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Hey hey hey,

Another Top 3 in Tech update hot off the press for your reading pleasure. This one is focused on different web frameworks, as well as how to effectively learn to code in 2023.

Let's get to it:

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1. Most Demanded Frontend Frameworks

If you're a front-end developer (or web developer in general), you've probably heard of modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, Angular, Svelte etc.

These frameworks make it easier to build complicated websites and webapps by abstracting a lot of JavaScript complexity. They basically give you a lot of tools that make it easier to implement whatever you want - without worrying about the underlying, imperative JS code.

Overall, these frameworks are amazing. Building any moderate to large sized web application without them would be a mess.

But of course, they also increase the learning curve for new developers by quite a lot. For most jobs, "just" knowing HTML, CSS and JS isn't enough anymore.

This naturally begs the question: which framework should you learn? Is one of them "better" than the others for someone just getting started with web development?

And, as with anything in development, the answer isn't as straight forward as you might hope.

The truth is that all these frameworks are cool and unique in their own way. They all have some obivous pros and cons, but at the end of the day, which one you like and choose to learn also comes down to personal preference.

For me personally, I think Vue is the most elegant and easiest to work with. But, React has the biggest and best ecosystem of surrounding tools. And Svelte is closer to "standard" HTML/CSS/JS which makes it easier to learn for beginners. I haven't worked with Angular myself, but it seems like a good fit for large, very structured "enterprisey" applications.

The most important aspect though, is that you play around with a few of them to get a feel for their differences - and then pick the one that best help you reach your goals. To help you make that choice, check out this recently released overview of the most demanded frameworks in 2022:

​See the full breakdown​

As you can see, React is clearly the most popular (and probably the safest choice if your goal is to get a job ASAP). But if you have time and just want to focus on learning and building cool stuff, definitely try out some of the other frameworks to see which one makes you the most productive.

And remember: regardless of which one you learn first, you can always switch and pick up the other options later - because fundamentally, they all work in very similar ways. So don't be scared of "locking" yourself to one framework for all eternity

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2. Astro 2.0

Speaking of frameworks, this week featured the 2.0 release of another popular web framework: Astro!

Astro is a little different from the other front-end frameworks though. It's mostly designed for creating content focused sites (not so much webapps), but allows you to use the other frameworks for individual parts of the site if you need to add interactive elements (called Astro Islands).

It also offers really great performance out of the box, and is an easy choice if you're looking for something simple to build your portfolio or blog. Now with typesafety, hybrid rendering, improved dev server and more in version 2.0 🔥

​Check out the Astro 2.0 release blog post to learn more​

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3. Roadmaps for learning code in 2023

As if all of the things I just said wasn't enough stuff for you to learn in 2023... it's about to get wild.

I'm a front-end web developer, so that's obviously where I have my focus.

BUT! There's lots of other coding areas like app development, games / 3D programming, hardware coding, desktop apps (just to name a few).

In this short 9 minute video, Fireship (my favourite tech Youtube channel) breaks down 7 different roadmaps for learning to code in 2023 depending on your area of interest.

It's an awesome overview and should give you plenty of inspiration for how to get started with coding or where to go if you're still early in your career:

That's it for now! Stay safe, and I'll see you in 2 weeks

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— Mads Brodt