Web Development Advent Calendars for 2019

A wooden advent calendar flanked by two tall candles (one of Edgar Allen Poe, one of Frida Kahlo), a wooden Ganesh, and a lucky cat sculpture flipping off the viewer instead of waving. In the foreground is a small candle in a metal frame with a rotating metal fan top, a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, an incense burner, and three little Norwegian gnomes. All this against a red wall.

Web developers around the world have celebrated Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related topics. As a result, you may recognize some of the ones listed below.

Every year I miss a few on day one, so add a comment or tweet me if you have more to add.

24 Ways (@24ways)

24 Ways, the one that most of this think about for web development calendars, is back again. It’s been going strong since 2005 and based on its history this year should have some good articles.

24 Accessibility (@24accessibility)

24 A11y will spend its second year sharing a series of articles on digital accessibility from assorted authors. If its first year was any clue, there will be good stuff coming.

Ladies of Code Advent (@ladiesofcode)

Ladies of Code Advent kicks off its inaugural year with a post on accessibility, so I am already a fan.

Lean UXmas (@LeanUXmas)

Lean UXmas collects the most popular articles from the Agile & Lean UX News mailing list, presented throughout the month.

SysAdvent (@SysAdvent)

SysAdvent is aimed at systems administrators, but there is a some cross-over to web developers. It has posts dating back to 2008, so there is plenty of good material there if you’re too impatient to wait for each day to be revealed.

24 Days in December (@24DaysInDec)

24 Days in December is a PHP-specific advent calendar. It looks like its goal is to give back to the same community from which the author has learned, which is a good metaphor for the holiday.

Advent of Code (@ericwastl)

Advent of Code provides a small programming puzzle every day up to Christmas. They are stand-alone, but supposedly have a general theme. They also use different technologies so there is some variety as well.

24 Days in Umbraco (@24DaysInUmbraco)

24 Days in Umbraco is dedicated to the Umbraco CMS. Now in its ninth year (the calendar, not the CMS).

Shape Christmas (@ShapeChristmas)

It’s a Shape Christmas is returning. This year will be a selection of favorites from the previous 8 years.

24 Jours de Web (@24joursdeweb)

24 Jours de Web is back (after skipping 2016) as an advent calendar for web folk. Written in French, it is clearly primarily targeted at French speakers, but a round of Google Translate will open it up to far more readers (like me).

Web Accessibility Advent Calendar (@kazuhito)

Web Accessibility Advent Calendar 2019 is in Japanese, and thanks to the wonderful powers of Google Translate, I can tell you that anything form poems to posts count as long as they are about accessibility: Webアクセシビリティに関する内容であれば、ガチネタでもポエムでも構いません。). If you know Japanese, I welcome any corrections.

Language a Day (@andrewshitov)

Language a Day will cover the basics of a different programming language every day. Examples will be posted to GitHub.

Java Security (@ripstech)

Java Security Calendar 2019 will give away a daily Java security challenge.

Performance Calendar (@perfplanet)

Performance Calendar hails this as the speed geek’s favorite time of the year, ostensibly because of the tips it has been offering each December since 2009. It isn’t just server optimizations you’ll find here, so don’t shy away because you’re not a system admin.

Data-driven Advent Calendar (@journocode)

Data-driven Advent Calendar is a bunch of tutorials, interviews, games, and other contributions. It is produced by Journocode, a collection of journalists and computer scientists working in newsrooms across Germany.

Fronteers Advent Calendar (@fronteers)

Fronteers Advent Calendar is a collection of articles on tools, techniques, workflow, and less technical work-related topics. Fronteers is also donating 75 Euros per day to each author’s chosen charity. Also, the articles are in Dutch.

WP snippets til Christmas (@elliottrichmond)

WP snippets til Christmas is back after a hiatus (it last ran in 2013). Elliott Richmond has asked anyone to submit code, with the only requirement being that it relates to WordPress.

Selfhtml Advent (@SELFHTML)

Selfhtml Advent is from Germany’s oldest (since 1995) and largest web design Community. The advent calendar will present tips and examples of its contributors.

Marco’s Extended Advent (@marcoinenglish)

Marco’s Extended Advent started in November, and is bringing 30 days of, well, anything. Tips, tricks, links, etc.

JVM Advent (@JavaAdvent)

JVM Advent is posting a technical article from various authors related to Java each day.

Perl Advent Calendar (@perladvent)

Perl Advent Calendar goes all the way back to 2000 (and back then looked a bit more like a traditional advent calendar, too) and has been dispensing tips for Perl developers ever since.

IT Security Advent Calendar (@infowebica)

IT Security Advent Calendar offers a daily tip for protection of devices, networks and data. If you find the embedded frame does not let you scroll to read the content, visit the frame contents directly.

DecEmber (@emberjs)

DecEmber, or Countdown to The New Year: 31 Days of Ember Addons, is going further than a 24 day countdown, instead using all of December to highlight a new add-on each day.

TheCloud.Christmas (@livetibekk)

TheCloud.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company (a Trønder, to be more specific). You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

CSS.Christmas (@livetibekk)

CSS.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

Functional.Christmas (@livetibekk)

Functional.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

Java.Christmas (@livetibekk)

Java.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

JavaScript.Christmas (@livetibekk)

JavaScript.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

Kotlin.Christmas (@livetibekk)

Kotlin.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

ML.Christmas (Machine Learning) (@livetibekk)

ML.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

OpenSource.Christmas (@livetibekk)

OpenSource.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

Product.Christmas (Product Development) (@livetibekk)

Product.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. This one is a daily podcast in Norwegian. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

React.Christmas (@livetibekk)

React.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

Security.Christmas (@livetibekk)

Security.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

UX.Christmas (@livetibekk)

UX.christmas is one of a dozen advent calendars from Bekk, a Norwegian company. This one will be partly in Norwegian. You can see the current day from all 12 of them at bekk.christmas.

Alex Lakatos’ Dev Tools Advent (@lakatos88)

Alex Lakatos’ Dev Tools Advent exists only on Twitter. Each day he will tweet a Firefox Dev Tools tip.

Sarah Drasner’s Advent (@sarah_edo)

Sarah Drasner’s Advent exists only on Twitter. Each day she will highlight a new person/project that she thinks people would benefit from knowing about.

Tommy Hodgins’ Advent (@innovati)

Tommy Hodgins’ Advent exists only on Twitter. Each day he will show how to transform valid custom CSS syntax into other things.

Previous Years

I started tracking these in 2010. Since then some have come and gone. For the ones not returning, in many cases the content is still out there. Take a look and maybe you’ll find an older article that is useful today.

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