The Weekly Dev's Brew

Micro-frontends promise to help teams scale development, but AWS Principal Architect Luca Mezzalira has seen some succeed and some just fall apart. In this conversation, he shares what he's learned from years of implementation work at companies like DAZN and through consulting with Fortune 500 organizations.
Luca explains why micro-frontends are fundamentally different from components—something many teams get wrong from the start. He discusses the common pitfalls he encounters: teams treating them like distributed components, sharing state across boundaries, and copying architectures from companies with completely different constraints and resources.
The discussion covers practical implementation details—from communication patterns and tooling strategies to when approaches like iframes actually make sense. Luca also touches on newer developments in server-side rendering and how they're changing the micro-frontend landscape.
This isn't about micro-frontends being good or bad, but about understanding when and how to use them appropriately. Luca emphasizes the importance of context and organizational design in making these architectural decisions work.

Our Fantastic Guest - Luca Mezzalira
I’m a software architect with over 20 years of experience helping organizations—from startups to Fortune 500s—design scalable, resilient, and modern architectures. My focus: evolving frontend systems, driving cloud-native modernizations, and enabling autonomy at scale through architectural clarity.
As Principal Serverless Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS, I advise global enterprises on designing and implementing efficient, event-driven systems. I specialize in serverless, micro-frontends, and distributed architectures that align technology strategy with long-term business outcomes.

LinkedIn
X/Twitter

Links and Resources
Luca's Newsletter 
Single-spa 
Module Federation 
Native Federation 
Web Fragments (Microsoft) 
Astro Server Islands 
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Why CSS is Now the Fastest-Moving Space in Web Development (with Una Kravets)

While everyone's talking about AI disrupting development, Una Kravets from Google Chrome reveals a surprising twist: CSS has quietly become the fastest-evolving part of web development. In this conversation, Una breaks down how features that required months of JavaScript engineering are now landing as native platform capabilities. Think customizable dropdowns, anchor positioning, and scroll-driven animations. She shares insights from working directly with Chromium engineers and explains why senior developer expertise is becoming more valuable than ever, even as AI lowers the barrier to building applications.
Una walks through her process for identifying platform gaps and working with standards bodies like Open UI. She also tackles the unique challenge of scaling web platform knowledge in an AI-driven development landscape, sharing her mixed feelings about AI's current applications. From her success building Chrome extensions with Gemini to her frustration with chat-based customer service, Una argues for using AI where it makes sense while maintaining the human elements that make the web engaging. Whether you're skeptical about AI's role in development or curious about the cutting-edge of CSS, this conversation offers a grounded yet forward-thinking perspective on the future of web development.

Our Fantastic Guest
Una Kravets
Una Kravets leads the Web UI Developer Relations Team at Google Chrome with a mission to make the web platform easier to build on and more powerful. She hosts the CSS Podcast and has spoken at over 100 conferences around the world helping folks build better web interfaces. When Una isn't online, she loves to craft and recently became a mom.

X
Bluesky
Website

Links and Resources
Emil Kowalski's React motion course animations.dev
Google's web development guidance and feature announcements
Open UI Community Group
CSS Working Group GitHub
Web Platform Tests

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What does it take to build a web browser when everyone says it's impossible? In this episode, we sit down with Andreas Kling, the engineer behind Ladybird—the only major browser project that doesn't take money from Google.
Andreas breaks down a uncomfortable truth: Google funds every major browser through search deals. Chrome, Firefox, Safari—they're all dependent on Google's advertising revenue. Ladybird is building the first truly independent alternative since the early Firefox days.
We dive deep into the technical challenges of implementing web standards from scratch, why their 700,000 lines of code can compete with Chrome's 100+ million, and how they're making browser code that actually mirrors the specifications. Andreas reveals why they switched from UTF-8 to UTF-16, why they didn't choose Rust, and how they handle the constant evolution of living web standards.
From the "draw the owl" problem of CSS specifications to building a sustainable nonprofit model with sponsors like Shopify, Andreas shares the engineering and business decisions behind their ambitious timeline: alpha in 2026, beta in 2027, and v1.0 by 2028.

Our Fantastic Guest
Andreas Kling
President of the Ladybird Browser Initiative.

X

Links and Resources
Ladybird Browser Website
Web Platform Tests
Fil-C (memory-safe C++ compiler)
Thank you very much for listening!
We are also pretty much on all social media platforms, so make sure to like and subscribe!

Homepage - https://www.weeklybrew.dev/
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What does it take to accidentally become the maintainer of one of React's most popular libraries? In this episode, we sit down with Dominik Dorfmeister (aka. TkDodo), maintainer of React Query (now TanStack Query), to unpack his unexpected journey from answering Discord questions during COVID to maintaining a library with 10 million weekly downloads.
Dominik reveals how spending months just helping people on Discord led to becoming a core maintainer of the TanStack ecosystem. We dive deep into React Query's stability-first approach, the challenges of managing breaking changes across multiple frameworks, and why the React adapter is surprisingly the most complex to maintain.
From deleting 20,000 lines of dead code at Sentry to building platform teams that enable developer productivity, Dominik shares insights into maintaining software at scale.

Our Fantastic Guest
Dominik Dorfmeister
Software Engineer from 🇦🇹, working at Sentry, maintaining TanStack Query

BlueSky

Links and Resources
Dominik's Blog
Query.gg
Knip Docs 

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We are also pretty much on all social media platforms, so make sure to like and subscribe!

Homepage - https://www.weeklybrew.dev/
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What does it take to build one of the fastest-growing database ORMs from scratch? In this episode, we sit down with Andrii Sherman, co-founder of Drizzle, to unpack their philosophy: "If you know SQL, you know Drizzle."
Andrii breaks down why their "headless ORM" approach is winning over developers frustrated with traditional ORMs. We dive deep into Drizzle's smart migration system, the growing ecosystem (DrizzleKit, DrizzleStudio), and how they've built a sustainable business model around open source with a 15-person team—all while working from Ukraine.
From SQL template tags to building developer tools that don't get in your way, Andrii reveals the engineering decisions behind Drizzle's rapid adoption. We explore their unique approach to database migrations, why they're still not v1.0, and how they've created an entire ecosystem of tools that just work.
Whether you're curious about modern database tooling, open source sustainability, or building developer-first products, this conversation offers rare insights into creating technology that developers actually love using.

Our Fantastic Guest
Andrii Sherman
Drizzle Team co-founder

X (formerly twitter)

Links and Resources
Drizzle Team
Drizzle ORM Documentation
Drizzle ORM v1 Roadmap
Deep State Project
Sponsor Drizzle

Thank you very much for listening!
We are also pretty much on all social media platforms, so make sure to like and subscribe!

Homepage - https://www.weeklybrew.dev/
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