Hi there,

Another issue of the Top 3 in Tech Newsletter coming right at you - so let's just get started, shall we?

​

1. Learning to code in 5 minutes

I'm sure you've seen YouTube videos like this before:

"Learn X programming language in Y minutes!"

It's an exciting title. Definitely one that gets clicks. Who wouldn't want to learn coding in a short amount of time?

But as you can imagine, it's also a pipe dream. Coding is way too broad of a topic to learn in such a short amount of time. Hell, even 5 months isn't very long to learn a single programming language.

There really isn't any shortcuts to learn coding quickly. It will take a lot of time and effort before you really start feeling comfortable writing code and building software. And to do that, you have to stay consistent while learning.

So, I'm gonna share with you a small trick ("hack" if you will) that makes it a lot easier to build that discipline and actually stay consistent:

Write code for 5 minutes - every single day.

The human brain thrives on routines. It thrives on habits. So really, the best way to learn anything is to consistently do that thing over a long period of time.

But you might be wondering: why only 5 minutes? Is that really enough to learn anything worthwhile?

Well no, but also yes.

The reason I suggest 5 minutes is because you can do that every day. Regardless of how busy you are, everyone has 5 minutes at some point in a normal day. And if you simply can't mentally or physically afford more than 5 minutes on a particular day, that's fine. You still kept your streak and helped build the habit.

But the beautiful thing is that, once you start coding for the day, there's nothing to stop you after just 5 minutes. It basically just tricks your brain into "code-mode" - and from there you can go as long as you like to amplify your learning. And most of the time you won't want to stop.

So while there's (obviously) no way to learn coding in 5 minutes, I strongly believe there is potential to learn coding if you commit yourself to just 5 minutes per day.

It will take time and it will be tough. But it's also entirely doable if you stick with the habit.

Good luck!

​

2. Dynamic social images

Hot off the press: just this Monday, Vercel (the company behind NextJS) released an awesome new feature: Dynamic OG image generation.

If that doesn't mean anything to you, OG / social images are the little preview images that appear when you share a link on social media. It's a way to entice people to click it by providing a quick overview of what the link is about (usually together with a meta title and description).

These images are very important, but they've always been hard to create dynamically. Meaning if you have a blog for example, you would have to manually create a good looking meta image for each of your posts.

Well, no longer! Vercel, using a library called Satori, can now generate these images for you based on a JSX-like syntax - making it a lot easier to create great social images for each individual page or post of your website.

​Check out the announcement blog post on Vercel​

​

3. The CIA Website

The last pick for this week is just a fun little link: to none other than the official CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) website.

Traditionally government websites have always been bad (from a design, UX and technical perspective). Like, horrendously bad. Usually looking like something from 20 years ago.

But apparently the CIA has upped their game and actually created a website that looks like something from this century.

Of course it's nothing crazy, but it's definitely nice to see a site like this for a change. It's even made using Gatsby, a static site generator for React!

​Check it out - you might even spot a cool CSS animation you can use yourself​

Anyways, just thought that was kind of interesting and worth sharing.

See you in 2 weeks 👋

​

Did you enjoy today's newsletter?

​👍 Yes, it was amazing!​

​😐 Eh, I guess it was ok​

​👎 Not really at all​

​

​

I would really appreciate if you would share the newsletter with your friends on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, 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