egghead.io developer chats

Keith Peters joins us today to talk about his experiences with experimenting with code and math, the transition from Flash to Go, woodworking and blacksmithing, and getting books published.Keith talks to us a bit about multi trochoids; they're what happens when you take a circle and roll it around something, like a spirograph. He was inspired to do this project by Sodaplay, a site back in the flash days that had stuff you could hook up to various engines.What language did Keith use to write his multi trochoid experiments? Initially, Keith wrote it in Go, but he wanted to put it out on the web and make it interactive, so he ported it to Javascript.Back in the 90s Keith worked with Flash, when Flash left he moved over to Javascript and using the html5 canvas. Javascript is great if you want it live on the web but for still images and animations it was a pain in the neck, so Keith tried out Rust, Python, and finally settling on Go.Keith is into some non-coding hobbies like woodworking and knife making, Joel has even bought some of his knives. It started when Keith wanted to build an arcade cabinet, he bought tools and got into learning how to use them. Keith has found a lot of crossover with working with his hands and building things with code, both of them can be boiled down to learning a technology to create things and solve problems.Finally, Keith explains the pros and cons of going through a publisher to get your book out. He says that self-publishing is easier than ever, but a publisher provides you with a lot of assistance with editing, marketing, artwork, and a healthy dose of pressure.Transcript"Learning and Experimenting with Physical and Digital Mediums with Keith Peters" TranscriptResources:Trochoid Experimentsplayingwithchaos.netKeith Peters:TwitterGithubWebsiteJohn Lindquist:TwitterWebsite

Dave Smith is on the Alexa Team at Amazon, he hosts the Soft Skills Engineering podcast and headed up the recent Utah JS Conference.Recently Dave asked on Twitter "on a scale of 1 - 10 in difficulty how would you rate the task of writing a function that iterates over a list of strings and returns the top 10?" This sparked up a lot of good, and most people rated it a 2-3 until people started asking "wait, is this question in an interview context? In that case, it's a solid 10." Dave talks about how the external stresses of an interview can turn even a "simple" question into a very stressful and challenging experience.The topic of interview "red flags" comes up, and Dave explains how the biggest one is refusing to answer a question. He says that even if you don't have an answer to something try to follow up with more questions and have humility, you are there to present yourself. Dave also says not to make up or guess at something if you don't know the answer, try to ask them to rephrase the question and give the angle of your own understanding.Dave has his own excellent podcast with his co-host Jamison Dance called Soft Skills Engineering, check it out in the link below.Transcript"Success and Failure in the Interview Process with Dave Smith" TranscriptResources:Soft Skills Engineering PodcastUtah JS ConferenceDave Smith:LinkedInGithubTwitterMediumJohn Lindquist:TwitterWebsite

Today we are joined by Eve Porcello, who teaches Javascript, React, and GraphQL with Moon Highway. She is also the author of the books Learning React and Learning GraphQL.Eve explains her process in preparing her conference presentations and how she uses techniques she learned in her theatre and improv background to really bring something professional and engaging to the stage.Why is GraphQL blowing up recently? Eve says she believes it's because people realize that are a lot of clients that need data and they only need to load the smallest amount of data that's necessary.Everyone always says to have a project app to learn something new but what do you even build if you have "no good ideas"? Eve talks about what makes a good learning project. Keep the scope really small. Some variant of a to-do app is a great project.Finally, Eve talks about her work with the High Fives Foundation. High Fives works with injured extreme sports athletes to help them pay for the high health care costs of an injury.Transcript"Eve Porcello on GraphQL" TranscriptResources:Moon HighwayEve Porcello - Everything You Need to Know About GraphQL in 3 ComponentsLearning GraphQLGatsbyHigh Fives FoundationEve Porcello:GithubTwitterMediumO'ReillyJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

