Without question, 2020 was a “complicated” year to put it generously. Disasters of all sorts dominated the headlines (and our lives), and anything good had a tendency to fade away rather quickly.
That being said, I thought now, in a rare moment of free-time, I would dredge back up some of those bright spots and share them.
Business As Usual. Mostly.
Business this year was bad. No question. There was a very noticeable drop in the quality and quantity of viable contracts on the open markets.
Nevertheless, for us business was relatively stable, thanks in part to a few larger projects. And the way we see it, the fact that this year wasn’t a huge loss is a huge win.
New Admin On the Way
Thanks to a little downtime in the middle of the year, we decided it was time to upgrade the Eccentric Domain administrative backend.
More and more, we felt like it wasn’t bringing any value to the table, instead serving as more of a formality. It’s still got a-ways to go, but it’s going to be worth the wait:
- Vue.js front-end for increased interactivity and more intuitive navigation and project management.
- A remodeled back-end that simplifies contracts, submitting requests, tracking changes, and just about everything else you could do before, while enabling a number of things you couldn’t.
- Improved task organization. There are a lot of “wish-lists” sitting on Word documents out there. We’d like to offer something slightly better.
- Better feedback tools. We’re going up against the rugged simplicity of email/text, but the payoff of having fewer issues slip through the cracks is worth it.
- Integrated payments system. Goodbye invoices. (We’ll still be using a hosted solution, for security reasons, but it’ll be far more consistent and far less of a hassle.)
Exciting Upgrades In The World of Web Development You May Have Missed
Being stuck indoors doesn’t really stop programmers from getting things done. And thanks to that, there were a number of significant software releases this year that we’re eager to play with.
PHP
First and foremost, the long-awaited PHP 8 arrived, bringing with it a variety of improvements meant to make development easier, the resulting code better and your sites more secure and reliable.
…And all of that will likely fade into the background, because after some delays, the big one has finally landed: JIT compilation.
Very basically, it allows processing-heavy applications run significantly faster. But before you get too excited, you should know the impact on websites is likely to be marginal.
The bigger story here is that this makes PHP a more viable language outside of web development. This has plenty of implications that could easily benefit you in the future, but for now, it’s speculative.
(And whether the changes described sound enticing or not, do make sure you keep track of when you’re due for an upgrade.)
Laravel
Laravel 8 brought its own spread of treats and toys. mostly relevant to developers.
But for the less technically-inclined, the big thing here is that Laravel Jetstream and Livewire have come to offer a lifeline to Laravel’s standard “View” files. (Blade PHP Templates)
These allow you to infuse some of that super-responsive interactivity offered by JS frameworks without having to give up your front-end to Javascript. Yes, you’ll still need a coder to handle those interactive bits, but this allows you to still have some control over your HTML.
Vue.js
On that note, though, if fully-fledged interactivity is your jam, Vue 3 came along this year as well.
It continues to offer that most valuable of traits, ‘progressiveness’– it can peacefully coexist with standard mark-up without taking over (though many a front-end developer may try on its behalf)– and thanks to some much desired improvements in how it handles events, data inheritance, and such, it’s looking easier, friendlier (and, thus, maybe even cheaper) to use than ever.
.NET Framework
And finally, shifting away from the LAMP stack, we have .NET 5, an explosion of a release that serves as the merger for the original, Windows-only .NET Framework and its open-source, multiplatform counterpart .NET Core.
What’s more, this closely coincides with the release of Blazor, a game-changing feature of .NET that enables writing client-side code without Javascript. For the average person, that probably doesn’t sound like much, but for a full-stack developer, it’s a dream come true.
New Toys
What’s life without shaking things up every now and then with new tools, toys and programs?
Microsoft Edge, Reloaded
The original release of MS Edge was a messy affair, largely used by new Windows users to download Chrome or Firefox. Apart from a neat marker feature, the best one could say about it was it kept some people from using Internet Explorer.
This year, a Chromium-based version of Edge was released, and quickly outperformed its predecessor and even threatened Chrome’s supremacy. In fact, it has become my default browser, in part because of its nicely formatted form inputs elements.
WSL2
Officially released in the first half of the year, Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 removed all the asterisks from developing for the LAMP stack on Windows, by simply letting you load a literal LAMP stack environment directly on top of Windows.
It’s not perfect– having to store source files inside the VM isn’t ideal– but the speed and accuracy of the development leave me wanting for just about nothing.
DualSense
A bit of a left turn, but I don’t care. It’s tech-related, so close enough. Sony took the beloved DualShock design of previous generations and made some even-more beloved innovations.
Enjoying its full range of features currently requires an actual PS5– a rarity and, if reports are correct, a marvel of energy inefficiency– but even on PC, I’ve come to appreciate its extra bit of heft and size, the pleasant feel of its tactile affordances and the much-lauded haptic feedback that has replaced the dull, forgettable “rumble” of previous controllers.
Best of Luck in 2021
We may not be out of trouble yet, but there are a number of lights up ahead. With any luck, this tunnel of a year will make them shine all the brighter.
Take care and stay safe out there.
