503: Epic Web and Remix with Kent C. Dodds

Kent C. Dodds, a JavaScript engineer and teacher known for Epic Web Dev and the Remix web framework, reflects on his journey in tech, including his tenure at PayPal and his transition to full-time teaching.

Kent's passion for teaching is a constant theme throughout. He transitioned from corporate roles to full-time education, capitalizing on his ability to explain complex concepts in an accessible manner. This transition was marked by the creation of successful online courses like "Testing JavaScript and Epic React," which have significantly influenced the web development community.

An interesting aspect of Kent's career is his involvement with Remix, including his decision to leave Shopify (which acquired Remix) to return to teaching, which led to the development of his latest project, Epic Web Dev, an extensive and innovative web development course.

This interview provides a comprehensive view of Kent C. Dodds's life and career, showcasing his professional achievements in web development and teaching, his personal life as a family man, and his unique upbringing in a large family.

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• Epic Web
• Remix
• Follow Kent C. Dodds on LinkedIn or X. Visit his website at kentcdodds.com.
• Follow thoughtbot on X or LinkedIn.

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Transcript:

WILL: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. And with me today is Kent C. Dodds. Kent is a JavaScript engineer and teacher. He has recently released a massive workshop called epicweb.dev. And he is the father of four kids. Kent, thank you for joining me.

KENT: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

WILL: Yeah. And it's an honor for me to have you. I am a huge fan. I think you're the one that taught me how to write tests and the importance of it. So, I'm excited to talk to you and just pick your brain and learn more about you.

KENT: Oh, thank you.

WILL: Yeah. So, I just want to start off just: who is Kent? What do you like to do? Tell us about your family, your hobbies, and things like that.

KENT: Yeah, sure. So, you mentioned I'm the father of four kids. That is true. We are actually expecting our fifth child any day now. So, we are really excited to have our growing family. And when I'm not developing software or material for people to learn how to develop software, I'm spending time with my family. I do have some other hobbies and things, but I try to share those with my family as much as I can.

So, it's starting to snow around here in Utah. And so, the mountains are starting to get white, and I look forward to going up there with my family to go skiing and snowboarding this season. During the summertime, I spend a lot of time on my one-wheel just riding around town and bring my kids with me when I can to ride bikes and stuff, too. So, that's sort of the personal side of my life.

And then, professionally, I have been in this industry developing for the web professionally for over a decade. Yeah, web development has just worked out super well for me. I kind of focused in on JavaScript primarily. And when I graduated with a master's degree in Information Systems at Brigham Young University, I started working in the industry.

I bounced around to a couple of different companies, most of them you don't know, but you'd probably be familiar with PayPal. I was there for a couple of years and then decided to go full-time on teaching, which I had been doing as, like, a part-time thing, or, like, on the side all those years. And yeah, when teaching was able to sustain my family's needs, then I just switched full-time. So, that was a couple of years ago that I did that. I think like, 2018 is when I did that.

I took a 10-month break to help Remix get off the ground, the Remix web framework. They got acquired by Shopify. And so, I went back to full-time teaching, not that I don't like Shopify, but I felt like my work was done, and I could go back to teaching. So, that's what I'm doing now, full-time teacher.

WILL: Wow. Yes, I definitely have questions around that.

KENT: [laughs] Okay.

WILL: So many. But I want to start back...you were saying you have four kids. What are their ages?

KENT: Yeah, my oldest is 11, youngest right now is 6, and then we'll have our fifth one. So, all four of the kids are pretty close in age. And then my wife and I thought we were done. And then last December, we kind of decided, you know what? I don't think we're done. I kind of think we want to do another. So, here we go. We've got a larger gap between my youngest and the next child than we have between my oldest and the youngest child.

WILL: [chuckles]

KENT: So, we're, like, starting a new family, or [laughs] something.

WILL: Yeah [laughs]. I just want to congratulate you on your fifth child. That's amazing.

KENT: Thank you.

WILL: Yeah. How are you feeling about that gap?

KENT: Yeah, we were pretty intentional about having our kids close together because when you do that, they have built-in friends that are always around. And as they grow older, you can do the same sorts of things with them. So, like, earlier this year, we went to Disneyland, and they all had a great time. They're all at the good age for that. And so, they actually will remember things and everything.

Yeah, we were pretty certain that four is a good number for us and everything. But yeah, we just started getting this nagging feeling we wanted another one. So, like, the fact that there's a big gap was definitely not in the plan. But I know a lot of people have big gaps in their families, and it's just fine. So, we're going to be okay; just it's going to change the dynamic and change some plans for us. But we're just super excited to have this next one.

