Seven small libraries I keep reaching for, a conversation with Canva Staff Engineer Den Odell on what performance looks like when your product serves 250 million people a month, last call for the May session of From Lizard to Wizard, and Chrome quietly shipping WebMCP in the browser.
New article: 7 cool JavaScript libraries you might want to use
Every few months I stumble into a library that immediately earns a permanent spot in my toolbox. Knip, Nuqs, ts-pattern, Orval, Zod, Biome, Ofetch — each one solves a small problem so cleanly you wonder how you lived without it.
The article walks through what each does, where it shines, and the trade-offs. No "modern stack" hype, just the seven libraries I actually keep installing.
Read the full article here
Podcast: Den Odell on performance engineering at Canva
New episode of Señors @ Scale is out. Den Odell is a Staff Software Engineer at Canva and the author of Performance Engineering in Practice (Manning, 2026). He works inside one of the largest React/TypeScript codebases on the planet, serving 250M+ monthly users across 190+ countries.
We got into what happens to "edge cases" when your product serves a quarter of a billion people, Canva's release pipeline (staff → beta → geofenced regions → world), the protobuf-based RPC layer powering frontend/backend communication, test parties and dogfooding, an async-first culture across global time zones, and why most teams are stuck in what Den calls the Performance Decay Cycle.
Watch the full episode on YouTube
Listen on Spotify
From Lizard to Wizard — last call for May
The next session is Thursday, May 28, 2026 · 5–9 PM CET. Four hours, fully remote.
This is the last session of May. Only 4 seats left before it closes.
If you've been on the fence, this is the moment. The next one won't be until June.
Sign up now
Community reads
Chrome ships WebMCP by Chrome — MCP, but in the browser. The same protocol you've been wiring up to your IDE and to Claude Desktop now has a web surface. If you've been wondering how agent-readiness lands on the open web (as opposed to vendor-controlled clients), this is the page to bookmark.
Modern Web Guidance by Chrome — Chrome's new opinionated guide to what "modern web" actually means in 2026. Less "use this API", more "here's how to think about the platform now that the platform finally caught up". Worth a slow read.
Deferred Hydration in TanStack Start by TanStack — the new docs on deferring hydration in TanStack Start. If you've ever shipped an SSR app and watched the TTI tank because the whole tree had to hydrate at once, this is the pattern you wanted.
The Hidden Challenge of Bundling Styles in a Design System by German Quinteros — CSS shipping, tree-shaking, layer order, consumer overrides, all the stuff nobody warns you about on day one when you're shipping a design system.
Cyber Frontier Models by Cloudflare — Cloudflare's take on the security shape of the new model landscape. Where threats are landing, what their data looks like at the edge, and what infra teams should be watching this year.
Learn Harness Engineering by Walking Labs — an open course on harness engineering — the discipline of building scaffolding for AI agents (tooling, evals, sandboxes, traces).
Migrating from ESLint + Biome + Prettier to Oxlint + Oxfmt by Nicolas Charpenay — pairs nicely with the Biome section in this week's article. A field report on what it takes to leave both ESLint and Biome behind for the oxc-based toolchain. Honest about the rough edges.
Conferences
Convex Summit — June 17-18, 2026
I'm speaking at Convex Summit 2026 at Kinépolis Ciudad de la Imagen in Madrid. Two days on how architects and tech leaders navigate complex decisions, with a lineup I'm genuinely looking forward to.
Use code CONVEX26DanNeciu for 15% off tickets.
More info and tickets
React Alicante 2026
No discount code on this one, but I'd flag React Alicante as one of the best React conferences in Europe this year and a must-see if you can make it. I'm not even speaking here and will not miss it for the world, already booked my ticket.
Conference site
Tickets
ZurichJS
ZurichJS is on my list this year. Strong lineup, well-run community, and the kind of single-track conference you can actually keep up with.
Use code REACTJSBARCELONA_10 for 10% off tickets.
More info and tickets
That's it for this one.
If you're enjoying these, share the subscribe link with someone who'd get something out of it, or with your team on Slack:
neciudan.dev/subscribe