Hello, checkiomates🐱‍👤!

This week's digest explores creative rendering and modern standards, from ASCII art generation to the transition from the old Date object to the Temporal API. We also review 2026 app-building strategies and present a complex mission to parse crontab expressions for future task scheduling.

💡TIP

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🏁MISSION

Crontab Parsing by freeman_lex -

Linux Crontab command is a powerful utility that is used for scheduling and automating tasks in Unix-like operating systems. In this mission your task is to parse a crontab timing expression (crontab format MIN HOUR DOM MON DOW), return a sorted ascending list of next 3 execution datetimes based on a provided current datetime (ISO format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM).

assert.deepStrictEqual(nextCrontabExec("* * * * *", "2025-03-03T14:30"), [
    "2025-03-03T14:31",
    "2025-03-03T14:32",
    "2025-03-03T14:33",
]);
assert.deepStrictEqual(nextCrontabExec("*/15 * * * *", "2025-03-03T14:30"), [
    "2025-03-03T14:45",
    "2025-03-03T15:00",
    "2025-03-03T15:15",
]);

📖ARTICLES

ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering -

Alex digs deep into getting ASCII-based graphics rendering just right with JavaScript, complete with examples of the algorithms used and numerous demos.

How to Learn to Build Apps in 2026 -

Learning to build apps used to mean starting with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You’d spend months learning the ins and outs of each language, building little projects along the way. First a calculator. Then a to-do list. Then maybe a portfolio site. It was a slow climb up a steep mountain. But today, someone who has never touched code can build a working application prototype in minutes. Before they understand anything about the code.

Date is out, Temporal is in -

The Temporal API has been promised as a future API tackling the weaknesses of JavaScript’s Date for many years now, but finally that future is arriving. Mat leans on numerous examples to show off Date's weaknesses and push Temporal’s strengths here.

👩‍💻CODE SHOT

What do you think the following code does?

function checkio(line: string): string {

    return line.split(' ').reduce((pre, cur) => cur.length > pre.length ? cur : pre, '');
}

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