- FEDSA Feed
- Posts
- Brittle Design Systems & Better TypeScript
Brittle Design Systems & Better TypeScript
What’s hot, what’s broken, and what’s just beautifully weird in web dev this month
FEDSA team
March 28, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Hello everyone!
Are the mornings cooling down wherever you are?
Autumn has come! It felt like we had a heatwave and flooding one day, and the next called for an extra layer at night.
In the world of front-end, things are also changing, though a bit less predictable and more dramatic than our seasons. March left us with Next.js security exploits, design systems losing trust, and a rewrite of TypeScript’s compiler. Not to fear, there’s some exciting news too.
Let’s not waste any more precious time. In this month’s edition of the FEDSA Feed:
A monthly recap of what happened in the frontend world over the last few weeks.
Introducing our Beginner Support sessions, which are a great way for newbies to get some help and for more experienced members to share their knowledge
Freshly pressed and brought to you with much love and attention: our job recommendations!
Next.js Exploit
This month's most significant news is the security vulnerability in Next.js that surfaced recently. Their blog has an announcement about it, and they have released some patches. It involves how middleware requests can trigger infinite loops, allowing attackers to skip critical checks. So, if you run Next.js on your server in production, you need to patch it immediately. If you’re on Vercel or Netlify, you’re not affected. Read about it here
Zeroheight’s Design Systems Report
Next, let’s look at Zeroheight’s Design Systems Report, which surveyed various people about how they manage, measure, and maintain design systems. One standout to us: Many respondents say their design systems are unstable or untrustworthy. That’s worrisome, given that a design system is supposed to provide stability and consistency. See the report here
TypeScript’s Rewrite in Go
TypeScript is being rewritten in Go, specifically, the compiler and related tools that are shifting, not the actual runtime of TypeScript-based apps. That means your deployed JavaScript won’t change, but the type-checking and compiling process could eventually become much faster, especially in large codebases with heavy type inference. Find out more here
TanStack Form & Netlify
TanStack Form is hitting its stable release. It’s a form library from the TanStack ecosystem. They already have TanStack Query, TanStack Table, TanStack Router, etc. TanStack Start is a new meta-framework that might become Netlify’s official recommendation, competing with Next.js. There’s a sense that Netlify wants a strong single-page app ecosystem, whereas Next.js is moving further into React Server Components. TanStack Start is apparently an SPA-only approach, which might attract folks who dislike or don’t need server components. Read about it here
“Our interfaces have lost their senses” by Amelia Wattenberger
This is a great read and a visual treat from Amelia. In it, she argues that we should rebuild digital interfaces to be more multisensory, tangible, and responsive to our natural ways of thinking and working. Have a look here
Cool Things We’re Enjoying Right Now:
Slow Roads (Web GPU Demo)
A fascinating demo called “Slow Roads” runs a 3D driving simulator right in your browser with physics, collisions, and more. It’s all done with Web GPU/3D rendering - it's super impressive to see what modern browsers can handle.
Fancy Components
A site called Fancy Components showcases all kinds of interesting UI ideas - uncommon components, fun interactions, animations, and so on. Great for inspiration, though maybe not for your high-stakes finance form.
Level Up Your Coding Skills with FEDSA Beginner Support Sessions!
Learning to code is a wild ride - exciting but overwhelming when tutorials don’t match your project or when the documentation is unclear. Ever catch yourself staring at a jumble of code until it blurs into a pixel soup? Yeah, we’ve all been there.
Our free Beginner Support Sessions are a space for you to get friendly mentorship and encouragement on your coding journey. Our sessions are not just about squashing bugs, but more importantly for you to grow your confidence.
Join us for our next sessions on Tuesday, 8 April at 17:30, whether you’re a coding newbie or need a nudge!
Join the Beginner Support channel on our Discord to join in on the team effort!
PS - If you want to share some love and act as a mentor, contact us here
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Keen to share your knowledge at an upcoming FEDSA event? Sign up to be a contributor.
EVENT REPLAYS:
In case you missed March’s events, you can watch the replays here:
JOB OPPORTUNITIES:
If you want to work on developer-oriented products, check out this Product Manager role at Gitstart.
There are a couple of jobs opening at Bash. At Bash you’ll be part of a team working on awesome retail innovations. They operate like a startup - even though they are a big company - and there are tons of benefits.
If you’d like to share your open roles here, reach out here for more information.
If you found this useful, remember that sharing is caring, so tell your friends to subscribe so they can learn along with you!
Did we miss something like a chop? Just hit “reply” and help us set the record straight!
P.S. Wish you could hear from us more often? Just join our FREE community on Discord and bring all your questions.
Reply