WILL: I totally understand what you mean by having them close together. So, I have three little ones, and my oldest and my youngest share the same exact birthday, so they're exactly three years apart.

KENT: Oh, wow. Yeah, that's actually...that's fun. My current youngest and his next oldest brother are exactly two years apart. They share the same birthday, too [laughs].

WILL: Wow. You're the first one I've heard that their kids share a birthday.

KENT: Yeah, I've got a sister who shares a birthday with her son. And I think we've got a couple of birthdays that are shared, but I also have 11 brothers and sisters [laughs]. And so, I have got a big family, lots of opportunity for shared birthdays in my family.

WILL: Yeah, I was actually going to ask you about that. How was it? I think you're the 11th. So, you're the youngest of 11?

KENT: I'm the second youngest. So, there are 12 of us total. I'm number 11.

WILL: Okay, how was that growing up with that many siblings?

KENT: I loved it. Being one of the youngest I didn't really...my experience was very different from my older siblings. Where my older siblings probably ended up doing a fair bit of babysitting and helping around the house in that way, I was the one being babysat. And so, like, by the time I got to be, like, a preteen, or whatever, lots of my siblings had already moved out. I was already an uncle by the time I was six.

I vaguely remember all 12 of us being together, but most of my growing up was just every other year; I'd have another sibling move out of the house, which was kind of sad. But they'd always come back and visit. And now I just have an awesome relationship with every one of my family members. And I have something, like, 55 nieces and nephews or more. Yeah, getting all of us together every couple of years for reunions is really a special experience. It's a lot of fun.

WILL: Yeah. My mom, she had 12 brothers and sisters.

KENT: Whoa.

WILL: And I honestly miss it because we used to get together all the time. I used to live a lot closer. Most of them are in Louisiana or around that area, and now I'm in South Florida, so I don't get to see them as often. But yeah, I used to love getting together. I had so many cousins, and we got in so much trouble...and it was --

KENT: [laughs]

WILL: We loved it [laughs].

KENT: Yeah, that's wonderful. I love that.

WILL: Yeah. Well, I want to start here, like, how did you get your start? Because I know...I was doing some research, and I saw that, at one point, you were an AV tech. You were a computer technician. You even did maintenance. Like, what was the early start of your career like, and how did you get into web dev?

KENT: I've always been very interested in computers, my interest was largely video games. So, when I was younger, I had a friend who was a computer programmer or, like, would program stuff. We had visions of...I don't know if you're familiar with RuneScape, but it's this game that he used to play, and I would play a little bit. It was just a massive online multiplayer game. And so, we had visions of building one of those and having it just running in the background, making us money, as if that's how that works [laughter]. But he tried to teach me programming, and I just could not get it at all.

And so I realized at some point that playing video games all the time wasn't the most productive use of my time on computers, and if I wanted my parents to allow me to be on computers, I needed to demonstrate that I could be productive in learning, and making things, and stuff. So, I started blogging and making videos and just, like, music videos.

My friend, who was the programmer, he was into anime, or anime, as people incorrectly pronounce it. And [laughs] there was this website called amv.com or .org or something. It's Anime Music Videos. And so, we would watch these music videos. And I'd say, "I want to make a music video with Naruto." And so, I would make a bunch of music videos from the Naruto videos I downloaded, and that was a lot of fun. I also ran around with a camera to do that.

And then, with the blog, I wrote a blog about Google and the stuff that Google was, like, doing because I just thought it was a fascinating company. I always wanted to work at Google. In the process of, like, writing the blog, I got exposed to CSS and HTML, but I really didn't do a whole lot of programming. I also did a little bit of Google Docs. Spreadsheets had some JavaScript macros-type things that you could do. So, I did a little bit of that, but I never really got too far into programming.

Then I go to college, I'm thinking, you know what? I think I want to be a video editor. I really enjoy that. And so, my brother, who at the time was working at Micron, he did quality assurance on the memory they were making. So, he would build test automation, software and hardware for testing the memory they build. And so, he recommended that I go into electrical engineering. Because what he would say is, "If you understand computers at that foundational level, you can do anything with computers." And I'd say, "Well, I like computers. And if I go into video editing, I'm going to need to understand computers, too. So yeah, sure, let's let's do that."

I was also kind of interested in 3D animation and stuff like that, too. Like, I wasn't very good at it, but I was kind of interested in that, too. So, I thought, like, having a really good foundation on computers would be a good thing for me. Well, I was only at school for a semester when I took a break to go on a mission for my church [inaudible 09:42] mission. And when I got back and started getting back into things, I took a math refresher course. That was, like, a half a credit. It wasn't really a big thing, but I did terrible in it. I did so bad.

