Week 2025-26

Jul 02, 2025

I was planning to write more extensively today, but I thought, no—you deserve a break too. @vlkodotnet

Week's Highlight: The Battle for JavaScript

Have you ever wondered why the JavaScript programming language specification is called ECMAScript? It's a fascinating story.

Long ago, when JavaScript was created for the Netscape browser, Brendan Eich developed it in just 10 days. At management's request, he drew inspiration from Java because Sun Microsystems was collaborating with Netscape at the time. As a result, the JavaScript trademark remained with Sun Microsystems, which Oracle later acquired in 2009.

This is the real reason the specification was named ECMAScript—to avoid potential trademark issues. Neither Sun nor Oracle had built any products around the JavaScript trademark, so when Oracle renewed the trademark in 2019, someone "clever" decided to use a screenshot of the Node.js website.

Ryan Dahl, creator of Node.js and currently working on Deno, has launched a petition to free JavaScript as something that should belong to the community. The petition has been filed, and we'll learn on September 6th how Oracle plans to wiggle out of this situation.

Business Insights

Summer is the season when various reports get published. Last week we had several interesting ones, and this time we have one from the journalism world. It's broken down by country, so you can find your own. It's a pretty interesting look at the state of journalism in your country.

If anyone knows about internet trends, it's Cloudflare—a company that provides DDoS protection and handles enormous amounts of internet data traffic (around 20 %). Their CEO said at a conference that AI poses an existential threat to content providers. What does this mean?

While we used to provide our content to Google and receive approximately one visit for every 3 pages of content (average value, of course), this ratio gradually changed to 6:1. For OpenAI, it was 250:1, and for Anthropic, a staggering 6000:1. As user trust in AI increases, the need to click on your content decreases. Users get information directly from AI Overview, ChatGPT, etc., which is why this ratio has climbed to 18:1 for Google (and that doesn't even fully account for AI Overview), 1500:1 for OpenAI, and up to 60,000:1 for Anthropic. And it's getting worse.

Will the future lie in blocking AI bots? Will anyone dare to block Google, without which we won't get referrals from Google Search?

But don't forget—Sundar Pichai trusts us... that we'll somehow figure out what to do about it.

Self-Development Insights

You're sitting at your computer, you're in the flow, and it feels like code is just pouring out of you. The flow is so good that it'll keep you going for hours, and you won't even realize how productive you're being. You don't know, and you don't want to stop typing. But maybe you're wrong.

According to recent research, it's better to take short 2-5 minute breaks every hour. Such breaks reduce stress and increase concentration because prolonged focus can lead to mental and physical fatigue. A small reset quickly fixes this.

Note: This article sparked controversy in our closed group. Is it relevant for creative professions like programming? I'm wondering if this is just clickbait, where they link different topics together to make some content. I'm adding a warning: read at your own risk.

AI Insights

Google released a new version of Gemini Robotics that can now function without cloud connectivity. With the included SDK, your robot should be able to handle tasks independently after 50-100 activity demonstrations. However, a robot is a piece of hardware, and in this offline mode, you'll need to ensure the safety of the robot's surroundings—because AI algorithms aren't 100% reliable.

Microsoft introduced the very small Mu model, which can run directly on the NPU chip found in all Copilot+ PC certified devices. If you're one of the lucky owners, Mu will be able to answer questions about where to change various Windows settings.

Google released the Gemini CLI console agent, which is excellent because it offers so many free API calls that you won't even have to pay for them. Additionally, the underlying model ranks among the top models for vibe coding.

We also got Google's Gemma 3n model, which is unique in supporting Matryoshka Representation Learning. You can configure such a model according to your needs.

How better to end this section than with the article "AI Killed My Job"? It's not just about being laid off—for some, it means losing motivation, creativity, and the desire to work.

.NET Insights

Every year, the .NET team publishes a comprehensive list of performance improvements with each new .NET release. We're still waiting for this year's, but in the following article, you can already see what it will approximately contain. Faster array allocation, better scope handling with delegates, faster LINQ, and improved JSON serialization and deserialization. And you get all of this with just a simple upgrade to the new .NET 10 framework.

Those developing for MAUI will get simplified XAML.

GitHub Copilot got a better default GPT 4.1 model, a bunch of new models to choose from, and the ability to track available usage.

An interesting investigation into why the Background Garbage Collector gets stuck for several seconds. If a user thread wants to allocate a large object during Concurrent Sweep LOH, it's blocked until BGC completion.

Link Drop

Microsoft is changing Windows to prevent disasters similar to CrowdStrike. While that was caused by third-party antivirus software, Windows' reputation suffered. For antivirus makers, this means they'll run outside the system kernel and get new APIs. Quick Machine Recovery will also be added for multiple consecutive startup failures.

The blue screen won't be blue anymore—it'll be black. The change comes after 40 years.

After 20 years, a new PNG image format specification is being released. It supports HDR, animations, and EXIF data.

For console mode lovers, Starship was released—a customizable shell for all operating systems written in Rust. Plus, you have tons of modules available.