Jason Lengstorf is a developer on the GatsbyJS team.Jason didn't start his career even remotely in the tech field. He was a musician.Jason's band didn't have much money, so he learned design to make merch, learned some markup to edit their myspace, eventually learned to build a website for them, then learned backend so his bandmates could upload images and post things.Jason talks about Gatsby's plans to compete with the more seamless WordPress model. He also talks about gatsby's differences from WordPress and the use cases for each service.One of Gatsby's strengths is how good it is for learning Javascript and React, you can quickly go from the command line to getting stuff on the screen in two minutes, much like create-react-app, the differences is that with Gatsby you get a data layer and a good deployment story.Finally, they talk about what it's like to manage a repo that has 964 contributors, 5500 commits, and 936 issues. It was more chaotic in the early days, but they have brought on some people who are helping manage it and are defining better processes.If you are interested in learning Gatsby, they have recently put much work into revamping their official tutorials.Check them out hereTranscript"Jason Lengstorf on GatsbyJS" TranscriptTopics:His early musical aspirations that lead to his career as a developerGatsby's goals in creating an agnostic unified data layer.The differences between Gatsby and other static site generatorsGatsby 2 and its many performance upgradesManaging a large and active repositoryResources:GatsbyGatsby on TwitterGatsby TutorialsNetlifyJason Lengstorf:WebsiteTwitterGithubJohn Lindquist:TwitterWebsite

On this episode, I get the chance to speak with Lynne Tye, the creator of Key Values, a place for Software Developers to find a company that fits their values beyond just what tech stack they use or salary they provide.Lynn has had a diverse career and only started coding in 2015. Once she cut her teeth freelancing, she realized it was hard to find the right company to work with. When job listings and recruiters proved unhelpful, the idea for Key Values was born.Tune in to hear us talk about finding the right company culture, work/life balance and why it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, and the value of hands-on involvement.Transcript"Lynne Tye, founder of keyvalues.com" TranscriptTopics:Weighing the importance of your timeWhat does work/life balance mean to youWhat it takes to launch your projectWhy loving what you do is so importantTaking investment moneyAmbition and expectations with yourselfLynne’s previous career path vs. her current oneFiguring out what works for you in your educationStarting a business when you just started to programResources:Key ValuesIndie HackersApprenticeship PatternsHackers and PaintersfreeCodeCampNathan Barry - Authority30x500Lynne TyePersonal TwitterKey Values TwitterJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

Jen Luker is a software engineer at Formidable Labs Inc. She has worked as a full-stack developer using PHP, Javascript, and CSS, but has a particular fondness for frontend technologies.Today, we discuss the issue of accessibility and how focusing on making websites and software more accessible should be a constant consideration, particularly since it taps into an underserved market. Tune in to hear on discussion on this vital and fascinating topic.Transcript"Jen Luker, a11y champion" TranscriptTopics:The Internet and accessibilityHow loading times affect accessibilityHow accessibility helps everyoneMissing out on business by not being accessibleThe importance of making accessibility a regular part of the conversationQuotes:“One of the benefits of incorporating a lot of these accessibility features is that they end up helping everyone.” -Jen Luker“Only about one in ten websites, according to an audit that DQ did, is accessible.” -Jen LukerResources:Formidable Labs Inc.Deque aXeJen Luker:WebsiteTwitterGithubJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

Shawn "swyx" Wang is an infinite builder, dual-class CFA, and Developer. Shawn currently works for Netlify.Tune in to hear Shawn talk about what it means to be an infinite learner and builder and how he uses this approach to further his career.Transcript"swyx (Shawn Wang) on infinite building" TranscriptTopics:Infinite learningInfinite buildingJavascript fatigueEngagementFighting feelings of inadequacyQuotes:“I changed myself from a financial career...I thought that was a stable thing...I realized that I needed to move on from that…” -Shawn Wang“You should learn just in time, not just in case.” -Shawn Wang“If you actively write stuff and put stuff out...that you are interested in, guess what? People come and engage with you…” -Shawn WangShawn Wang:eggheadWebsiteTwitterJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

Henry Zhu is currently a steward for Babel, and today he'll be discussing the management and lifestyle side of working on an open source project full-time.The financial side to open source is interesting. Henry talks about where he gets his money and how he can be financially independent while still working on open source full time. Most of the money comes from donations through Open Collective and Patreon. A lot of the donations come from users, but corporations do donate as well. Henry also discusses the stability of it, and how the NPR model of asking for donations can lead to uncertainty about the next month.Henry says he's enjoying the management and marketing side of being a steward about as much as he enjoys coding. It's a side that people don't often think about with open source. This side of it includes a lot of marketing and interacting with the greater community, as well as the other maintainers and contributors to babel.How does Henry handle all this responsibility when there is no one above him telling him when to take a break, or when to go on vacation? Henry and Joel talk about having a positive "selfishness", and taking care of yourself so that the project can prosper. If you want to be doing it for years you have to make sure that you don't burn out.Transcript"Henry Zhu, Maintainer of Babel" TranscriptResources:BabelThe Power of HabitYou Are What You LoveTiny HabitsKai DavisHenry Zhu:TwitterWebsiteGithubPatreonOpen CollectiveJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