And it was about that time that I realized, you know what? I've been thinking my whole life that I'm good at math. And just thinking back, I have no idea why or any justification for why I thought I was good at math because in high school, I always struggled with it. I spent so much time with it. And in fact, my senior year, I somehow ended up with a free period of nothing else to do. I don't know how this happened. But, I used that free period to go to an extra edition of my calculus class. So, I was going to twice as much calculus working, like, crazy hard and thinking that I was good at this, and I superduper was not [laughter].

And so, after getting back from my mission and taking that refresher course, I was like, you know what? Math is a really important part of engineering, and I'm not good at it at all, obviously. And so, I've got to pivot to something else. Well, before my mission, as part of the engineering major, you needed to take some programming classes. So, there was a Java programming class that I took and a computer systems class that included a lot of programming.

The computer systems was very low level, so we were doing zeros and ones. And I wrote a program in zeros and ones. All that it did was it would take input from the keyboard, and then spit that back out to you as output. That was what it did. But still, you know, many lines of zeros and ones and just, like, still, I can't believe I did that [laughter]. And then we upgraded from that to Assembly, and what a godsend that was [laughs], how wonderful Assembly was after working in machine code. But then we upgraded from that to C, and that's as far as that class went. And then, yeah, my Java class, we did a bunch of stuff.

And I just remember thinking or really struggling to find any practicality to what we were doing. Like, in the Java class, we were implementing the link to list data structure. And I was like, I do not care about this. This does not make any sense. Why should I care? We were doing these transistor diagrams in the computer systems class. And why do I care about that? I do not care about this at all. Like, this is not an interesting thing for me. So, I was convinced computer programming was definitely not what I wanted to do.

So, when I'm switching from electrical engineering, I'm thinking, well, what do I do? And my dad convinced me to try accounting. That was his profession. He was a certified public accountant. And so, I said, "Okay, I'll try that." I liked the first class, and so I switched my major to go into the business school for accounting. I needed to take the next accounting class, and I hated that so much. It was just dull and boring. And I'm so glad that I got out of that because [laughs] I can't imagine doing anything like that.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: But as part of switching over to business school, I discovered information systems. What's really cool about that is that we were doing Excel spreadsheets and building web pages. But it was all, like, with a practical application of business and, like, solving business problems. And then, I was like, oh, okay, so I can do stuff with computers in a practical setting, and that's what got me really interested. So, I switched, finally, to information systems–made it into that program. And I was still not convinced I wanted to do programming. I just wanted to work with computers.

What ended up happening is the same time I got into the information systems program, I got married to my wife, and then I got this part-time job at a company called the More Good Foundation. It's a non-profit organization. And one of my jobs was to rip DVDs and upload those videos to YouTube, and then also download videos from one site and upload those to YouTube as well. And so, I was doing a lot of stuff with YouTube and video stuff.

And as part of my information systems class, I was taking another Java class. At that same time, I was like, you know, what I'm doing at work is super boring. Like, can you imagine your job is to put in a [inaudible 13:45] and then click a couple of buttons? And, like, it was so boring and error-prone, too. Like, okay, now I've got to type this out and, you know, I got to make sure it's the same, try and copy-paste as much as I can. And it was not fun.

And so, I thought, well, I'm pretty sure there are pieces of this that I could automate. And so, with the knowledge that I was getting in my information systems programming class, that was another Java class, I decided to write a program that automated a bunch of my stuff. And so, I asked my boss, like, "Can I automate this with writing software?" And I'm so glad that they said I could.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: Because by the end of it, I had built software that allowed me to do way more than I ever could have before. I ended up uploading thousands of videos to their YouTube channels, which would have taken years to do. And they ended up actually being so happy with me. They had me present to the board of directors when they were asking for more money [laughs] and stuff. And it was really awesome. But still, I was not interested in being a programmer. Programming, to me, was just a means to an end.

WILL: Oh, wow.

KENT: Yeah, I guess there was just something in me that was like, I am not a programmer. So, anyway, further into the program of information systems, I interned as a business intelligence engineer over that next summer, and I ended up staying on there. And while I was supposed to be a business intelligence engineer, I did learn a lot about SQL, and star schema, and denormalized databases to optimize for read speed and everything. I learned a lot about that. But I just kept finding myself in positions where I would use my programming experience to automate things that were problematic for us in the business realm. And this was all still Java.

