Empower your UI library by boosting open-source / InnerSource community engagement Creating a UI component library can be a monumental yet rewarding endeavor, especially when approached with community collaboration at its core. A well-constructed UI library not only provides a suite of components that are essential for building consistent and efficient interfaces, but it also acts as a cornerstone for fostering community engagement — be it through an open-source model or an InnerSource approach within larger organizations. By designing a UI library that encourages wide adoption, you invite fe ..read more

Standardizing JS development: templates, code reuse, uniform QA, and enforced conventions Growing a frontend team can lead to many exciting developments. However, it can also introduce challenges, especially when keeping the code consistent with high-quality standards. When more developers write code, it can quickly become messy or inconsistent without proper guidelines. Fortunately, there are well-established tools and techniques for standardizing JavaScript development. Frontend Code Requires High Standards Frontend code must ensure both functionality and visual appeal. Unlike backend code ..read more

How to transform design tokens into useful VS Code snippets for faster, error-free coding Styling using native CSS (or pre-processor languages compiled to CSS) can be great as it offers better performance than JavaScript-based solutions. In addition, CSS is as “universal” as it gets. You won’t waste your time learning framework-specific styling solutions that might become obsolete or fall out of favor, leading to costly refactoring later on. Having said that, some aspects of the dev experience are vastly improved when using CSS-in-JS libraries or frameworks, mainly type support and Intel ..read more

And how to implement the InnerSource development strategy for composable software Open-source is great. It allows us to develop faster and better, leverage the collective intelligence of a diverse community, and innovate through collaboration. We reuse what’s already available and contribute by reporting issues and suggesting PRs. In contrast, dev teams in enterprises often operate in silos where other teams’ code is inaccessible to them. This leads to poor code reuse and prevents teams from contributing to the projects they consume (APIs, shared libs, etc). When we contribute back to a ..read more

How composable architectures paving the way to perform atomic releases Reducing the lead time from development to production is essential in modern software development. Many software processes, like Kanban, are geared toward this. Yet, releasing to production for every change is still challenging. We must ensure that even the slightest change to the codebase does not break existing functionality. However, executing automated tests for the entire codebase may exhaust your CI. How can we push the limits of CI/CD and release each change into production in a stable way? Modul ..read more

These principles will help you to design and implement robust composable architecture for your web applications. In the ever-evolving software development landscape, the push towards building modular and flexible applications is still on the rise. Composable architectures stand at the forefront of this movement. When creating composable architectures, several design principles and patterns, including DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself), KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), YAGNI (You Aren’t Gonna Need It), and Domain-Driven Design (DDD), play crucial roles in shaping the design. By leveraging these co ..read more

Build your own API Gateway using Node.js in under 5 minutes Microservices offer enhanced scalability, flexibility, and agility. As organizations adopt microservices-based applications, managing the diverse and distributed nature of these services becomes a challenge. Therefore, the API Gateway pattern emerges as a crucial solution, serving as the central entry point for client interaction in a microservices ecosystem. This pattern acts as a traffic orchestrator, simplifying the client experience and streamlining the complexities of microservices communication. Let’s explore more on ..read more

What should you use to build your API? Application Composer, Swagger, Postman or REST-Assured APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are the backbone of building efficient and scalable software systems. Simply put, an API is a modular component that helps you streamline intra-app/inter-app communication. Thus, selecting the correct tools for developing your APIs can be a critical task that directly impacts the overall success and productivity of your entire project. Therefore this article will be discuss four tools that you can use to develop, manage and deploy your API while cov ..read more

Implementing feature flags with Bit and Bit Platform: A step-by-step guide Feature flags are an integral part of any platform engineering. They offer a flexible way to manage and deploy features without altering code directly. Feature toggles can be sorted into three types: Release toggles, which control feature release timing. These allow teams to merge code into the main branch without releasing it immediately to users. Experiment toggles, also known as A/B testing toggles, which enable teams to test new features with a subset of users. Ops toggles, which allow operations te ..read more

The Blueprint of Modern Frontend Design Systems for Integrated Component Architecture Modern design systems go beyond aesthetics and are the backbone for creating consistent and efficient user interfaces. They include detailed guidelines, components, and tools, enabling designers and developers to work in harmony. At the same time, the architecture of the frontend design system plays a pivotal role in creating highly functional user interfaces with improved developer experience. A modern design system architecture has the following key characteristics. Compatibility with existing librar ..read more