Author Atila Fassina

January 6, 2025 — We, as human beings, don’t worry too much about making sure the connections land at the right point. Our brain just works that way, declaratively. However, for building AI, we need to be more explicit. Let’s dive in! Read more…

November 27, 2024 — From KnockoutJS to modern UI libraries like SolidJS, Vue.js, and Svelte, signals revolutionized how we think about reactivity in UIs. Here’s a deep dive into their history and impact by Atila Fassina. Read more…

November 14, 2024 — Penpot helps designers and developers work better together by offering a free, open-source design tool based on open web standards. Today, let’s explore its newly released Penpot Plugin System. So now, if there’s a functionality missing, you don’t need to jump into the code base straight away; you can create a plugin to achieve what you need. And you can even serve it from localhost! Read more…

May 28, 2024 — Application frameworks have built whole ecosystems on top of them. Let’s take a closer look at serverless platforms such as Netlify’s Platform Primitives and explore how they can increase our productivity with a serverless fullstack experience. Read more…

January 8, 2024 — Are you ready for a little exercise of pulling a framework apart and putting the pieces back together? In this article, Atila Fassina explains how meta-frameworks have evolved around core libraries in their own unique ways. Read more…

March 29, 2023 — Dealing with sensitive data is an important topic for any app. In this article, you will find out how to handle sensitive or confidential information in your apps and what Row-Level Security means. Read more…

February 1, 2023 — The new App Directory architecture has been the main character of the recent Next.js release, which keeps bringing up many questions. In this article, Atila Fassina explores the advantages and pitfalls of this new strategy and reflects on whether you should use it in production now or not. Read more…

January 17, 2023 — Writing code documentation can be overwhelming when there’s no smooth process in place. Streamlining best practices and setting automation in your favor works a long way toward getting permanently up-to-date content that reflects the important pieces of your codebase. Read more…

November 7, 2022 — Let’s talk about Next.js, one of the most well-known React frameworks used for production. From new components to font optimization, Atila shares a quick overview and invites you to join his Advanced Next.js Masterclass taking place later this month. Read more…

September 1, 2022 — In the second part of “Databases For Front-End Developers” series, Atila Fassina explores concepts to equip you to have your own opinions about which kinds of databases suit your specific needs. Read more…

August 11, 2022 — In this article, the first part of “Databases for Front-end Developers” series, Atila Fassina helps you understand the concepts behind database architecture in order to use them reliably and sheds some light on serverless databases. Read more…

March 25, 2022 — In the past months, there have been lots of talks dedictaed to Remix. Routing is not only one of the things that sets it apart from other frameworks, but it also fuels great performance and improves the overall experience for developers. Let’s dig in to all of the features that build up routing in this powerful framework. Read more…

February 28, 2022 — Maintaining a design system is a lot of work. In this article, we will have a look at what solutions fit inside the umbrella of a Design System, and a few important steps and checkpoints you need to keep an eye on throughout your projects. Here, Atila Fassina shares his lessons learned and how a platform such as Backlight can help put together a series of tools to speed up your architecture setup. Read more…

February 24, 2022 — How would you measure performance? Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet for measuring performance. Different products will have different benchmarks and two apps may perform differently against the same metrics, but still rank quite similarly to our subjective “good” and “bad” verdicts. Web Vitals are the new gold standard in performance due to their direct correlation with the user’s experience. In this article, Atila Fassina will show you what monitoring can do and how RayGun can help you sustain performance maintenance while scaling your app. Read more…

November 9, 2021 — Internationalized routing is not exactly a new feature on Next.js. (It has been out since v.10.) In this article, we are not only checking what we get from this feature, but also how to leverage such functionalities to achieve the best user experience and a smooth developer experience as well. Keep reading if you enjoy self-documented code, lean bundle-sizes and compile-time errors instead of runtime errors. Read more…

August 31, 2021 — By combining some React APIs, we can accurately manage “simple” states. With Next.js though, we can quickly find situations where we need to accommodate many other requirements. This article is intended to be used as a primer for managing complex states in a Next.js app. These strategies should fit the vast majority of apps around with little to no adjustments. Let’s have a look at some patterns to accomplish all that. Read more…

June 29, 2021 — Static Generation is great for performance — until the app gets too big and build-times go through the roof. Today, we’ll have a look at how Netlify’s fresh On-Demand Builders can fix that. Additionally, we pair it up with Next.js’ Incremental Static Regeneration for the best user and developer experience. And, of course, benchmark those results! Read more…

May 14, 2021 — Since its early days, JavaScript programs have grown in complexity and the number of tasks they perform. The need to compartmentalize such tasks into closed scopes of execution became apparent. “Tree-shaking” is a must-have performance optimization when bundling JavaScript. In this article, we dive deeper on how exactly it works and how specs and practice intertwine to make bundles leaner and more performant. Plus, you’ll get a tree-shaking checklist to use for your projects. Read more…