it, throw away the result, and return undefined. That’s it. That’s the whole job.

When a browser receives undefined from clicking a link, it does nothing. No navigation, no page refresh. It’s a way to override the browser’s default behavior for an anchor tag.

In practice, it looked like this:
```
<a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="openModal()">Click Me</a>
```
The href prevents the browser from doing anything, and the onclick fires whatever JavaScript you actually wanted to run. Clever? Sure. A good idea today? No.

Why Did We Use It?

Back in the day, we wanted to stop the browser from doing its default thing, following a link, so we could trigger events and make web pages more interactive. This was typically done on anchor tags because, well, that’s what we had. JavaScript didn’t give us a better way to handle it at the time, so javascript:void(0) became the go-to pattern.

It worked. But “it works” and “it’s a good idea” are two very different things.

Three Reasons to Stop Using It

1. It Breaks the Anchor Tag’s Purpose

The biggest issue is that javascript:void(0) completely overrides what an anchor tag is supposed to do. An <a> tag exists to link to things. When you stuff JavaScript into the href, you’re hijacking the element’s entire reason for existing.

We’ve moved on from needing to do this. If you want something clickable that triggers behavior, use a <button>. If you want a link that also has JavaScript behavior, give it a real URL as a fallback.

2. Separation of Concerns

Modern best practices tell us that HTML should define the structure of the page, and JavaScript should define the behavior. When you’ve got JavaScript living inside an href attribute or relying on inline onclick handlers, you’re mixing the two in ways that make code harder to maintain and reason about.

The better approach? Use event.preventDefault() in your JavaScript:
```
<a href="/fallback-page" id="myLink">Click Me</a>
```
```
document.getElementById('myLink').addEventListener('click', function(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
  openModal();
});
```
This way, if JavaScript is disabled or fails to load, the link still works. There’s a fallback behavior, which matters for accessibility and backwards compatibility. The HTML stays clean, and the behavior lives where it belongs, in your JavaScript files.

Now, I will say that plenty of modern front-end frameworks add their own semantic patterns and play pretty loosey-goosey with this separation of concerns rule. But even React’s onClick handlers and Vue’s @click directives are compiled and managed in a way that’s fundamentally different from jamming raw JavaScript into an HTML attribute.

3. Content Security Policy Will Block It

I’d like to believe Security still matters in 2026 so lets talk about the Content Security Policy (CSP).

CSP is a set of rules that a web server sends to the browser via HTTP headers, telling the browser what resources the page is allowed to load or execute. Before CSP, browsers just assumed that if code was in the HTML document, it was meant to be there. Web pages were incredibly vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

With CSP, the server tells the browser: “Only execute JavaScript if it comes from my own domain. Do not execute any code written directly inside the HTML file.”

A proper CSP header looks something like this:
```
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self';
```
This is great for security. But guess what javascript:void(0) is? Inline JavaScript. A strict CSP will block it.

So if you see a site still using javascript:void(0), check the response headers. Chances are you’ll find something like:
```
Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline';
```
See that 'unsafe-inline' addition? That’s the security risk. By adding unsafe-inline, the developer is telling the browser to trust all inline scripts. Every single one. So if an attacker manages to inject JavaScript onto the page, the browser will execute it without hesitation.

You’re weakening your entire site’s security posture just to keep a legacy pattern alive. That’s not a tradeoff worth making.

You Probably Don’t Even Need to Think About This

If you’re working with any modern JavaScript framework, this problem is already solved for you.

React, Svelte, Vue, Solid, whatever you’re using, they all ship components that handle default browser behavior the right way. Take forms as an example. The raw HTML <form> element will, by default, submit and trigger a full page navigation. That’s why developers used to manually call event.preventDefault() everywhere. But now, frameworks like Next.js, Remix, and SvelteKit give you a <Form> component (or equivalent) that overrides that default behavior for you. No page reload. No manual prevention.

The same applies to links, buttons, and pretty much any interactive element. The framework’s component handles the wiring so you don’t have to remember the low-level browser quirks. You import the component, use it, and move on.

That’s the real reason javascript:void(0) feels so out of place in 2026. It’s not just that we have better patterns available, but the tooling has abstracted the problem away entirely. The history is worth knowing, because understanding why things work the way they do makes you a better developer!
Apr 15, 2026 / Web-development / security / javascript

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Routing in SvelteKit vs Next.js vs Astro

Continuing my series on Svelte, I want to dig into how SvelteKit handles routing and how it compares with Next.js and Astro. These are the frameworks I am most familiar with, so apologies if you wanted a different framework.

Let’s start with everybody’s favorite topic: routing. Okay, maybe I’m the only one excited about this, but stick with me.