It was there that I finally realized, you know what? I think I actually do want to be a programmer. I actually really do enjoy this. And I like that it's practical, and it makes sense for me, so…

WILL: What year was that?

KENT: That would have been 2012. Then I got a new job where my job was actually to be a programmer at a company called Domo, where they do business intelligence, actually. So, it got my foot in the door a little bit since I was a business intelligence engineer already. I got hired on, actually, as a QA engineer doing automated testing, but I never really got into that. And they shifted me over pretty quick into helping with the web app.

And that is when I discovered JavaScript, and the whole, like, everything flooded out from there. I was like, wow, I thought I liked programming, but I had no idea how fun it could be. Because I felt like the chains had been broken. I no longer have to write Java. I can write JavaScript, and this was just so much better.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: And so, yeah, I was there for a year and a half before I finally graduated. And I took a little break to work at USAA for a summer internship. And when I came back, I had another year and then converted to full-time. And so, yeah, there's my more detail than you were probably looking for, story of how I got into programming [laughs].

WILL: No, I actually love it because like I said, I've used your software, your teachings, all that. And it's amazing to hear the story of how you got there. Because I feel like a lot of times, we just see the end result, but we don't know the struggle that you went through of even trying to find your way through what your purpose was, what you're trying to do. Because, at one point, you said you were trying to do accounting, then you were trying to do something else. So, it's amazing to see, like, when it clicked for you when you got into JavaScript, so that's amazing.

KENT: Yeah, it is kind of funny to think, like, some people have the story of, like, I knew I wanted to be a programmer from the very beginning, and it's just kind of funny for me to think back and, like, I was pretty certain I didn't want to be a programmer.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: Like, not only did I, like, lots of people will say, "I never really thought about it, and then I saw it, and it was great." But I had thought about it. And I saw it, and I thought it was awful [laughter]. And so, yeah, I'm really glad that it worked out the way it did, though, because programming has just been a really fun thing. Like, I feel so blessed to be doing something that I actually enjoy doing.

Like so many of our ancestors, they would go to work because they cared about their family and they just wanted to feed their family. I'm so grateful to them for doing that. I am so lucky that I get to go to work to take care of my family, but also, I just love doing it.

WILL: Yeah, I feel the same way, so yeah, totally agree. After you found out about JavaScript, when did you figure out that you want to teach JavaScript? What was that transition like?

KENT: I've been teaching for my whole life. It's ingrained in my religion. Even as a kid, you know, I'd prepare a talk, a five-minute talk, and stand up in front of 30 of my peers. And even when you're an early teenager, you get into speaking in front of the entire congregation. It took a while before I got good enough at something, enough hubris to think that people would care about what I have to say --

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: Outside of my religion where, like, they're sitting there, and I've been asked to speak, and so they're going to listen to me. And so, when I started getting pretty good at programming, I decided, hey, I want to teach this stuff that I'm learning. And so, when I was still at school and working at Domo, the business intelligence company, one of our co-workers, Dave Geddes, he put together a workshop to teach AngularJS because we were migrating from Backbone to Angular. And I asked him if I could use his workshop material to teach my classmates.

This was, like, soon after ng-conf, the first ng-conf, which my co-workers at Domo actually put on. So, I wasn't involved in the organization, but I was very much present when it was being organized. I attended there and developed a relationship with Firebase with the people there. I was actually...they had a developer evangelist program, which they called Torchbearers or something. And actually, that was my idea to call them Torchbearers. I think they wanted to call us torches, and I'm like, that just doesn't make sense.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: I developed a relationship with them. And I asked them, "Hey, I want to teach my classmates AngularJS. Would you be interested in sponsoring some pizza and stuff?" And they said, "Yeah, we'll send you stickers, and hot sauce, and [laughs] a bunch of..." Like, they sent us, like, headphones [laughs] and stuff. So, I was like, sweet. I taught my classmates AngularJS in a workshop, brought a bunch of pizza, and it was, you know, just an extracurricular thing.

And actually, the recording is still on my YouTube channel, so if you want to go look at one of my early YouTube videos. I was very into publishing video online. So, if you are diligent, you'll be able to find some of my very early [laughter] videos from my teenage years.

But anyway, so, yes, I've been teaching since the very beginning. As soon as I graduated from college, I started speaking at meetups. I'd never been to a meetup before, and I just saw, oh, they want a speaker. I can talk about something.

WILL: Wow.