Today we are joined by Phil Pluchthun, creator of the programming font Dank Mono and core contributor to the styled-components library. Phil will be talking about his work in design and programming, styled components, the process of making a font, and finally some advice to anyone who wants to make a font of their own.So what are styled components? It's a new component-based CSS and Jest library. It's all about using these small styled components that you put in instead of HTML. It's nice because you don't have to create a whole new component that renders for some simple styling.Phil talks about as a developer he's always been in a role where he's had to work closely with designers and provide feedback for them. Over time he started to work more with design projects, and as he worked for small startups without a lead design, he found himself filling that role.Dank Mono is Phil's first font, He's always enjoyed typography, and as he's gone along it starting turning out better than he thought. When he started, he just wanted to make some ligatures for Operator Mono, but there were some terms in there that would prevent him from ever being able to share it.In the beginning, Phil was doing every letter from scratch. He started with an h because it has an excellent shape that can be reused with many letters. Halfway through he learned that Glyphs app supports components, so he had to start over after a week!Phil encourages anyone who is not entirely satisfied with the fonts available to think about what they'd want to change. He recommends to start with Glyphs app and watch and read its related talks and tutorials and to start with a single letter to see how you like it!Transcript"Phil Pluckthun, Creator of Dank Mono" TranscriptResources:Dank MonoGlyphsPhil Pluckthun:TwitterGithubMedium BlogJohn Lindquist:TwitterWebsite

We are joined by Ives Hoorne, a developer at Catawiki and creator of code sandbox. Today he talks about how he began writing code, how Minecraft modding made him love it, his interest in the company Catawiki and how he taught himself web development to work there, and finally the future for his projects.Ives began coding at 11 years old. He was fascinated by secret languages, so he and his friend made a program in Visual Basic that would jumble text and another that would decipher the text. They would send these to each other as public facebook messages. It fell off after this project for awhile. After a few years, Ives got back into it when Minecraft came around, and he started writing mods for it.The success and popularity of Code Sandbox made Ives happy. He enjoys how it became popular and how some of the bigger names such as Dan Abramov started talking about it. Though Ives discussions about how this positive feedback caused him to attach his self-worth to the project, and how he had to let that go so he wouldn't be hurt by snarky feedback and other forms of negativity related to his project.There were a couple of surprises in the development of Code Sandbox. Code Sandbox stores all files and directories in their Postgres database. When they fork Code Sandbox, they copy all the files, directories, and sandboxes over. Ives thought this wouldn't scale but somehow they now have 400k sandboxes, and the database is only four gigabytes! One of the negative surprises was when there was an error in the sandbox when someone tries to share their sandbox, the preview service would try over and over again to take a snapshot. The following month their hosting bill was a dozen times the price as it usually was!Ives' first experience speaking at a conference was much better than he expected. When he was presenting, he noticed that he was talking with a bunch of people who were willing to listen to him. It was such a cool experience for him that he now loves speaking at conferences for him. Ives says he wants to start talking about things besides Code Sandbox, such as UI driven development for example. He says that it can be greatly improved, npm installing is still manually typing npm install package-name. He says that this can be made much better by being able to search for dependencies and directly add them with a single click.Finally, Ives talks about his plans for Code Sandbox. He plans on adding a dashboard because currently, it's very cumbersome to navigate to your sandbox. The dashboard will give you the ability to put sandboxes in directories organizing them that way. They are also managing offline support. Finally, they are adding team support so multiple people can all work on a sandbox at once.Transcript"Ives Van Hoorne, creator of CodeSandbox" TranscriptResources:Code SandboxcatawikiIves Van Hoorne:GithubWebsiteTwitterJohn Lindquist:TwitterWebsite

