Web Development Advent Calendars for 2020

A cheese advent calendar. December 1 is open to show a small wheel of cheddar. The door also has a joke. How did the cheese paint his wife? He double Gloucester!
This is why you never go to the (locally- and independently-owned) grocery store on an empty stomach.

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.

Many of the regulars are skipping this year, citing the pandemic and probably not wanting to sit in front of their computers for even longer.

Lean UXmas (@LeanUXmas)

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

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).

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).

Code Security (@ripstech)

Code Security Advent Calendar 2020 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.

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.

PWAdvent (@nic_o_martin)

PWAdvent will introduce a new progressive browser feature every day. Perhaps there will be some you did not know exist or can work on the web.

A11y Advent (@HugoGiraudel)

A11y Advent is Hugo Giraudel’s between jobs project. Each day they will post a tip that they suspect may be common knowledge to many.

Web Accessibility Advent Calendar (@kazuhito)

Web Accessibility Advent Calendar 2020 is in Japanese, and thanks to the wonderful powers of Google Translate, I can tell you that anything from 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. Related, if you want to see a calendar about accessibility that is not restricted to web topics, check out Accessibility Advent Calendar 2020 (some registration required?).

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.

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.

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.

Innovation.Christmas (@livetibekk)

Innovation.christmas (formerly 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.

Samantha Ming’s Code Tidbits (@samantha_ming)

Samantha Ming’s #CodeTidbits30 exists only on Twitter. For the next 30 days she will post JavaScript, HTML, and CSS snippets.

Ginny & Tonic’s Accessible Advent (@GinnyAndT)

Ginny & Tonic’s Accessible Advent also exists only on Twitter. Each day in December she will post one thing that would make her life more accessible as a visually impaired person.

id24’s Previous Talks Advent (@id24conf)

Inclusive Design 24 is sharing favorite talks from its last few years of the id24 online-only conference. It also exists only on Twitter.

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.

2 Comments

Reply

Hi Adrian,

I am collecting this year links for my German readers, too. Some English links maybe interesting for you, too.

There is a PWA-calendar and Hugo Giraudel si collecting A11y tips. And the performance calendar is back.

Greetings from Germany,
Jens

In response to Jens Grochtdreis. Reply

Thanks! Two of those were on my list, but when I checked this morning they had no new content (nor 2020 URL). I may have been a cache-hell, so I appreciate you pointing me to them.

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