Issue #41: Down to Earth
I’m finally back to the ground from my cloud-free vacation and (even though I’m feeling a bit sad about it) I’m glad I had some time to ruminate on my developer goals and purposes (yeah, I know normal people use New Year’s Eve for that). Which led me to TypeScript Compiler API but that’s a whole separate story. For this current one, let’s see how other developers and tools from the world of metaframeworks try to find their solid grounds and foundations and what it leads to eventually.
The Good
Daniel Rosenwasser from the TypeScript team had announced TypeScript’s version 6 beta and RC consequently. This OG technology for the metaframework apps creators is getting closer to the highly anticipated finish line of the Go migration.
…[W]e are working on a new codebase for the TypeScript compiler and language service written in Go that takes advantage of the speed of native code and shared-memory multi-threading. This new codebase will be the foundation of TypeScript 7.0 and beyond. TypeScript 6.0 will be the immediate precursor to that release, and in many ways it will act as the bridge between TypeScript 5.9 and 7.0. As such, most changes in TypeScript 6.0 are meant to help align and prepare for adopting TypeScript 7.0.
So obviously this is mostly a kind of technical (quality-of-life) intermediary release but nevertheless, it comes with a bunch of important improvements for type inference, project paths aliasing, es2025 targeting, rootDir pointing, Temporal support, DOM API addressing, and many more, including the most paradigm-shifting one – defaulting strict config option to true.
Appetite for “stricter” typing continues to grow.
Meanwhile, Sarah Gooding from Socket wrote some notes on Node shifting to year-matching releases and what it will mean for us, the Node ecosystem inhabitants.
Version numbers will align with the year of first Current release, so 27.0.0 arrives in 2027, 28.0.0 in 2028, and so on.
If only all the tools would introduce such helpers for old farts with leaky memory like me! In the world where you use complex tooling combinations each day, matching the versions of some of them becomes a nightmare (looking at you, nx and Angular matrix!).
The Bad
Interesting attack vector dangerous for developers looking for Next.js jobs was found by Microsoft Defender team, complementing the long list of the metaframework’s CONs (performance, Vercel, Guillermo’s mustaches…) and making me delete the seemingly harmless .vscode folder from this newsletter website’s source code.
…[A] recruiting‑themed “interview project” can quickly become a reliable path to remote code execution by blending into routine developer workflows such as opening a repository, running a development server, or starting a backend.
The Microsoft’s own protection suggestions are crazily enterprise-oriented, of course (and weirdly do not include migrating to SvelteKit ecosystem or Jetbrains’ IDEs), but shortly speaking, nothing beats zero-trust policy, neither in your current work nor in your “future endeavours” plans. Especially as the shitstorm on the npm supply chain side proceeds to escalate (thanks to our friendly AI overlords) with more and more fresh attacks which also widely spread outside npm to popular SDKs (FWIW, never was a fan of ingraining something external deeply into your codebase) and even new invisible “glassworms”.
Impressed by all of that, I was already considering migrating one of my old Next.js projects to simple and straightforward Eleventy when the news hit me hard: there’s no more Eleventy! The tool got weirdly acquired and mutated (or something like that – I cannot even say for sure – because of the confusing accompanying series of Kickstarter campaigns and community Q&As). I personally don’t trust and approve such stuff to be honest (along with many other fans of the tool) but that’s the way the planet spins, so just hoping for bright future for the project.
If you are sad of that too, you can try building your own static site generator, it’s easy-peasy, as Philippe Gaultier had found and told us about. You can even boldly add React Server Components to that, as Josh Wilson and the team did – figuring it’s not a big deal too, after all, with RSCs and a sprinkle of Vite.
RSCs are the API for many needs that previously required dedicated framework support. So with less to do and better tooling to do it, it’s now feasible to build your own framework!
The Noteworthy
If you’re up to more solid thoughtful tooling combine harvesters though, RedwoodSDK team has good news for you: Peter Pistorius had announced version 1 which is a huge step towards wide adoption for the metaframework.
For every framework out there, there are real people behind it, and for me, it wasn’t a straight line. It took leaving the framework to start my own company, failing, and coming back with a completely different perspective on what a framework should actually do.
The list of updates is probably one of the largest I’ve ever seen and allows the guys to provide RedwoodSDK users with Cloudflare-based set of tools and patterns for building web applications following the three foundational principles (thanks guys, I love that!): without magic, composability over configuration, and web-first architecture.
By staying close to the platform, we reduce complexity, remove hidden behavior, and make code easier to understand and maintain. It’s not just about writing software — it’s about understanding the software you’re writing.
Surprisingly, as we know, Cloudflare had chosen another metaframework as their ambassador in this ecosystem, and recently Astro released new major version 6 (not that they didn’t have anything else to announce, but still) with lots of goodies for loyal Cloudflare Astro developers. For this newsletter project the migration went quite smoothly, even with some dependant tools and config customizations, but there are some breaking changes (including important deprecations – as Astro is damn fast for that!) so watch your steps carefully (or tell your agents to do that).
Elated by success (and the new awesome team acquired, probably) Cloudflare even decided to show the world that there’s nothing simpler than rewriting the notorious Next.js monster with Vite and AI in a matter of a week. It looks impressive but I still have some nagging feeling that the deal is a bit more complex than Claude Code CLI shows you on your Ghostty’s screen. Which is supplemented by the news from the Vercel team publishing the new 16.2 release bringing nitty-gritty but significant performance improvements (hopefully, not stolen from the new Cloudflare’s version).
And while big corporates choose their weapon and steal ideas from one another VoidZero is progressively building their own empire, changing their shoes on the go constantly but relying consistently on common Rust-based Vite ecosystem vision. The latest vision state is formulated in their March launch week recap and pivots from Vite 8 release, full Vite+ open-sourcing, and announcing the Void platform for competing with those pesky old deployment platforms not embracing the “blazing-fasting” enough. It all looks a bit chaotic and if that wasn’t the ol’ good Vite behind all of that I’d probably consider the project rolling down (no pun intended) to some crypto scam, from the way it’s performed, but we’ll see.
Solid team led by Ryan Carniato makes its path in much more thoughtful and substantial way, announcing the beta version of Solid 2.0 with a lot of deep reworking for the framework features (which we can also expect for Solid Start of course, in its turn). Ryan also had shared some interesting findings he discovered on the way to this release, specifically on what React, always sworn for having done everything wrong, actually did right. And if you’re not the guy who cowardly runs away from performance challenges to some other framework in your mighty AI boots, maybe this piece will make you think on what can you do with your React app today to make it better, faster, safer (like, for instance, TanStack Start guys suggest, inspiring several metaframework vendors already).
But if you have made up your mind and packed your bags, consider revisiting Nuxt for a change – the guys just released their version 4.4 with results of their own rethinking of ubiquitous React legacy.
No matter which cargo-cult territory you find yourself at today, it always makes sense to stop and think about the basics and about the roots. What will remain? Time will show, but you’ll always be safe betting on the basement, that’s for sure.
đź‘‹