Development Advent Calendars for 2024

Web developers around the world have for years given a nod to Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Yule wassailing mummering end of Gregorian calendar year Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related topics. As a result, you may (should) recognize some of the ones listed below.

Every year I miss a few on December 1, so add a comment or hit me up on the Fediverse if you have more. I delayed posting again this year because I am a bit tired of people who just copy the entire thing and share their version on the socials. Also, this content originally appeared on AdrianRoselli.com and if you aren’t reading it there then the site you are on is a thieving site which should be held in the most contemptible disdain. Happy holidays!

I have not included advent calendars that are single blog posts, image-only efforts with inaccessible images, or delivered only via email. It would be a terrible gift from me to you if you sign up for spam or end up taking advice from organizations that are clearly bad at advice. Maybe next year I’ll ban LinkedIn posts.

I am happy to see more of the calendar creators are available on the fediverse. I look forward to it being all of them. I resent those who are still on Twitter, so if you have a better social link for any of them, please let me know.

HTMHell Advent Calendar (@matuzo@front-end.social)

HTMHell Advent Calendar is Manuel Matuzović’s doubling-down on the theology of HTML. And Christianity. One of those. Anyway, each day will reveal an article, talk, or tool that focuses on HTML.

Advent of Code (@ericwastl@hachyderm.io)

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 Jours de Web (@ParisWeb@mamot.fr)

24 Jours de Web is back 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).

Performance Calendar (@stoyan.org@bsky.app)

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.

アクセシビリティ Advent Calendar (@motchie)

Accessibility (アクセシビリティ) Advent Calendar 2024 is in Japanese, and thanks to the powers of Google Translate, I can tell you it covers a variety of accessibility issues, including web: Webのアクセシビリティを含む、様々なアクセシビリティについてのアドベントカレンダーです。). If you know Japanese, I welcome any corrections. It has been running since 2013.

Selfhtml Advent (@SELFHTML@bildung.social)

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

Kodekalender (@knowitnorge)

Kodekalender is a Norwegian code-specific calendar. Each day solve a code puzzle and be entered in a drawing (you should check the rules).

Bekk Christmas (@livetibekk)

Bekk.christmas collects a few topics per day in one calendar. In previous years I broke them all out, but with some of the domains not resolving it seems safest to link to the parent calendar. Posts will cover JavaScript, UX, security, and machine learning.

24 Days in Umbraco (@24DaysInUmbraco)

24 Days in Umbraco is dedicated to the Umbraco CMS. This calendar has been running since 2012.

24 Pull Requests (@24PullRequests@mastodon.social )

24 Pull Requests is less an advent calendar than it is an effort to mobilize developers. The goal is to get developers to send a pull request every day in December (up to Christmas), thereby supporting your favorite open source projects.

Perl Weekly Challenge Advent (@PerlWChallenge)

Perl Weekly Challenge Advent has been running since 2021. Each day it takes a response from a previous weekly challenge and re-posts it on the site.

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.

C# Advent Calendar (@mgroves)

C# Advent Calendar (sharp, not hashtag) is revealing two posts per day, including on December 25. That’s 50 posts over the course of the month.

Advent of Cyber (@RealTryHackMe)

Advent of Cyber offers a daily beginner security exercise over 25 days (not 24). There is prize money available, but you need to sign up to have a shot at it.

Raku Advent Calendar

Raku Advent Calendar (Raku is Perl6) has a new daily post for your Perl/Raku needs.

Festive Tech Calendar (@_cloudfamily)

Festive Tech Calendar is a YouTube channel with videos ranging from a half hour to over an hour.

24 Days of Design Gifts (@Framer, @Mans)

24 Days of Design Gifts will be pushing design-related bits from heavily discounted apps to free icon & wallpaper packs.

IndieWeb Gift Calendar

IndieWeb Gift Calendar is an annual group effort starting in 2017 to gift (ship) one or more IndieWeb-related thing(s) each day of December that others can use to improve their IndieWeb experience.

Advent of TypeScript (@typehero)

Advent of TypeScript shares a daily challenge for readers using, yup, TypeScript. There is a dedicated Discord for asking questions and answers will be posted on the Type Hero GitHub. Apparently you can also earn Advent of TypeScript badges on GitHub.

The Tactile Times Advent Calendar and Countdown

The Tactile Times Advent Calendar and Countdown is self-described as the first fully-accessible online advent calendar aimed specifically at young braillists (as far as they know). Its content is not web/dev-related, but it is good insight into what “3 blind children” can build for their “newspaper for young braillists”.

Joomla Advent Calendar

Joomla Advent Calendar, as the name implies, is all about Joomla tips & tricks. The calendar is in German, so if you are like me and only speak not-German, you can use your browser’s auto-translation feature.

CSS Advent Calendar

CSS Advent Calendar offers a brief note on a property or feature, with links to MDN and a related video. Thanks to Jens Grochtdreis for finding it.

#MobileA11yAdventCalendar

#MobileA11yAdventCalendar is a hashtag by Marc Steadman over on the walled garden that is LinkedIn (so you must be logged in to see it). From the second day (it appears to start on day 2), it looks like the focus will be very broadly on native mobile app accessibility. Thanks to Jen Smith for the pointer. And Corina just told me Mark’s hashtag is on Bluesky.