Hi friends 👋 Thank you for taking a break from generating Ghibli Studio-style images to read this newsletter. It truly means a lot to me that you... What’s that? You’re reading this while you wait for your image to finish generating? Oh well, I still appreciate it.

This week we have a shot but packed issue. We'll talk about what "just enough" architecture looks like, tech companies' newly found appreciation for efficiency, and how to move fast without breaking all the things.

We also have a new episode of the Frontend.fm podcast, a great talk on coding with AI, and a full list of articles and resources, including a report on the highest-paid technology in frontend and full-stack jobs, which is *checks notes* ... WordPress? That can't be right.

Anyway, let's dive in.

MAXI'S RAMBLINGS

The Sweet Spot

Efficiency is on everyone's mind these days. Tech companies are getting leaner, faster, and more focused—and both managers and individual contributors are constantly searching for ways to do more with less, all without sacrificing quality.

The thing that everyone seems to be looking for is that sweet spot between speed and stability: the right pace that lets your team move as fast as possible, but not so fast that you'll end up regretting it a month from now.

Everyone's looking to "move fast and break nothing," if you will.

As someone who spends a good chunk of his time in the "pre-code" phase—design, architecture, domain modeling, drawing boxes and arrows—I’ve been thinking a lot about what that sweet spot looks like from an architectural perspective.

Planning and architecture are important, of course, becuase they help us make sure we’re building the right things the right way. But at some point, we have to stop theorizing and start shipping. So… how much architecture is enough architecture?

And then I thought: "Haven’t I written about this before?" Turns out I have! And so have plenty of smart folks who’ve researched this topic in the past. I found it useful to go over their findings again, so I thought I'd hit the proverbial repost button and share it with you all.

I'm still collecting my thoughts on what this sweet spot looks like for web developers in the age of AI—and I will share a write-up about that soon—but I have no doubt that the fundamental principle remains the same: when it comes to architecture, perfect is the enemy of progress, so come up with a design that is "good enough," and start building.

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FRONTEND.FM

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JavaScript to PHP, Laravel, and Learning-Driven Development with Josh Cirre

​Josh Cirre joined me on the latest episode of Frontend.fm to chat about his journey in tech, his transition from JavaScript to Laravel, the power of Laravel’s batteries-included approach, Learning-Driven Development, and much more.

Laravel is one of my favorite frameworks for building web applications these days, which might sound like a weird thing to say for someone who's always talking about JavaScript and React—but it's true! It's an incredibly powerful tool with a thriving community, and my chats with Josh are a big part of why I'm such a fan.

You can listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform to be the first to know when a new episode comes out.

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ARCHITECTURE SNACKS

Links Worth Checking Out

1. Epic Web Conf was last week and I’ve been slowly catching up with all of the great talks. This one from Devon Neill on going from idea to production in 20 minutes is one of my favorites so far. If you’re wondering what the talk is about, well, it’s as advertised—he started with nothing but an idea in a markdown file, and by the end of the talk he had a fully working app in production; all without barely touching any code. Dev gave a really impressive live demo and his talk is a great example of how valuable clear instructions are when coding with LLMs. Highly recommend giving it a watch!
2. Tim Severien shared some insightful research on the state of the frontend and full-stack job market. Surprising no one, React, Tailwind, and Next.js are some of the most mentioned technologies in the job openings analyzed. And surprising everybody, the framework at the top of the compensation by technology list is… WordPress?
3. The Twitter-drama of the last couple of weeks was, for once, something worth paying attention to. A group of researchers found a critical security vulnerability in Next.js that allowed attackers to bypass its middleware layer, and after the bug was patched, they published an interesting research paper with all of the details.
4. Ian Miell wrote about why he’s no longer talking to architects about microservices. "These conversations usually go nowhere productive," Ian says, which is the same reason I'm no longer talking to my children about why we can't have ice cream for breakfast every single day.
5. A longtime dream of frontend developers worldwide is finally coming true—the HTML select element can now be customized with CSS, and Adam Argyle from the Google team wrote a blog post with everything you need to know about it.
6. You probably heard of MCP by now, but did you know that MCP does not stand for Marvel Cinematic Protocol? Oh, you knew that already. Yes, I knew that too, of course… Anyway, Addy Osmani wrote a great deep dive on MCP in case you were looking for a comprehensive resource to learn more about it.
7. Alex Kondov wrote a common sense take on LLMs. Alex’s thoughts resonate a lot with my own experience working with these shiny coding robots, particularly on how the key to building scalable software (with or without AI) continues to be good software design.
8. I enjoyed this article by Michael Lynch on How to Write Blog Posts that Developers Read. Lots of great tips on keeping your audience engaged and meeting your readers where they are.

That’s all for today, friends! Thank you for making it all the way to the end. If you enjoyed the newsletter, it would mean the world to me if you’d share it with your friends and coworkers. (And if you didn't enjoy it, why not share it with an enemy?)

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Have a great week 👋

– Maxi