Today our guests and host talk about what pushed them to start living healthier lifestyles and what they are doing to maintain it. Leonard was 280 pounds when he was 23 at his heaviest, Taylor was 19 and 287 pounds, and John was 320 pounds.Leonard made a change due to having health issues with his heart, he got on P90x and after a year of it moved on to much better things, this got him to a muscular 190. John began because he failed a breathing test and only had 50% lung capacity, he got it into his head that he was a healthy person now and started using the elliptical and not eating junk food. Taylor was turning 20 as a milestone and decided to make a change by kicking soda, going vegetarian, riding his bike, and walking around more. His goal was never to get a six pack but just to live a healthier life.It has been five years since Leonard's initial push to get fit. He says that the most significant thing has been finding a sustainable diet and exercise program that he can do for the rest of his life, well into his 80s. P90x is not sustainable, he followed it precisely for six months, but he was physically burning out and felt terrible.Reading a book called the Primal Blueprint changed everything for Leonard. It teaches that manipulating your body composition is all about finding that balance of macronutrients and lifting heavy things while getting plenty of rest. Since he hated gyms and alpha attitudes, Leonard purchased a barbel, a squat cage, and some weights allowing him to take his body to the next level lifting heavy things three days a week. He blew through his weight stalls, cut down to sub 10% bodyfat, and developed significant musculature! Being a remote developer was the ideal environment for achieving these things due to the flexible schedule and ease of access to his home gym.Finally, things are wrapped up with Leonard explaining how having a healthy body and exercising have given him mental health benefits. The depression and anxiety he used to struggle with have been helped by the changes he has made. Taylor leaves us with the advice to do this for yourself, not for anyone else, and to take your time and not get into a big hurry with it. It takes time.Transcript"Health and Wellness for Developers" TranscriptResources:The Primal BlueprintLeangainsThe 7 Minute WorkoutThe 4 Hour BodyTaylor Bell:TwitterGithubLeonard Souza:WebsiteTwitterGithubJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

We are joined by Brian Vaughn. Brian is on Facebook's Core React Team. He also contributes to a lot of open source products in the javascript space.While Brian went to college to study Graphic Design, he ended up transitioning into programming. During college, he did a lot of graphic design consulting work, as a way to pay his way through school. Eventually, he agreed to create a website for a client and found that programming was a much better fit.Brian built react-virtualized during his time he spent at Treasure Data. The company is really into open source, and many of his team members had projects out there. When they were writing the console, they used Facebook's fixed data table.However, it did not have the features that they wanted. So Brian volunteered and built what would be the first version of react-virtualized.The exposure he got from sharing react-virtualized with the community is what landed him the job on the React Core Team. A developer's success tends to come from sharing the cool thing they built. Share your work everyone!Brian talks about React's goals with 17. Dan Abramov and Dominique have been working on creating an optimizing compiler for react components. The idea is that the compiler can read your components and optimize them. You will be able to keep writing React components in ways that make sense to you, and it will compile them and optimize at runtime. The team is also working on making functional components more powerful, so you do not have to reach out to class methods. It will be interesting to see what will shake out of their work when using async and the compiler.Transcript"Brian Vaughn, React Core Team" TranscriptResources:react-virtualizedPrepackBrian Vaughn:WebsiteTwitterGithubJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

John Lindquist asks Evan You when exactly did he become a developer? Evan talks about how the whole thing was a gradual process with no definite "I'm a developer now!" moment. Evan had a degree in art and art history, but he was finding it hard to find work. So Evan went back to school and enrolled in a design and technology program where everyone was forced to learn to code, this is where he first learned Javascript and found great enjoyment in using it.Google's Chrome experiments are what drove Evan to learn Javascript on a deeper level. Evan landed a job at Google Creative Labs after he created and put a portfolio of his prototypes out there once he thought himself to be good at programming. Google Creative Labs were looking for someone who could bring in design and build cool things quickly, they contacted Evan, and things sort of just fell together.Google Creative Labs was where Evan first started his work on Vue. As the project grew, the team started to use Angular 1. it had too many features that they didn't need. Evan also didn't like some of the design decisions that Angular 1 had. So, Evan started to work on a templating library just for his personal use. After six months, in February 2014, he officially released it as Vue.js, putting it out there for others for others to use. Initially, it was just a templating library but as the community grew and more features got requested Vue got built into the framework that it is today, being compared on the same level as React and Angular.Finally, Evan and John discuss Vue's future regarding single file components and proxies. Currently, there are still a lot of problems going with the compile on the fly approach. However, there is a spec being discussed called HTML Modules. Html Imports are getting dropped from the spec. There has been discussion around the HTML Modules spec that looks very similar to what single file components look like on the platform level.Evan plans to refactor Vue to leverage proxies. Currently, when Vue receives data, it will walk through all of its properties and convert them to getter/setters, this has caveats such as not tracking newly added properties when it finishes. Proxies allows them to get rid of these caveats. Proxy traps can track these changes!Transcript"Evan You, creator of Vue.js" TranscriptResourcesVue.js WebsiteHTML Import SpecAll About Reactivity in VueGoogle Chrome ExperimentsGoogle Creative Labs Five ProgramEvan YouGithubWebsiteBlogLinkedInTwitterPatreonJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

