Words by Vernacchia

I’ve been working at Deliveroo for quite some time, just over 4 years in fact! (That’s forever in tech years)

When I was hired, my background was pretty spcific to FE-esque (frontend) things.

1. Know my way around a browser ✅
2. Have set up and debugged too many webpack configs ✅
3. Investigated various styles of testing (still like TDD for unit tests. fight me) ✅
4. Kept up with Node.js, React, and other tech ✅
5. Can debate endlessly about shit… ✅
6. Knew Backbone.js, Angular.js, and React + could pick up most FE stacks ✅

Unfortunately, I moved to a different team after about 6-8 months and they didn’t need many of these skills. Instead, they needed me to get up to speed with BE technologies. So, I did. It’s what my team needed.

Over the years (yes, years) the teams I was/am responsible for improved vastly. Like, so amazing. Maybe that’s another blog post, but I digress.

During that time, I let my FE knowledge slip. All the flame wars between Svelte, Solid, React Suspense (still a thing like it was a while ago?!?!), XState, Remix, etc. = 🍿. I didn’t have time to have a look. Hot takes were my sources of information.

I am finally at a point where I can come back and investigate new FE tech! I’ve been lucky enough to schedule a half day every week to do so. My manager even supports it. Hell, it was his idea.

I’m really excited to get back into the FE space, allowing myself to evaluate different options and potentially bring some back to Deliveroo.

Anyway, I’ll be blogging about my experiences on this site, which I built with Astro (awww yeahhhh, new and shiny).

Topics I’m looking at include, but are not limited to:

• Chrome Extensions
  • (post) My First Chrome Extension (Google Docs Default Zoom)
  • (post) Google Workspace Zoom Default (more support!)
  • (post) “Simulating” JS Events
• (post) Adding post comments via utterances
• (post) Different ways to do search on static sites
• Frameworks / Meta-frameworks
  • Astro
    • (post) Astro thus far…
    • (post) Astro Content Collection Month and Year Pages
  • Next.js
  • Remix
  • qwik
  • Vue.js
  • Svelte
  • SolidJS
  • htmx
  • Lit
• React Aria
  • (post) Part 1
• Deno
• React Server Components vs SRR vs everything
• react-router
• TanStack router
• react-query (or tanstack query)
• What’s the best way to build/package/transpile things these days - it’s been a while
• Best way to have consistent types between backend/frontend + request validation
  • tRPC
• CSS / CSS-in-JS
  • Vanilla Extract
  • Tailwind - Will give it a try again as it’s likely improved since I tried it when it first came out
• Edge networks
  • Deno deploy
  • cloudflare workers
  • deployment to these using frameworks
• serverless
• lambda layers
• api gateways
• how to do React properly starting from fresh in 2022/23”. I feel like a lot of what I know/we do as a company is based on React 14-ish ideas. Are we leveraging suspense? What about the shiny new SSR capabilities?
• E2e testing Frameworks
• Vite
• Vitest
• Cloudflare
  • R2
  • D1
  • Wrangler
  • KV store
• View transitions - Page transitions
  • new thing for MPAs and stuff like that
• Module federation
• Micro front-end
• React three journey
• Bundlers + tree shaking based out compile mode (js common)
• lambda layers
• Andy osmani online book
• OpenAI training for what you should focus on
• Service workers
• Framer
• Bun
• State Management
  • Xstate
  • Redux / Redux Toolkit
  • Zustand
  • Jotai
  • MobX
• Vanilla extract css
• three.js
• DynamoDB data modelling (not fe, but interesting to me and my role)

They are also in no order!

Until next time...