February 2025 – Hot New Web Dev

Welcome to Hot Web Dev February 2025, featuring the latest technology and web development news. This month we go back in time to revisit an old coding academy. We have our usual section on coding featuring Laravel and Svelte. The tool of the month is another web platform framework.

Scam Warning

I was a member of OnClick Academy until 2022 when the website suddenly disappeared leaving hundreds of users out of pocket. The owner at the time, Victor Bastos issued a begging email to everyone on his contact list which was accrued from signups from the Udemy course he had published years before. I ran frequent updates on the news until the site was eventually under new management and the emails became infrequent.

At the end of 2024, I started receiving emails from Victor and a company called WebLabs AI. The latter published a freebie containing millions of leaked data from social media accounts including LinkedIn and Facebook. Victor now has a Skool community where he is showing you how to build and monetize an AI app. It has since been archived. He is using the name Victor Cruz and so far I don’t see any content you need to purchase. I am unsure what happened to the newly named Platform X or whether it exists. I smell something fishy. Keep your money in your wallets and keep a look out for grifters.

Learning Resources

After a quiet month of learning resources, I have handpicked a 4-hour beginner’s course on frontend, backend and database with Java, Spring Boot, Angular and MySQL. FreeCodeCamp has an excellent tutorial on knowing the difference between an if/else and a switch statement. Gamification is a popular way of delivering interactive learning. Learn Git through Gamification – A Visual Guide to Key Version Control Concepts.

Coding Resources

Laravel 12 has been released and continues to enhance the development experience with its elegant syntax and robust features. Designed to build web applications efficiently, Laravel includes tools for developers, such as routing, middleware, and an expressive ORM called Eloquent. Its innovative architecture promotes maintainability and scalability, making it a prime choice for many developers. The latest release comes with new application starter kits for react, vue and livewire along with light and dark modes and upgrades to Tailwind 4.0.

It’s been four months since Svelte 5 was released in October. As it was rewritten to incorporate the new features called runes, older libraries and tools written for Svelte 4 and earlier would have to be upgraded. Now that Svelte 5 is stable new tools are coming out. One such tool is Svelicon, a simple CLI tool for generating Svelte icons from the Iconify SVG collection. If UI is your thing? Svelte 5 UI library of components including a navbar, modal, gallery and much more.

WOW Tool Of The Month

Brisa is a web platform framework that enables developers to build fast, simple web applications. It offers server-side rendering, web component support, and browser event handling on the server. Brisa is fully integrated into Tauri to provide multi-platform capabilities, allowing developers to easily convert web applications to native Android, iOS, and desktop applications.

Must Read Resources From February 2025

• Why Do Developers Struggle with Project Management (and How to Fix It)
• How OWASP Helps You Secure Your Full-Stack Web Applications
• Color Accessibility 101: How Color Affects Readability on Your Website
• Top 13 Tailwind CSS Alternatives for Developers
• The Python Toolbox: Essential Tools Every Developer Should Know