Astro: The Traditional Approach

Astro’s routing feels the most traditional of the three. You have a src/pages/ directory, and the file name is the route. So src/pages/dashboard.astro maps to /dashboard. If you’ve worked with PHP or other languages with file-based routing, this will feel immediately familiar.

Inside the .astro file, you separate your backend logic at the top of the file with --- fences. That code runs entirely on the server, and everything below is your HTML template. Clean and straightforward.

Next.js: Folder-Based with the App Router

Next.js (the current versions, at least) uses the App Router. The structure is folder-based: app/dashboard/page.tsx maps to /dashboard. The key difference from Astro is that the folder name determines the route, but the file must always be called page.tsx.

By default, everything in the app directory is a server component, meaning it runs on the server. If you want client-side interactivity, you explicitly add "use client" at the top of the file. You can also set "use server" if you want to be explicit, but it’s the default. I think Next.js does a really good job of making it clear what runs where.

SvelteKit: Convention Over Configuration

SvelteKit also uses folder-based routing, similar to Next.js. The structure is src/routes/dashboard/, but instead of page.tsx, SvelteKit uses a reserved + prefix for its special files:

+page.svelte — Renders on the server, then hydrates on the client
+page.server.ts — Runs only on the server (data loading, form actions)
+server.ts — A raw API endpoint with no UI

There’s no "use client" or "use server" directive. The file naming convention itself tells SvelteKit what should run where. If you fetch a database record in +page.server.ts, that data is returned as an object, fully typed, and available in your +page.svelte via the $props rune. It just works.

The Case for Standard File Names

I can see if some people get annoyed that every route has files named +page.svelte and +page.server.ts. The files will all look the same in the IDE, but there’s a real advantage here: you can group all related components in the same route folder.

For example, if you’re building a dashboard, you can keep your DashboardChart.svelte, DashboardFilters.svelte, and other components right alongside your +page.svelte and +page.server.ts. You always know which file is the route entry point, which handles server logic, and which are supporting components. It encourages logical grouping instead of scattering related files across the project.

Quick Comparison

Feature	Astro	Next.js	SvelteKit
Route structure	File name = route	Folder + `page.tsx`	Folder + `+page.svelte`
Server/client split	`---` fences	`"use client"` directive	File naming convention
API routes	`src/pages/api/`	`app/api/route.ts`	`+server.ts`
Default rendering	Server	Server	Server + hydration

All three frameworks use file-based routing, but they each have a slightly different philosophy about how to organize and separate concerns. Astro keeps it simple with traditional file mapping. Next.js gives you explicit directives. SvelteKit leans on naming conventions to keep things clean.

I think I can get used to the + prefix convention in SvelteKit. The type safety between your server file and your page component is nice.

Next up in the series, I’ll dig into how each framework handles data loading and forms.

Apr 10, 2026 / Astro / svelte / Web development / Sveltekit / Nextjs

Svelte 5 Runes: A React Developer's Guide to Reactivity
Continuing my series on Svelte topics, today we’re talking about runes. If you’re coming from React, this is is going to be a different way to work with reactivity in modern JavaScript.

These blog posts might be what is considered the basics, but it helps me learn and think through the topics if I work on blog posts around the important things that every developer needs to know.

What Are Runes?

In Svelte 5, runes are special symbols that start with the dollar sign ($). They look like regular JavaScript functions, but they’re actually compiler directives, reserved keywords that tell the Svelte compiler how to wire up reactivity during the build step.

If you’ve used decorators in Python or macros in other languages, runes fill a similar role. They look like standard JavaScript, but the compiler transforms them into something more powerful behind the scenes.

Let’s walk through the four runes you’ll use most.

$state — The Engine of Reactivity

$state is the foundation. It declares reactive state in your component.
```
<script>
  let count = $state(0);
</script>

<button onclick={() => count++}>{count}</button>
```
In React, useState returns an immutable value and a setter function, so you always need that setCount call. In Svelte, $state returns a deeply reactive proxy. You just mutate the value directly, and the compiler handles the rest. No setter function, no spread operators for nested objects. It just works.

$derived — Computed Values Without Dependency Arrays

In React, you’d reach for useMemo here, and you’d need to explicitly declare a dependency array so React knows when to recalculate.
```
<script>
  let count = $state(0);
  let doubled = $derived(count * 2);
</script>
```
Dependency arrays are prone to human error. We forget what depends on what, and that leads to stale data or unnecessary recalculations. $derived automatically tracks whatever state variables are used inside of it. No dependency array needed. It just reads what it reads, and recalculates when those values change.

$effect — Side Effects That Actually Make Sense

This is the equivalent of useEffect in React, which is notoriously tricky. Missing dependencies, stale closures, infinite loops… all the big gotchas are in useEffect calls.