KENT: And not realizing that, like, meetups are literally always looking for speakers. This wasn't some special occasion.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: And one of the meetups I spoke at was recorded and put on YouTube. And the guy who started Egghead io, John Lindquist, he is local here in Utah. And he saw that I spoke at that meetup, but he wasn't able to attend. So, he watched the recording, and he thought it was pretty good. He thought I would do a good job turning that into a video course. And that first video course paid my mortgage.

WILL: Wow.

KENT: And I was blown away. This thing that I had been doing just kind of for fun speaking at meetups, and I realized, oh, I can actually, like, make some legit good money out of this. From there, I just started making more courses on the side after I put the kids to bed. My wife is like, "Hey, I love you, but I want you to stay away for now because I've just been with these tiny babies all day.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: And I just need some alone time."

WILL: Yes.

KENT: And so, I was like, okay.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: I'll just go and work on some courses. And so, I spent a lot of time for the next couple of years doing course material on the side. I reached out to Frontend Masters and just told them, "Hey, I've been doing courses for Egghead." I actually met Marc Grabanski at a conference a couple of years before. And so, we established a little bit of relationship. And I just said, "Hey, I want to come and teach there." So, I taught at Frontend Masters. I started putting on my own workshops at conferences.

In fact, just a few months after graduating, I got accepted to speak at a conference. And only after I was accepted did I realize it was in Sweden [laughter]. I didn't think to look where in the world this conference was. So, that was my first international trip, actually, and I ended up speaking there. I gave, actually, two talks. One of them was a three-hour talk.

WILL: Whoa.

KENT: Which was, yeah, that was wild.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: And then, yeah, I gave a two-day workshop for them. And then, I flew straight from there to Amsterdam to give another talk and also do a live in-person podcast, which I'd been running called ngAir, an Angular podcast. It just kept on building from there until finally, I created testingjavascript.com. And that was when I realized, oh, okay, so this isn't just a thing I can use to pay my mortgage, and that's nice. This is, like, a thing I can do full-time. Because I made more with Testing JavaScript than I made from my PayPal salary.

WILL: Oh wow.

KENT: I was like, oh, I don't need both of these things. I would rather work half as much one full-time job; that's what I want, one full-time job and make enough to take care of my family. And I prefer teaching. So, that's when I left PayPal was when I released Testing JavaScript.

WILL: Wow. So, for me, I think so many times the imposter syndrome comes up whenever I want to teach or do things at the level you're saying you're doing. Because I love teaching. I love mentoring. I remember when I came into development, it was hard. I had to find the right person to help me mentor. So now, I almost made a vow to myself that if someone wants to learn and they're willing to put in the energy, I'm going to sit down however long it takes to help them because I remember how hard it was for me whenever I was doing it.

So, you said in 2014, you were only a couple years doing development. How did you overcome impostor syndrome to stand in front of people, teach, go around the world, and give talks and podcasts? Like, how did you do that portion?

KENT: Part of it is a certain level of hubris like I said. Like, you just have to be willing to believe that somebody's going to care. You know, the other part of it is, it's a secret to getting really, really good at something. They sometimes will say, like, those who can't do teach. That's total baloney because it requires a lot of being able to do to get you in a position where you can teach effectively. But the process of teaching makes you better at the process of doing as well. It's how you solidify your experience as a whatever. So, if you're a cook, you're really good at that; you will get better by teaching other people how to cook.

There's an element of selfishness in what I do. I just want to get really, really good at this, and so I'm going to teach people so that I can. So yeah, I think there's got to be also, like, a little bit of thick skin, too, because people are going to maybe not like what you have to share or think that you're posing or whatever. Learn how to let that slide off you a little bit.

But another thing is, like, as far as that's concerned, just being really honest about what your skill set is. So, if somebody asks me a question about GraphQL, I'm going to tell them, "Well, I did use GraphQL at PayPal, but I was pretty limited. And so, I don't have a lot of experience with that," and then I'll answer their question. And so, like, communicating your limitations of knowledge effectively and being okay being judged by people because they're going to judge you. It just is the way it is. So, you just have to learn how to cope well with that.

There are definitely some times where I felt like I was in over my head on some subjects or I was involved in a conversation I had no business being there. I actually felt that a lot when I was sent as PayPal's delegate to the TC39 meetings. Wow, what am I doing here? I've only been in the industry for, like, two or three years at [laughter] that point. It takes a certain level of confidence in your own abilities. But also, like, being realistic about your inexperience as well, I think, is important too.

WILL: Yeah, I know that you had a lot of success, and I want to cover that next. But were there any failures when you were doing those teaching moments?

