Robotic Renaissance

Plus: The First Emoji, Dev Tools, and More!

Author

David Thurman
April 10, 2025

Morning folks! This is Beyond Code - the newsletter designed to help developers build their careers, one Thursday at a time.

Note: This newsletter is not sponsored. Any websites/tools/apps we recommend are purely because we enjoy them personally

Did You Know…

The First Emoji Was Created in 1999

The first set of emojis

Shigetaka Kurita designed the first set of 176 emojis for a Japanese mobile internet platform. The goal? Add emotional nuance to plain text messages.

And now your iPhone can make AI emojis-oh how far we’ve come.

Handy Coding Tool

Free for Developers – Comprehensive Resource List

Free for Developers

Free for Developers is a curated list of free tools and services for developers. It includes code tools, markdown editors, code minifiers, and more.

Key Features:

  • Code Tools

  • Markdown Editors

  • Code Minifiers

  • And Much More!

Website: Free-For.Dev

Tech Highlights

Where’s Will Smith When you Need Him?

Humanoid robots have long been a promise of the future. While today’s bots might not be at the iRobot level yet, there have been some very impressive developments recently

Boston Dynamics.. Breakdances?: The company known for posting groundbreaking robotics videos on YouTube has now set the bar even higher. Not only can their latest model walk, crawl, and roll, it can also.. breakdance (Video)

Helix, the Fridge Operating Robot: AI Robotics company Figure recently released a video of their new robot, Helix, performing a simple, although very impressive, household task (Video)

Optimus is in his Prime: One of Tesla’s major long term bets has been their humanoid robots, Optimus. They recently posted a video highlighting Optimus autonomously navigating their factory and performing tasks (Video)

The new advancements are amazing to see (as long as you ignore the fact that we’re inching closer and closer to Asimov’s Sci Fi worlds)

Programming Tip

Keep Your Dependencies Updated (but Carefully)

Outdated dependencies can lead to security vulnerabilities, bugs, and just a big headache long term. However, if you try updating them recklessly, you can often break your project.

Tips:

  • Use a dependency management tool like npm, pip, or poetry (depending on your platform/language)

  • Test thoroughly after making updates (ideally in a staging environment when possible)

  • Review release notes before updating anything critical

Ask the Experts

“Do you think a college education is necessary for someone coming out of High School and looking to get into software engineering?”

Strictly speaking, a college degree is not needed to get to almost any level in tech that you want to; that said, the amount of effort you need to put in may be comparable, as there is a vast amount of knowledge out there. When trying to get into your first job, I recommend targeting a very specific subset of tech jobs to start off with- Junior Web Developer, for example. In this case I would compile a list of expectations from job descriptions for this position and go as deep as you can on each item.

Brian Morton, Owner @ Morton Software Insights

Open Source Highlight

Build Cross-Platform Apps with Tauri

Tauri is an open-source framework for building lightweight, secure desktop apps using web technologies. If Electron feels too bulky, give Tauri a try.

Why It’s Awesome:

  • Smaller app size compared to Electron

  • Works with any front-end framework

  • Focused on security and performance

What’s Open Source?
“Open sourced projects” refer to projects that have their code open to the public. They allow anyone to contribute to the project and help maintain it. Not only are they a great way to get hands on experience early on in your career, they also provide you a way to add bigger projects to your resume!

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Pop Quiz

What’s the Logic Flaw?

def is_valid_age(age):
    if age >= 13 or age <= 120:
        return True
    return False

Find the answer at the bottom of the newsletter!

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Pop Quiz Answer: The or should be and — as written, nearly all ages will return True, including age = 5