Today Joel catches up with Iheanyi Ekechukwu. Iheanyi is a Product Engineer currently working at DigitalOcean. He previously worked at IBM on Watson. They also talk about Iheanyi's education, stack, and side projectsIheanyi started out majoring in Computer Engineering, but switched to Computer Science after he figured out hardware just wasn't for him. He now lives and works in Brooklyn and spends most of his time coding (though he always brings his design skills to the table).Iheanyi's design comes from a dual degree program at Notre Dame, the college where he graduated. He noticed a lot of subpar interfaces coming from pure programmers, and he was frustrated with that, so he took his school's opportunity to learn design and apply it to his work. Even if he isn't a designer, he uses his skills daily to communicate with designers and make whatever he works on that much better.Iheanyi started using Ember back during college. He was frustrated by his school's class search interface, and he set out to improve it. Ember and Rails were like a match made in heaven for him, Ember having been authored by ex-Rails core team member, Yehuda Katz.Joel discusses with Iheanyi what he's currently using in his work. They get into GO, and how Iheanyi has enjoyed working with a statically typed language when doing back-end work. Not having to worry about full test coverage when refactoring has been great!Lastly, they talk about the various side projects Iheanyi has going. Such as Interface Lovers, a blog where top designers are interviewed and share their work music playlists. Also, Seeker, a job-board app that allows you to connect your strip account to it and have companies submit jobs.Transcript"Iheanyi Ekechukwu on education, programming, and managing side projects" TranscriptResourcesseekerInterface LoversCreative BlackChef WatsonIheanyi EkechukwuWebsitePodcastTwitterGithubegghead.ioJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

Joel interviews Michel Weststrate, author of Mobx and his new library, Immer. Today they get into the power of Immer, its early success on Github, common mistakes in state management, and what is next for Mobx.Immer is a light-weight, immutable state-management tool. Michel talks with Joel about some of its capabilities. Immer takes an object and a function and can track all the changes made to that object, it then gives you back the original object and a mutated copy. Immer can replace reducers, Michel calls them "producer" functions as they "produce" the new state.Joel then asks Michel "what makes state management so hard for people and are they overcomplicating it?" This question leads to Michel explaining that people don't think enough about the structure of their state enough up front. When you talk about state, there are three distinct concepts, values, references, and identities. However, people tend to only think of state purely as data. "You have to think about what is going to store it and what is going to reference it."Michel talks about how the mobx-state-tree fits into an application. Mobx is unopinionated; it doesn't tell you how to organize your stores. mobx-state-tree, however, is very explicit about the three concepts of state, values, references, and identities. With mobx-state-tree you organize your data into models and tell it how they relate to each other. It's all about consistently organizing your state!What's next for Mobx? Michel is currently working on some exciting features using proxies to make Mobx even more transparent than it is now. Michel has also been thinking about improving on asynchronous processes and how to leverage async actionables.Transcript"Michel Weststrate creator of Mobx and Immer Libraries for JavaScript" TranscriptResourcesImmerMobxMendixMichel WestrateMediumTwitterGithubegghead.ioJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

John Lindquist speaks with Jack Doyle, the creator of Greensock. They discuss many things including the motivation behind the creation of Greensock, managing GSAP forums, and how he transitioned from Flash to Javascript.Jack didn’t initially create Greensock to be a monetized business, but rather a helpful tool for other developers. He was working at an ad firm doing animation work, and it was there that he found the inspiration to create Greensock.The Robert Penner easing equations were like magic for Jack. Such simple equations that could create such cool effects were terrific. He talks about how he doesn't consider himself a math wiz in the slightest. The visual feedback that animation gives with the equations however really help him solidify the concepts.Jack's success turning his side project into a successful business is genuinely impressive. It was a stressful time for him; he was working for the agency still at the time. People don't feel safe with a product that might lose support any day, so he goes into the security behind a financially backed product and the factors that lead to him monetizing his business.Finally, there is a lengthy discussion on the challenges of having to maintain such a universal library that works on nearly every platform. There are a *lot- of edge cases. Jack also makes an effort to keep the API stable, so that questions that you find online from ten years ago can still apply to you today.Transcript"Jack Doyle, creator of Greensock" TranscriptResourcesGreensockGreensock ForumsGreensock Ease VisualizerJack DoyleTwitterGithubJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