KENT: Years ago, Babel was still a new thing that everybody was using to compile their JavaScript with new syntax features down to JavaScript that the browser could run. There was ES Modules that was introduced, and lots of us were doing global window object stuff. And then we moved to, like, defining your dependencies with r.js or RequireJS. And then, there was CommonJS, and Universal Module Definition, and that sort of thing. So, ECMAScript modules were very exciting. Like, people were really interested in that. And so, Babel added support to it. It would compile from the module syntax down to whatever you wanted: CommonJS or...well, I'm pretty sure it could compile to RequireJS, but I compiled it to CommonJS.

And so, there was a...yeah, I would say it's a bug in Babel at that time, where it would allow you to write your ES modules in a way that was not actually spec-compliant. It was incorrect. So, I would say export default some object, and then in another module, I would say import. And then, I'd select properties off of the object that I exported, that default I exported. That was allowed by Babel, but it is superduper, not how ECMAScript modules work.

Well, the problem is that I taught, like, a ton of people how to use ECMAScript modules this way. And when I realized that I was mistaken, it was just, like, a knife to the heart because I was, like, I taught so many people this wrong thing. And so, I wrote a blog post about it. I gave a big, long talk titled “More Than You Want to Know About ECMAScript Modules,” where I talk about that with many other things as well. And so, yeah, just trying to do my part to make up for the mistake that I made. So yes, I definitely have had mistakes like that.

There's also, like, the aspect that technology moves at a rapid pace. And so, I have old things that I would show people how to do, which they still work just as well as they worked back then. But I wouldn't recommend doing it that way because we have better ways now. For some people, the old way to do it is the only way they can do it based on the constraints they have and the tools that they're using and stuff. And so, it's not, like, it's not valuable at all. But it is a struggle to make sure that people understand that, like, this is the way that you do it if you have to do it this way, but, like, we've got better ways.

WILL: I'm glad you shared that because it helps. And I love how you say it: when I make a mistake, I own up to it and let everyone know, "Hey, I made a mistake. Let's correct it and move on." So, I really like that.

KENT: Yeah, 100%.

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WILL: I want to go back to what you were saying. When you left PayPal, you released Testing JavaScript. How did you come up with the idea to write a Testing JavaScript course? And, two, how long did it take to take off and be successful?

KENT: That was a pretty special thing, honestly. In 2018, I had put together a bunch of workshops related to testing. There was this conference called Assert(js) that invited me to come, taught them. In the year prior, I went to Midwest JS and taught how to test React. I had this material about testing. I'd gotten into testing just because of open-source stuff. I didn't want to have to manually go through all my stuff again every time I wanted to check for breakages and stuff, so that got me into testing. And whatever I'm into is what I'm going to teach. So, I started teaching that testing.

And then my friend, Ryan Florence, put together...he separated from Michael Jackson with React Training, and built his own thing called Workshop.me. He asked me to join up with him. And he would, like, put together these workshops for me, and I would just...my job was just to show up and teach. And so, I did that. I have a picture, actually, in this blog post, The 2010s Decade in Review, of me in front of 60 people at a two-day workshop at Trulia in San Francisco.

WILL: Oh, wow.

KENT: And this is where I was teaching my testing workshop. Well, what's interesting about that photo is that two weeks before that, I had gotten really frustrated with the tool that everybody uses or used at the time for testing React, and that was Enzyme. And so I was preparing this workshop or working on it. I had already delivered it a number of times, but I was working on it, improving it, as I always do [laughs] when I'm preparing.

WILL: [laughs]

KENT: I can never give the same workshop twice, I guess. And I was just so frustrated that Enzyme was so difficult to work with. And, like, I was going to prepare this document that said, "Here are all the things you should never do with Enzyme. Like, Enzyme encourages you to do these things; you should not do these things. And let me explain why." And I just hated that I needed a document like that.

And so, I tweeted, "I'm seriously starting to think that I should make my own very small testing lib and drop Enzyme entirely. Most of Enzyme's features are not at all useful and many damaging to my test bases. I'd rather have something smaller that encourages better practices." And so, I tweeted that March 15th, 2018. I did that. I did exactly that.

What I often do in my workshops is I try to build the abstraction that we're going to use so that you can use it better. So, I was, like, building Enzyme, and I realized the jump between what I had built, the little utilities that I had built as part of the workshop, from that to Enzyme was just a huge leap. And so, I thought, you know what? These utilities that I have built to teach Enzyme are actually really good. What if I just turned that into a testing utility? And that became Testing Library, which, fast forward to today, is the number one testing library for React. And it's recommended for testing React, and Vue, and Angular.

