The living list of "tech" I would like to try
Tags: list, tips
Published: 2020-11-08 13:40:26

Once in a while, I read about some new technology that excites me. But I can't just jump in and if I don't make a note then I can't remind the name when it would be handy. So I decided to gather it here and when I start doing something where I can use the technology I can come here to just click and decide if it is a good fit for my current needs.

[GraalVM](https://www.graalvm.org/) - Fast (not only) JVM runtime written in Java. Runs and **compiles** Java, Kotlin, Ruby, C/C++ (or any LLVM based language), Python, JavaScript, ... in one VM and even allows to use all of these languages in one codebase without the runtime overhead. In fact, it is faster than native C bindings from Node.js, Ruby, ... it seems like a great future to me. I could develop my React app in Kotlin and use some ML Python library here and some secure and fast Rust library to hash passwords there while targeting browsers and using critical parts in [WebAssembly](https://webassembly.org/).

[Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/) - very interesting alternative to C++ and [Go](https://golang.org/). Very fast, **secure** by default, and with a mix of the best of both FP and OOP worlds.

[Zig](https://ziglang.org/) - next gen C language that claims to be better compiler for C than C compilers. Consider comparison with https://vlang.io/

[Deno](https://deno.land/) with https://alephjs.org/ as an alternative to Next.js.

[Elm](https://elm-lang.org/) or [fp-ts](https://github.com/gcanti/fp-ts)/[io-ts](https://github.com/gcanti/io-ts) - I was cought by Elm's no runtime exceptions, but TypeScript feels more natural these days.

[FaunaDB](https://fauna.com/) - NoSQL relational ACID database with [**native** GraphQL API](https://fauna.com/blog/the-worlds-best-serverless-database-now-with-native-graphql).

[Firebase](https://firebase.google.com) - Set of services (auth, store, hosting, ...) built on top of Google cloud.

[Supabase](https://supabase.io/) - an open-source alternative to [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/) built on top of PostgreSQL. And maybe [also other databases](https://github.com/supabase/supabase/discussions/6#discussioncomment-80183) in the future.

[Neon](https://neon.tech/) - Truly serverless PostgreSQL with generous free tier.

[YugabyteDB or CockroachDB](https://www.yugabyte.com/yugabyte-db-vs-cockroachdb/), TerminusDB, or [HarperDB](https://harperdb.io/) - simply some alternative to PostgreSQL ready for a really big data. I have quite an experience with ElasticSearch and very little MongoDB, but those do not feel right. Especially the lack of JOINs and no ACID guarantee.

[Dolt](https://github.com/liquidata-inc/dolt) - git for relational data. Versioned database with branching all of the good from git.

[Airtable](https://airtable.com/) - part spreadsheet, part database.

[Postgres.ai's Joe bot](https://postgres.ai/blog/joe-0.5/) - Joe bot, an SQL query optimization assistant. Joe works on top of the Database Lab. Every time when an engineer starts communicating with Joe, a new full-size copy of the database is provisioned. This process is fully automated and takes only a few seconds, even for multi-terabyte databases. Such database copies are called “thin clones” because multiple clones share the same data blocks, so provisioning is super fast, and disk space consumption is very low. The clones are fully independent, so developers can modify databases. Finally, SQL execution plans are identical to production, which makes it possible to troubleshoot and optimize queries reliably without involving production databases. Thin provisioning in seconds thanks to copy-on-write (CoW) provided by ZFS and special methodology of preparing PostgreSQL database snapshots. There is also an option to use LVM instead of ZFS.

[Steampipe](https://steampipe.io/) is Foreign Data Wrapper for PostgreSQL that automatically unifies APIs from various sources and exposes them as a set of tables/views. You can fetch data from API through your DB. Something similar is [Superface](https://superface.ai/) that is another attempt to unify APIs into one cohesive library.

[React Testing Library](https://testing-library.com/docs/react-testing-library/intro) - the only right way to test React.js apps without implementation details.

[XState](https://github.com/davidkpiano/xstate) and https://css-tricks.com/model-based-testing-in-react-with-state-machines/ - alternative to Redux with the ability to draw your business logic as a chart.

[Redux-toolkit](https://redux-toolkit.js.org/) - Redux with boilerplate reduced.

[Snowpack](https://www.snowpack.dev/) or [Vite](https://vitejs.dev/) - Fast replacement for [Webpack](https://webpack.js.org/) used for development. Production build still uses Webpack, but development is blazingly fast.

[bundle-wizard](https://www.npmjs.com/package/bundle-wizard) - webpack analyzer for live websites

[Caddy server](https://caddyserver.com/v2) - HTTPS first, a no-boilerplate alternative to Nginx written in Go. Actually, I use this one already and I am pretty happy with it. The auto TLS certificate renewal is awesome.

[Glitch](https://glitch.com/help/) - have no idea what it is but I hit it regularly and it seems like some hybrid of Vercel/Netlify and [CodeSandbox](https://codesandbox.io/)/[repl.it](https://repl.it/).

[Gatsby](https://www.gatsbyjs.com) - Next.js alternative for building static sites. But I want to just explore it because I think Next.js is still better. But Gatsby is known for its amazing plugins.

[Blitz.js](https://blitzjs.com/) - full-stack React framework. Good old web framework without REST/GraphQL API but with the power of React.js.

[Fly.io](https://fly.io/) - cloud without the ops. Not like AWS, GCP, Azure and others.

[LogRocket](https://logrocket.com/) - [FullStory](https://www.fullstory.com/) and [Sentry](https://sentry.io/) in one package. There are self-hoste alternatives, even open source, https://www.rrweb.io/ and https://openreplay.com/.

[bearer.sh](https://dev.to/bearer/why-you-should-monitor-apis-that-your-app-relies-on-1g8) - third-party APIs real-time monitoring in a few lines of code.

[StackBlitz](https://stackblitz.com/) - full stack Node.js dev environment **running in the browser**. Node.js is compiled to WebAssembly to run in the browser. Alternatives are [Codespaces](https://github.com/features/codespaces) and [GitPod](https://www.gitpod.io/) but I am excited about StackBlitz because it [runs in the browser, even backend, has virtual TCP stack, ...](https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/). On the other hand it supports only Node.js now, and not Kotlin, Python, ... as GitPod.

[Space](https://www.jetbrains.com/space/) - kind of GitHub, Slack, Wiki, ... combined into one application. The presentation looks really great and it's from JetBrains so it could really cool app.

[Super productivity](https://super-productivity.com/) - time tracker and TODO list on steroid. I use [Toggl](https://toggl.com/track/) currently, but I would like to have something with integration to GitHub and Trello.

https://gitprime.com - now bought by https://www.pluralsight.com/product/flow - advanced developer metrics

[Kialo](https://www.kialo.com/) - discussion with thread supporting arguments and discovering fallacies. Discussion as a tree of pros/cons.

https://pipedream.com/ - like [Zappier](https://zapier.com/)/[Make](https://www.make.com/) but with full code control. https://www.napkin.io and https://www.val.town are other alternatives.

[Huginn](https://github.com/huginn/huginn) - self-hosted Zappier/IFTTT. There is also [one alternative in n8n](https://blog.logrocket.com/workflow-automation-with-n8n-io/).

[ZeroMQ](https://zeromq.org/) - broker less messaging framework or sockets on steroids.

[Blinkist](https://www.blinkist.com/) - all the best book summaries in 15 minutes. It's a little bit controversial because it's questionable if you can get all from the book in a summary from a stranger, but worth to try because I think some books are really good but too verbose for me.

Blockchain - just to work more closely with the crypto stuff.

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