Apache Kafka 3.8.0 has been released, bringing numerous new features and improvements, including several prominent ones that are highlighted in this blog post. The release marks an exciting milestone, especially considering it's already August and the monthly "Log Compaction" series is nearing its one-year anniversary. A new app will be built using the confluent-kafka-javascript client to demonstrate a key debate - whether to use tabs or spaces - in a Kafka-style approach, producing and consuming data from a topic.