The ideas that are in Testing Library got adopted by Playwright. If you're writing tests for anything in the browser, you are very likely using something that was either originally developed by me or inspired by the work that I did. And it all came from that testing workshop that I was working on. So, with that, I had not only that testing workshop; I had a number of other workshops around testing.

And so I approached Joel Hooks from Egghead.io. I say, "Hey, I'm getting ready to record a bunch of Egghead courses. I've got, like, six or seven courses I want to do." And he'd seen my work before, you know, I was a very productive course creator. And he said, "Hey, how about we, you know, we've been thinking about doing this special thing. How about we make a website just dedicated to your courses?" And I said, "That sounds great."

I was a little bit apprehensive because I knew that putting stuff on Egghead meant that I had, like, a built-in audience and everything that was on Egghead, so this would be really the first time of me just branching out with video material on my own. Because, otherwise, if it wasn't Egghead, it was Frontend Masters, and there was the built-in audience there. But yeah, we decided to go for it. And we released it in, I think, November.

And it was that first week...which is always when you make the most is during the launch period. But that launch week, I made more than my PayPal salary for the entire year. And so, that was when I realized, oh, yeah, okay, let's go full-time on this because I don't need two PayPal salaries. I just need one. And then I can spend more time with my family and stuff. And especially as the kids are getting older, they're staying up later, and I want to hang out with them instead of with my computer at night [laughter], and so...

WILL: I love how you explain that because I came in around 2018, 2019. And I remember Enzyme, and it was so confusing, so hard to work with, especially for, you know, a junior dev that's just trying to figure it out. And I remember Testing JavaScript and then using that library, and it was just so much easier to, like, grab whatever you needed to grab. Those utils made the biggest difference, and still today, they make a huge difference. So yes, I just resonate with what you're saying. That's amazing.

KENT: Aw, thank you so much.

WILL: Yeah. You did Testing JavaScript. And then what was your next course that you did?

KENT: I quit PayPal, go full-time teaching. That first year, I actually did an update to Testing JavaScript. There were a couple of changes in Testing Library and other things that I needed to update it for. And then I started working on Epic React. So, while I was doing all this testing stuff, I was also very into React, creating a bunch of workshops around that. I was invited to speak all over the world to talk about React. And I had a couple of workshops already for React. So, I was invited to give workshops at these conferences about React.

And so, I thought, you know, let's do this again, and we'll do it with React this time. The other thing was, I'd never really planned on being the testing guy. It just kind of happened, and I actually didn't really like it either. I wanted to be more broad than just testing. So, that kind of motivated me to say, hey, let's do something with React to be a little bit more broad.

Yeah, so I worked on putting those workshops together and delivered them remotely. And then, yeah, COVID hit, and just really messed everything up [laughs] really bad. So, I had everything done on my end for Epic React by March of 2020, which is, like, immediately after COVID got started, in the U.S. at least. And so, yeah, then we actually didn't end up releasing Epic React until October that year, which, honestly [laughs], was a little bit frustrating for me because I was like, "Hey, guys, I have recorded all the videos and everything. Can we get this released?" But, like, that just was a really rough year for everybody.

But yeah, so Egghead got the site put together. I did a bunch of interviews and stuff. And then we launched in October of 2020. That was way bigger than Testing JavaScript because Testing JavaScript was still very informed by my experience as an Egghead instructor, which, typically, the Egghead courses are, like, a video where watch me do this thing, and then you'll learn something and go apply it to your own stuff. And that's kind of what Testing JavaScript was built as.

But as part of the update of Testing JavaScript in 2019, I added another workshop module called Testing Node Applications. And in that one, I decided, hey, typically, I would have a workshop version of my material and a course version. The workshop version had like instructions and exercises. And the course version was no instructions or anything. It was just, like, watch these videos. And it was just me doing the exercises.

And with the update of Testing JavaScript, I added that Testing Node workshop, and I said, hey, what if we just, like, embrace the fact that these are exercises, and it's just, like, me recording the workshop? How I would deliver the workshop? And so, I tested that out, and that went really well. And so, I doubled down on that with Epic React. And I said, okay, now, this isn't just, like, watch these videos. This is a do the exercise and then watch me do the exercise.

So, Epic React was not only a lot more material but the format of the material was more geared for retention and true practice and learning. And so, Epic React ended up doing much better than Testing JavaScript, and even still, is still doing a remarkable job as far as course material is concerned. And, like, so many people are getting a lot of really great knowledge from Epic React. So yeah, very gratifying to have that.