In Svelte, $effect is used to synchronize state with external systems, like writing to local storage or updating a canvas:
```
<script>
  let theme = $state('dark');

  $effect(() => {
    localStorage.setItem('theme', theme);
  });
</script>
```
Just like $derived, it automatically tracks its dependencies and only runs when the state it reads actually changes. No dependency array, no cleanup function gotchas. It runs when it needs to run. That’s it.

$props — Clean Component Interfaces

Every framework needs a way to pass data into components. In Svelte 5, $props makes this look like standard JavaScript object destructuring:
```
<script>
  let { name, age, role = 'viewer' } = $props();
</script>

<p>{name} ({age}) - {role}</p>
```
Default values, rest parameters, renaming … it all works exactly how you’d expect from CommonJS. If you know destructuring, you already know $props. It’s readable, predictable, and there’s nothing new to learn.

Runes Me Over

You’ve probably noticed a theme. Svelte 5 runes eliminate a whole class of bugs that come from manually managing dependencies. React makes you think about when things should update. Svelte’s goal is to figure it out for you at compile time.
Apr 9, 2026 / Web-development / javascript / svelte / React

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Svelte vs React: State Management Without the Ceremony
Continuing my Svelte deep-dive series, let’s talk about state management and reactivity. This is where the differences between React and Svelte can ‘feel’ much different.

React’s State Ceremony

In React, state requires a specific ritual. You declare state with useState, which gives you a getter and a setter:
```
const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

function increment() {
  setCount(count + 1);
}
```
Want to update a variable? You have to call a function. You can’t just reassign count. React won’t know anything changed. This is fine once you internalize it, but it adds ceremony to what should be a simple operation.

Then there’s useEffect, which is where things get tricky. You need to understand dependency arrays, and if you get them wrong, you’re looking at infinite loops or stale data:
```
useEffect(() => {
  document.title = `Count: ${count}`;
}, [count]); // forget this array and enjoy your infinite loop
```
Some of useEffect usage is actually unnecessary and likely using it wrong. If you’re using it for data transformations, derived values from state or props, or responding to user events, you’re probably reaching for the wrong tool.

The React docs themselves will tell you that you might not need an effect. It’s a common source of bugs and confusion, especially for developers who are still building their mental model of React’s render cycle.

Svelte: Reactivity Through the Language Itself

Svelte takes a fundamentally different approach. Reactivity is baked into the language semantics. Want to declare state? Just declare a variable:
```
<script>
  let count = $state(0);

  function increment() {
    count += 1;
  }
</script>

<button onclick={increment}>{count}</button>
```
That’s it. You assign a new value, and the DOM updates. The Svelte compiler sees your assignments and automatically generates the code to update exactly the parts of the DOM that depend on that variable. No virtual DOM diffing, no setter functions, no dependency arrays to manage.

Need a derived value? Svelte has you covered with $derived:
```
<script>
  let count = $state(0);
  let doubled = $derived(count * 2);
</script>

<p>{count} doubled is {doubled}</p>
```
In React, you’d either compute this inline, use useMemo with a dependency array, or… if you didn’t know better reach for useEffect and a second piece of state (please don’t do this).

Svelte’s $effect rune exists for side effects like updating document.title or logging, but you should reach for it far less often than useEffect in React. The compiler handles most of what useEffect gets used for automatically.

More Svelte comparisons coming as I keep digging in. Thanks for Svelting with me.
Apr 8, 2026 / javascript / svelte / React / Web development

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Svelte vs React: The Virtual DOM Tax You Might Not Need

I’m diving more into Svelte and SvelteKit lately, and I’m going to be writing a few posts about it as I learn. Fair warning: some of these will be general knowledge posts, but writing things out helps me internalize the details.

The Virtual DOM Question

It’s well known that React relies on a virtual DOM. The basic idea is that React maintains a copy of the DOM in memory, diffs it against the actual DOM, and then batches the changes to update the real thing. This works, but having to maintain this virtual DOM can lead to complications and confusion around what triggers a render or a re-render. If you’ve ever stared at a useEffect dependency array wondering why your component is re-rendering, you know what I mean.

Svelte takes a completely different approach. It’s not a library you ship to the browser, it’s a compiler step. You write Svelte code, and it compiles down to highly optimized vanilla JavaScript that surgically updates the DOM directly. No virtual DOM to maintain. No diffing algorithm running in the background. The framework essentially disappears at build time, and what you’re left with is just… JavaScript.

Templating That Feels Like the Web

I like how Svelte handles the relationship between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. React forces you to write HTML inside JavaScript using JSX. You get used to it, sure, but it’s a specific way of thinking about your UI that can take some getting used to.

Svelte flips this around. Your .svelte files are structured more like traditional web pages — you’ve got <script> tags for your JavaScript, regular HTML for markup, and <style> tags for CSS. Everything lives in one file, but there’s a clear separation between the three concerns.