John Lindquist interviews Sarah Drasner, a senior cloud developer over at Microsoft and a Vue core team member. She is also known for making super cool animations. Today they discuss what got her from an art background to a full-time developer, resistance to change, why Vue is terrific, and the GreenSock animation platform (GSAP).Sarah's background was very unusual for a developer. She graduated with a major in printmaking and became a scientific illustrator for a nature museum. She relates drawing to program in that it's just a series of formalized steps. Many people say they can't draw, but if they just opened up and learned the process they would become technically proficient in drawing!Sarah also talks about how awesome GSAP is. Through benchmarking, she found that GSAP performed even better than native technologies when working with SVGs. She then gets into MorphSVG, and how it lets you transition between two SVGs and all sorts of things to create transitions.Finally, she discusses how she stays motivated on all the many projects she works on. She likes to imagine the feeling she'll get when she finally finishes it and lets that drive her. She also uses positive rewards for little milestones, such as eating a treat she enjoys or sitting in her favorite chair and relaxing.Transcript"Sarah Drasner talks about SVG animation with Greensock and Vue.js" TranscriptResourcesegghead: Develop Basic Web Apps with Vue.jsCSS Tricks: Intro to VueGreensockSarah DrasnerWebsiteTwitterGithubeggheadJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

Joel Hooks interviews Andre Staltz, an open-source hacker, and creator of Cycle.js. Andre quit his job to become an open-source hacker and now spends 30% of his time on open-source development and 40% on the Scuttlebutt project.Today they discuss the current web's stagnation, the vision of the peer to peer web, and what André is doing to reach that goal. They'll also discuss things that are more in Javascript land, such as Cycle.js and the callbag spec.Scuttlebutt is a web protocol, like HTTP. It's like a vast array of JSON objects that sync between two computers whenever they are both on the same network; this enables data to never reach an outside server, a true peer to peer network! Andre goes into his work on the project and why he believes it is necessary for the future of the web.But what is the peer to peer web and why is it better/different than the internet as we know it? Andre says that we are reaching a point where innovation is beginning to stagnate, where it is just enough to have Google, Amazon, and Facebook. We have reached a sort of peak, and things aren't evolving further. Andre goes on to say that one of the fundamental things that the internet missed early on was that it didn't guarantee a p2p connection.Andre gives some examples of how you begin to use the p2p web today. The Beaker browser, for example, can still access HTTP and HTTPS connections. However, it can also use the DAT protocol. What is DAT? Well, it allows you to directly "seed" your website out, and others can "leech" it. Like torrents, the more peers there are accessing your website, the better! He also talks about Fritter, a twitter clone that only runs on DAT. You download the front-end and JSON files of what people are saying. You are even able to fork the front end and customize it for yourself!Back in Javascript land, Andre talks about how he plans to properly support the Pull data source in Cycle.js, as well as having web-workers in the middle. He also talks about why he's removing the last library dependency from Cycle.js, xstream, in favor of just using a set of callbag utilities.Transcript"Reactive Programming and the P2P Web with André Staltz" TranscriptResourcesScuttlebutt on GithubFritter on GithubCallbag Spec on GithubThe Beaker BrowserCycle.jsAndré StaltzWebsiteTwitterEggheadGithubJoel Hooks:TwitterWebsite

John Lindquist, co-founder of egghead.io, interviews Michael Jackson, co-creator of the react-router library, and co-founder of React Training. Michael discusses his experiences with running a massively popular repo with a relatively small code-base, pioneering of new features, and the future of CDN based importing.Michael gets into the early days of the react-router repo, and what he had to do to steward the library. "In open-source, you are not just coding all day." It's mostly management, with it being a relatively small code-base that had a lot of users created a situation where you had to have excellent communication and a lot of deliberateness with what you change.React is just Javascript, meaning that it enables multiple solutions and allows innovation within the library. It also means that there will be some discourse in the direction that things should go. Michael also discusses how to keep an open dialogue with the React community, even though doing so may pose some challenges.Michael is extremely excited about the future of the CDN and unpkg. He says that it would be awesome if Facebook or Pinterest only needed to load the package once, or even if individual modules were loaded instead of entire libraries. unpkg is excellent and predictable. No need to read the documentation on how to include the library in your app. No need to worry about builds, webpack, bundling. It brings back a fresh perspective and lets you just use the web!Transcript"React Router with Michael Jackson" TranscriptResourcesReact TrainingunpkgMichael JacksonMedium BlogTwitterGitHubJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