WILL: Once again, I've used Epic React. It's taught me so many...stretched me. And I do like the format, so yes, I totally agree with that, yeah. The next thing, Remix, correct?

KENT: Yeah. So, how I got into Remix, around the same time we finished recording Epic React videos, I was doing some other stuff kind of to keep content going and stuff while we were waiting to launch Epic React. And around that same time, my friend Ryan Florence and Michael Jackson––they were doing the React training thing. And so, we were technically competitors. Like I said, Ryan and I kind of joined forces temporarily for his Workshop Me thing, but that didn't end up working out very well. And Michael really wanted Ryan back, and so they got back together.

And their React training business went way better than it had before. They were hiring people and all sorts of stuff. And then, a training business that focuses on in-person training just doesn't do very well when COVID comes around. And so, they ended up having to lay off everybody and tried to figure out, okay, now what are we going to do? Our income has gone overnight. This is a bit of a simplification. But they decided to build software and get paid for it like one does.

So, they started building Remix. Ryan, actually, around that time, moved back to Utah. He and I would hang out sometimes, and he would share what he was working on with Michael. We would do, like, Zoom calls and stuff, too. I just got really excited about what they were working on. I could see the foundation was really solid, and I thought it was awesome. But I was still working on Epic React.

I end up launching Epic React. He launches Remix the very next month as a developer preview thing. Yeah, it definitely...it looked a lot like current Remix in some ways but very, very different in lots of others. But I was super hooked on that. And so, I paid for the developer preview and started developing my website with it. And around the next year in August, I was getting close to finishing my website.

My website is, like, pretty legit. If you haven't gone to kentcdodds.com. Yet, it is cooler than you think it is. There's a lot that goes into that website. So, I had a team help me with the product planning and getting illustrations and had somebody help me implement the designs and all that stuff. It was a pretty big project.

And then, by August of 2021, Ryan and I were talking, and I said, "Hey, listen, I want to update Epic React to use Remix because I just think that is the best way to build React applications. But I have this little problem where Remix is a paid framework. That's just going to really reduce the number of people who are interested in learning what I have to teach. And on top of that, like, it just makes it difficult for people to test things out." And so, he, around that time, was like, "Hey, just hold off a little bit. We've got some announcements."

And so, I think it was September when they announced that they'd raised VC money and they were going to make Remix open source. That was when Ryan said, "Hey, listen, Kent, I think that it's awesome you want to update Epic React to use Remix. But the problem is that Remix isn't even 1.0 yet. The community is super small. It needs a lot of help. If you release a course on Remix right now, then you're not going to get any attention because, like, nobody even knows what it is."

So, part of me is like, yeah, that's true. But also, the other part of me is like, how do people find out what it is [laughs] unless there's, like, material about it? But he was right. And he said, "Listen, we've got a bunch of VC money. I've always wanted to work with you. How about we just hire you? And you can be a full-time teacher about Remix. But you don't have to charge anything. You just, like, make a bunch of stuff for free about Remix." I said, "That sounds great. But, you know, to make that worth my while because I'm really happy with what I'm doing with this teaching thing, like, I'm going to need a lot of Remix."

And so, Michael Jackson was like, "How about we just make you a co-founder, and we give you a lot of Remix?" And I said, "Okay, let's do this." And so I jumped on board with them as a year-delayed co-founder. I guess that's pretty common. But, like, that felt kind of weird to me [laughs] to be called a co-founder. But yeah, so I joined up with them.

I worked on documentation a little bit, mostly community building. I ran Remix Conf. Shopify was interested in what we were doing. And we were interested in what Shopify was doing because, at the time, they were working on Hydrogen, which was one of the early adopters of React Server Components. And, of course, everybody was interested in whether Remix was going to be adding support for server components. And Ryan put together a couple of experiments and found out that server components were nowhere near ready. And we could do better than server components could as of, you know, the time that he wrote the blog posts, like, two years ago.

So, Hydrogen was working with server components. And I put us in touch with the Hydrogen team—I think it was me—to, like, talk with the Hydrogen team about, like, "Hey, how about instead of spending all this time building your own framework, you just build on top of Remix then you can, you know, make your Shopify starter projects just, like, a really thin layer on top of Remix and people will love it? And this is very important to us because we need to get users, especially really big and high profile users, so people will take us seriously."

And so, we have this meeting. They fly a bunch of their people out to Salt Lake. They're asking us questions. We're asking them questions and saying, "Hey, listen, this is why server components are just not going to work out for you." Well, apparently, they didn't listen to us. It felt like they were just like, "No, we're highly invested in this. We've already sunk all t