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Published in Engineering Insights

Gnarly News October 2022

Gnarly News October 2022
Table of contents
  1. Heroku Introduces New Low-Cost Plans
  2. Adobe to Acquire Figma
  3. TypeScript Turns Ten
  4. Turbo 7.2 is Released
  5. Postgres 15 is Released
    1. Contributors

The software development landscape is constantly changing. As a software consultancy, it's our responsibility to keep our finger on the pulse of the industry. Here are some headlines that caught our attention recently.

Heroku Introduces New Low-Cost Plans#

This past summer Heroku announced their "Next Chapter" which includes discontinuing free product plans, free dynos, and data services like Heroku for Redis. This sent shockwaves through the community as the free services are often used for personal projects and staging environments. Initially, like many others, we assumed that this could lead to a large-scale migration away from the hosting giant. But now we're not so sure! Heroku recently publicized some reasonably priced plans that will likely be viable for most non-production projects. We're really excited to follow this journey and to check out some of the new offerings, which should be available in the coming months.

Adobe to Acquire Figma#

Design giant Adobe recently announced that it will acquire Figma, one of its leading competitors, for $20 billion. We love the collaborative environment that Figma provides and we have our concerns that Adobe will dilute and/or pick apart the product once the sale is complete, just like what happened with Macromedia back in 2005. 😪Time will tell!

TypeScript Turns Ten#

Ahh yes, 2012. Some thought the world was ending, others were reeling over the thought of introducing static types in JavaScript after Microsoft's announcement of their newest language: TypeScript. A lot has changed over the years but TypeScript continues to be a tool we reach for over and over again. Thanks for keeping us (mostly) sane, and Happy Birthday, TypeScript! 🎂🎉

Turbo 7.2 is Released#

David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the creator of Ruby on Rails, recently tweeted that Turbo 7.2 has been released. The project, originally released in November 2021, has received a ton of attention and has been largely embraced by the Ruby on Rails community. The adoption is evident if read through the included fixes and new features: this release is a chonker! We've been using Turbo in a handful of our applications and we're stoked to see these improvements come over the wire.

Postgres 15 is Released#

Postgres 15 was released this month, marking their 32nd major release. You can check out the official release notes here, but there are a few interesting features that stood out to us including new regular expression function for inspecting strings, faster sort performance, and the long-awaited MERGE command that allows you to conditionally insert, update, or delete rows of a table. And as a bonus, it just so happens that The Gnar's very own Steve Zelaznik started a blog post series on a bunch of neat Postgres features that you should definitely check out. Coincidence? 🤔

Contributors#

Learn more about how The Gnar builds software.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Heroku's free-plan changes matter?

The free services were often used for personal projects and staging environments. The newly announced plans made Gnar less certain that users would leave in large numbers.

What did MERGE add in Postgres 15?

It allowed conditional insertion, updating, or deletion of table rows.

Had Gnar used Turbo before the 7.2 release?

Yes. Gnar had used Turbo in a handful of applications and was pleased to see the release's fixes and features.

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