John Lindquist interviews Ben Clinkinbeard, a veteran developer and egghead instructor. He currently works as a consultant, focusing on data visualization. Ben discusses his career path, the benefits of having a mentor, and the importance of Data Driven Documents.Ben talks about how he worked on a multi-year project for the Colorado Department of Education where he was visualizing aggregate standardized testing data. He discusses his experience there and how it left a long lasting enjoyment of the craft. He also talks about why he chose D3 for his data visualization work, and how he feels that it's the best option in the JS space.A lot of companies have D3 as a "nice to have" but not many devs have that skill. There is a lot of demand but not enough supply. Seeing this, Ben created a screencast for egghead as our very first instructor! His interest in info-products sparked and he talks about his experience and the challenges he faced building his email course and then a full-fledged D3 and SVG book.Transcript"Data Viz using D3 with Ben Clinkinbeard" TranscriptResourcesD3 in 5 DaysBen ClinkinbeardEggheadGithubTwitterJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

John Lindquist has a conversation with the Mark Shust, an expert with Git and Docker. They talk about the 12-factor style of building an application and why devs should have a standard method.Often developers don’t have a standard process with git. Mark talks about the gitflow workflow, a way of working with features and managing how that feature gets merged into the code base.Though due to working with so many branches gitflow has its complexities. So, Mark trimmed it down and created a new workflow he calls git ship, which is gitflow without the development and hotfix branches.Before Docker, Mark was running through a dependency hell. Though with Docker Mark was just able to deploy an image and not have to worry about anything. Docker is like a VM but without all the memory overhead! You can even deploy as many images as you want at a time. You can run Postgres, Node servers, and also use entirely different languages in each image!Check out Mark’s course which covers all mentioned topics, Build a Twelve-Factor Node.js App with DockerTranscript"12-factor Javascript Applications using Docker with Mark Shust" TranscriptResourcesGitflowDockerMark’s 12-factor egghead CourseMark ShustGithubeggheadTwitterWebsiteJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

John talks with Juri Strumpflohner, an industry expert and angular trainer; and Rob Wormald, an Angular core development team member, getting into how Angular has evolved with the 2.0 release, powerful new features, their favorite libraries, and where the future is taking it.Angular has gotten much better under the hood. Rob talks about how the Angular team is working on really improving the code while still keeping the public API stable. He also talks about the team's ongoing debate on where to improve the code. Faster? Smaller? Currently, the team has chosen to work on making it smaller and has improved the bundle size of Angular.One of the new things about Angular that people are most excited about is the Elements and CLI Schematics libraries. Juri talks about how Elements opens up a "whole new world," allowing people not to have to resolve the same problems over and over again by letting them create reusable angular components.One of the hardest things to learn with Angular was the design and architecture patterns. Rob goes into how the team has improved the documentation, now actually getting into best practices and giving architecture guidelines.Finally, our guests get into their favorite Angular libraries. NgRx Formly being the big favorite. NgRx Formly is a beautiful library that allows devs to create powerful reactive forms. Rob also highly recommends the Angular Schematics library. It is a powerful low-level tool that allows you to create templates and code generators. You can even use it in conjunction with the Angular CLI to extend it or modify it for your own needs!Transcript"Angular Web Applications with Juri Strumpflohner and Rob Wormald (Angular Core Team)" TranscriptResourcesAngular 2Angular ElementsAngular SchematicsNgRxAngular Reactive FormsRob WormaldTwitterGithubEgghead CoursesJuri StrumpflohnerTwitterBlogEgghead Courses

Kent C. Dodds, a leading React expert, speaks with John Lindquist and Joel Hooks, the co-founders of egghead, about how React is a fantastic technology to learn for both newcomers to programming and Javascript grey-beards alike.Kent talks about how great componentizing your code is. No longer are you going in and writing HTML for all your pages, you are now writing powerful and useful javascript components.The concepts that React got built upon don't just apply to React code. Joel talks about how he taught the React style of componentized code, but using Angular in the workshops he has run.Kent and Joel also discuss the importance of ES6. There are still new Javascript tutorials that are get written in ES5, Joel explains why this is shortsighted. The future of Javascript is moving to ES6. Not only that but ES6 is an excellent improvement over ES5.New and powerful features can be leveraged with it, spread syntax, arrow functions, modules. These features are the direction Javascript is moving.So check it out. Learn this new technology and see that it's not so weird, with Kent's new courses The Beginner's Guide to ReactJS and Advanced React Component PatternsTranscript"Learning React with Kent C. Dodds" TranscriptResourcesThe Beginner's Guide to ReactJSAdvanced React Component PatternsLearn ES6codesandbox.ioReact DocumentationKent C. Doddskentcdodds.comTwitterGithubJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsiteJoel HooksTwitterWebsite