If you’ve ever worked with Django templates, Laravel Blade, or Ruby on Rails views, this will feel immediately familiar. It’s a lot closer to how the web actually works than JSX’s “everything is JavaScript” approach. For someone coming from those backgrounds, the learning curve is noticeably gentler.

More Svelte posts coming as I dig deeper. That’s all for now!

Apr 7, 2026 / javascript / svelte / React / Web development

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jQuery 4.0 was released on the 17th and they removed IE10 support. IE10 was first deprecated by Microsoft in January 2016 and fully retired in 2020. You might wonder, “What are they doing still supporting Internet Explorer?” They did say they were going to fully remove support in version 5.

😆: blog.jquery.com/2026/01/1…

Jan 28, 2026 / Web-development / javascript
Twenty Years of DevOps: What's Changed and What Hasn't
I’ve been thinking about how much our industry has transformed over the past two decades. It’s wild to realize that 20 years ago, DevOps as we know it didn’t even exist. We were deploying to production using FTP. Yes, FTP. You use the best tool that is available to you and that’s what we had.

So what’s actually changed, and what’s stayed stubbornly the same?

The Constants

JavaScript is still king. Although to be fair, the JavaScript of 2005 and the JavaScript of today are almost unrecognizable. We’ve gone from jQuery spaghetti to sophisticated module systems, TypeScript, and frameworks that would have seemed like science fiction back then.

And yet, we’re still centering that div.

Certainly, HTML5 and semantic tags have genuinely helped, and I’m certainly grateful we’re not building everything out of tables and spans anymore.

What’s Different

The list of things we didn’t have 20 years ago is endless but here are some of the big ones:
- WebSockets
- HTTP/2
- SSL certificates as a default (most sites were running plain HTTP)
- Git and GitOps
- Containers and Kubernetes
- CI/CD pipelines as we know them
- Jenkins didn’t exist
- Docker wasn’t even a concept
The framework landscape is unrecognizable. You might call it a proliferation … We went from a handful of options to, well, a new JavaScript framework every week, so the joke goes.

Git adoption has been one of the best things to happen to our industry. (RIP SVN) Although I hear rumors that some industries are still clinging to some truly Bazaar version control systems. Mecurial anyone?

The Bigger Picture

Here’s the thing that really gets me: our entire discipline didn’t exist. DevOps, SRE, platform engineering… these weren’t job titles. They weren’t even concepts people were discussing.

We had developers in their hole and operations in their walled gardens. Now we have infrastructure as code, GitOps workflows, observability platforms, and the expectation that you can deploy to production multiple times a day without breaking a sweat.

The cultural shift from “ops handles production” to “you build it, you run it” fundamentally changed how we think about software.

What Stays the Same

Despite all the tooling changes, some things remain constant. We’re still trying to ship reliable software faster. We’re still balancing speed with stability.

Twenty years from now, I wonder what we’ll be reminiscing about. Remember when we used to actually write software ourselves and complain about testing?

What seems cutting-edge is the new legacy before you know it.
Jan 9, 2026 / DevOps / Web-development / Career / Retrospective

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Web development

1. Explicit Resource Management with using

2. New Set Methods

3. Iterator Helpers

4. Map Upsert

5. Import Attributes

The Through-Line

Sources

Native Masonry Layouts

Scroll-Driven Animations

Customizable <select>

A Note on Adoption

Sources

What It Actually Does

Theming Without the Yo-Yo

Variants Without Modifier Classes

Feature Detection Inline

Observations

Browser Support

Sources

Why Date Was Broken

What Temporal Actually Fixes

Everything is immutable

Different types for different concepts

Time zones and calendars built in

Math that respects the calendar

Comparisons and Diffs

Should You Use It Yet?

What Does It Actually Do?

Why Did We Use It?

Three Reasons to Stop Using It

1. It Breaks the Anchor Tag’s Purpose

2. Separation of Concerns

3. Content Security Policy Will Block It

You Probably Don’t Even Need to Think About This

Astro: The Traditional Approach

Next.js: Folder-Based with the App Router

SvelteKit: Convention Over Configuration

The Case for Standard File Names

Quick Comparison

What Are Runes?

$state — The Engine of Reactivity

$derived — Computed Values Without Dependency Arrays

$effect — Side Effects That Actually Make Sense

$props — Clean Component Interfaces

Runes Me Over

React’s State Ceremony

Svelte: Reactivity Through the Language Itself

The Virtual DOM Question

Templating That Feels Like the Web

The Constants

What’s Different

The Bigger Picture

What Stays the Same

1. Explicit Resource Management with `using`

Customizable `<select>`

`$state` — The Engine of Reactivity

`$derived` — Computed Values Without Dependency Arrays

`$effect` — Side Effects That Actually Make Sense

`$props` — Clean Component Interfaces