Robin Wieruch - A Developer's Newsletter - Issue #13
Why GraphQL? Advantages and Disadvantages
It's always great to know why you should (or shouldn't) learn something new. There are many benefits of using GraphQL for your existing or new application. And it isn't too difficult to move towards GraphQL for your tech stack. For instance, if you are planning to extract microservices from your monolithic server application, it is a perfect time giving these microservices a GraphQL API. Afterward, all microservices but also your legacy monolith can be combined as one GraphQL schema with a GraphQL gateway. So definitely checkout whether GraphQL is interesting for you.
What is a learning path for Node.js?
The last weeks I was active on Quora again. I find it a valuable part of my daily doings contributing to those platforms to help out others or to offer a perspective on certain topics. If you are interested, checkout my recent and more popular answers for these three questions:
Most of my work is about frontend development, so I am not sure whether you had the chance to touch any backend applications yet. If you haven't, you should make some time to dive into Node.js. This short starter guide is everything you need to set up your Node.js project with Babel. Afterward, it is up to you whether you are doing Machine Learning, building a REST/GraphQL APIs with it, or connect it to a database.
Build your own GraphQL client library for React
GraphQL is a fairly new thing in the JavaScript world. That's why I find it the perfect opportunity for contributing to open source. There are not many solutions out there yet, so if you are looking for such kind of opportunity, you should jump on the train. Many companies are adopting GraphQL. It's your chance to be part of it. For instance, this article shows you how to implement your own GraphQL library in React. There is no magic, it's just React and JavaScript. So try it out yourself.
A brief History of Humankind
Again I had the time to read a couple of books. Since I learn plenty of things by just reading books from great authors, I want to recommend this one for you today: Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind. It's a pretty popular book, but if you haven't read it yet, it's definitely worth to check it out. Apart from getting a glimpse of out history as human beings, it gives a lot of food for thought along the lines.
Redux and GraphQL?
Having all these new tools for GraphQL in a React application, leaves many developers confused about how to integrate them with Redux. For instance, what about Redux and Apollo Client? It's not always clear where to draw the boundary between both libraries. The article gives some clear recommendations on how to integrate both worlds to manage remote and local data.
That’s it from my side. I hope you got a couple of great learning resources and inspirations from my content. I am pretty excited for the GraphQL in React book, so I hope getting your support for it. At this time, I am working full time on it to release it in the following weeks to learn about GraphQL. So stay tuned for it :)
Thank you so much for reading, Robin
P.S.: If you want to follow me on my personal journey as location independent developer, you can now checkout my public Instagram account. The last months I have just been in Indonesia and at the moment, I am planning to move somewhere else. So if you are curious, I would love seeing you saying hello there :)