Hey there,

Welcome to today's issue of the Top 3 in Tech newsletter. I'm writing this from my vacation in beautiful Cyprus, so I really hope you enjoy it! Should take less than 4 minutes to read. Let's get started:

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1. Taking breaks

Consistent practice by coding every day is one of the most effective ways to learn. It's also the fastest way to level up your skills, especially if you build lots of small projects that are interesting to you. And if you're not currently working as a developer, but looking to break into the industry, there's basically no way around it.

But coding every day can also get exhausting. Even if you only code a tiny bit each day, it can still take a toll on you mentally.

It's especially true if you're still new to programming - because you'll run into lots of problems and frustrating issues you just can't wrap your head around.

And even if you've been a developer for a long time, the industry moves fast. And having to keep up with all the modern tools and frameworks can still get rather tedious.

So as I sit on a beach in Cyprus, sipping a drink and enjoying my vacation away from code, I wanted to use this opportunity to stress the importance of taking time off.

Yes, learning to code takes time and effort.

Yes, you should enjoy learning new things in general.

But none of it matters if you get burned out because you forced yourself to code all the time when you weren't intrisincally motivated.

So remember that it's always important to take breaks if you feel yourself:

1. Getting overworked
2. Don't enjoy the process as much
3. Simply don't have time for a while

That'll be way more sustainable in the long run and ensure you don't end up quitting development all together by burning yourself out.

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2. Avoiding image layout shifts

If you work on the web, chances are you're familiar with the "image layout shift" issue. The problem happens becuase the browser has to make room for an image based on CSS, but it doesn't know the actual dimensions of the image until it has been downloaded. This can lead to clunky UI jumps when loading images - but now we have several methods to deal with this.

Check out this amazing article by Jake Archibald (Developer Advocate at Google) explaining the problem way better than I ever could, and offering the pros/cons of potential solutions:

​Avoiding <img> layout shifts ​

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3. FaunaDB

As you probably know, I'm a front-end developer. That means I specialize in HTML/CSS/JavaScript (+ their accompanying frameworks). But I very rarely work with databases. Mostly because it's an entirely different set of skills and knowledge needed.

The problem with that is that you need a database to create most "useful" apps (projects that require users, saving data for a long time etc.)

Fortunately, a lot of cloud-based databases have popped up in the last few years - one of them being FaunaDB. And taken from their website: "Fauna is a flexible, developer-friendly, transactional database delivered as a secure and scalable cloud API with native GraphQL."

Fauna is a great way to spin up a hosted database, and then connect to it using your favourite programming language. So check it out and give it a try for your next project:

​Get started with FaunaDB​

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Did you enjoy today's newsletter?

​👍 Yes, it was amazing!​

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I would really appreciate if you would share the newsletter with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email or copy/paste the link mads.fyi/top3 on other platforms. It really helps to keep me motivated and let the newsletter grow. See you in 2 weeks ✌

— Mads Brodt