Joel Hooks co-founder of egghead.io, interviews Dan Abramov, co-author of Redux. They discuss the "Redux phenomenon" and the notion of improving the developer experience.Dan's Redux course has been the most popular course on egghead.io for years. What caused Redux to blow up as it did? Dan is here today to talk about the problems he faced that inspired him to write this framework, and all the experiences he had that led to it.Joel and Dan talk about how quickly functional programming concepts pushed their way into the mainstream. When they were younger object oriented was how you programmed, Gang of Four was like their bible. However, Dan talks about the problems he was facing and how they inspired him to create Redux.Dan's belief that user experience starts with the developer also inspired Redux. The notion that a developer should suffer is silly. Having a tool that is a joy to use and allows a programmer just to create things is invaluable.The frustration of getting started with React was enormous. You had to deal with Webpack and install packages manually and hope that you didn't mess up. All this was hugely daunting for beginners especially. create-react-app was the solution for that. Allowing an easy way to get React going with a dev server and all, it let you just get in there and start building components.Finally, Joel and Dan leave us with a note to those seeking to learn to program well. Read GitHub like it's a blog. Read the commits, the issues, the PR's, all of it. You might not understand what is going on now, but you will build fluency and eventually you'll understand well enough that you can start to answer questions and contribute.Transcript"Dan Abramov, co-author of Redux" TranscriptResourcesGetting Started with ReduxBuilding React Applications with Idiomatic ReduxGang of FourGame Programming PatternsDan AbramovTwitterGithubBlogJoel HooksTwitterWebsite

Will Button and Miller Hooks, two experienced Python developers, have a conversation about the differences between Python and Javascript, and what that means to a new programmer.Python is downright awesome for a beginner, due to it being more readable and there not being a mountain of frameworks that all seem like completely separate languages. Not only that but there are amazing tools that enable a beginner to just jump right in and create.Python is learnable to the point that even people outside of software development are using it as a tool to automate annoying manual tasks. Scripting away all the hard repetitive tasks at work until everyone thinks they are some kind of wizard.One of the tools mentioned in the podcast is the wonderful Cookiecutter Django. A great tool for beginners who don't want to deal with a million installs and an array of different skills just to get a project deployed.The other tool mentioned, The Jupyter Notebook, gets python up and running right in your browser. Inline code and rich text documentation allow you to write code and see the results inline, even giving you the power to write documentation around the output.Check out Will's new egghead course, Intro to Python, and jump into this rich, beginner-friendly world.Transcript"Getting into Python" TranscriptResourcesJupyter NotebookCookie-cutter DjangoMiller HooksGithubWill Buttonwillbutton.coTwitterGithubJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

In this episode John sits down to talk to Paul Frend and Brian Lonsdorf (aka Dr Boolean) about functional programming, and its practical use cases on the job. Paul has released a new course on egghead.io covering the topic of transducers that is the spark for this conversation.Transducers are a a useful pattern that can deliver performance and readability, but are often misunderstood or obscure to many programmers. Along with transducers you'll learn more about monoids, folds, lenses and so much more.Transcript"Functional JavaScript with Paul Frend and Brian Lonsdorf (Dr Boolean)" TranscriptResourcesProfessor Frisby Introduces Composable Functional JavaScriptQuickly Transforming Data with Transducersflunc opticspartial.lensesBrian LonsdorfTwitterGithubegghead.ioPaul FrendTwitterGithubegghead.ioJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite

Two leading TypeScript experts, Marius Schulz and Basarat Ali Syed, discuss their initial reactions and excitement for TypeScript and how it has evolved and earned their trust over the years. TypeScript has been the main focus of many of their products and trainings and they’ve gained their expertise by closely following the project and digging deep into the TypeScript compiler code. As TypeScript continues to improve with features, tooling, and performance they share their opinions on what they’re most looking forward to in the near future.Transcript"Using TypeScript with Basarat and Marius Schulz" TranscriptResourcesAdvanced Static Types with TypeScriptMarius SchulzTwitterGithubWebsiteBasaratTwitterGithubWebsiteJohn LindquistTwitteregghead.ioGithubWebsite