JSJ 265 Wade Anderson and Ramya Rao on Visual Studio Code

This episode is live at the Microsoft Build 2017 with Charles Max Wood and AJ O’Neal. We have Wade Anderson and Ramya Rao from the Visual Studio Code Team at Microsoft. Tune in and learn more about what’s new with Visual Studio Code!

[00:01:20] – Introduction to Ramya Rao and Wade Anderson

Ramya Rao and Wade Anderson are in the Visual Studio Code Team at Microsoft.

Questions for Wade and Ramya

[00:02:00] – Elevator Pitch for Visual Studio Code

Our vision on Visual Studio Code is to take what was best out of the IDE world (Visual Studio, Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc.) and bring what was best from the lightweight editor world (Sublime Text, Notepad++, Atom) and merge those two together. We wanted the lightweight features from text editors and the debugging capabilities of Visual Studio and Eclipse. We did general availability last year. We’ve been stable for a year. Additionally, this is Visual Studio Code for Mac, Windows, or Linux. It’s also built in Electron.

[00:03:45] – What are your roles on the team? Do you have particular parts that each of you work on?

Wade’s title is a Program Manager. He does more non-developer things but Ramya is an engineer on the team so she gets a lot more coding that Wade does. Everybody has a key area to own but nothing stops them to go into another area. We try to share knowledge between people but we always have that one key owner that you always go to.

Ramya is a recent addition to the team. She started out maintaining the Go extension, maintaining and adding features. She’s slowly branching out to the Emmet features of the product.

[00:05:30] What is Emmet?

Emmet, or Zen Coding, is a must-have tool for you. You can write, say abbreviations and that expands to really huge HTML to update tags, rename tags, etc. That is one of the features of Emmet and Sergey actually wrote the library. We have an in built integration in the product. I [Ramya] am currently working on that.

[00:06:28] Does Visual Studio Code make it easy to go to the parts that I need to customize on an HTML?

In that case, we have a multi-cursor software in Visual Studio Code, as well. You could place your cursor in different positions, and then, simultaneously edit things.

[00:07:42] Is Emmet an extension or does it come with Visual Studio Code?

Right now, it’s in Built. If you want to know more about Emmet features, you can to emmet.io. That has all the documentation that you need to learn about Emmet features. In Visual Studio Code right now, we’re looking at making into an extension. We pull it out of the main code and maybe more people can contribute and make it even more better.

[00:08:21] – What’s new in Visual Studio Code?

One of our main pillars for this year is to improve performance of the product. We’ve grown a larger team so we’re adding a lot more features every month. Last few months has been, “How can we get some stability on the issues coming in while making sure we’re reducing our tech load?” We really keep to those core principles that we started with at the beginning, which was, we want a fast, lightweight editor.

We built a few extensions that we call key map extensions. They are just a mapping of key bindings that you learned in Sublime Text. You don’t have to re-learn any key bindings in Visual Studio Code.

We also build this Welcome page where you can flip through and see features really briefly. In that Welcome page, one of the key things is an interactive playground where you can play with existing code in different sections. Additionally, as we’ve mentioned, we also put multi-cursor features.

Another thing is workbench naming. You can change the theme of Visual Studio Code but it will be restricted to the editor and not the rest of the workbench.

[00:13:40] – Do you know how Xterm.js works as it was one of the features that you’ve added in Visual Studio Code?

Daniel’s another engineer that’s here with us today. He was the largest contributor to the Xterm.js project. He built the integrated terminal for Visual Studio code so I can’t speak to the internals of how that works.

[00:14:12] – Are we going to start seeing Visual Studio Code integrated into web experiences with other Microsoft products?

That’s actually where we started. We were Monaco editor where you get this cloud-based editing experience. We’re getting people to use it but we’re only getting people who were already using Microsoft products.  When electron came out, we saw an opportunity of, “Hey, can we port this  Monaco editor to Electron and we could then, run it on Mac and Linux.”

[00:19:45] – What are the performance things that you’ve done?

One thing that we did recently was adding an ability to calculate the start time for Visual Studio Code? That’s one of our full steps to get more information from the user-side. How can you get a profile of what things are running? Which part of the process took much time?

We also need to identify what are the things people are doing that’s causing the editor slow down. An example is when you open a large file and things get laggy.

Another exercise we did was we looked at all of our extension API’s to see which one of those could be a malicious extension.

The difference between VS Code and Atom is that, we ask questions like, “Are we using good data structures? Are we managing our memory properly? Are we removing stuff we don’t need anymore?” That just comes down to all those little things you learn from basic textbooks that have been around for decades about how to write good code. That’s what we have been doing and that’s what we’ll continue to try to do, to try and improve the performance.

[00:25:55] – Do you have problem on the desktop? Are all the modules just load at once?

We definitely don’t load everything at once. Different parts of the editor is loaded differently. When you do the Require, we don’t do it at first load. We do it when we notice that the user wants to use Emmet. We don’t try to load all the library at the beginning and delay the whole process.

We try to lazy load as much as possible, even the extensions. We have a separate process called extension host that takes care of loading all the extensions. Whether the extensions are completed loading or not, that does not stop you from typing in a file. Simple actions shouldn’t be bugged down by fancy actions.

[00:28:25] – What’s coming next for Visual Studio Code?

Every month, when we plan our iteration, we create iteration draft plan. We put it out there for people to see. Performance and helping people get started are probably the top two for us. You can look at github.com/Microsoft/vscode, look for the label ‘iteration plan draft.’ So that’s the current work that we’re doing that month.

Another feature is the multi-root workspace where you can open multiple folders. When you look at the issues and sort by most comments, multi-root is the number one. The second one that is little paper cuts around formatting and auto-intending – just things that make your code prettier.

Picks

AJ O’neal

• Breath on the Wild
• Microsoft’s Intelligent Edge

Charles Max Wood

• Boom Beach
• Bluetick.io
• Emacs key binding extension for Visual Studio Code

Wade Anderson

• Kindle Paperwhite
•  Twitter @waderyan_

Ramya Rao

• Open source
• Twitter @ramyanexus

JSJ 268 Building Microsoft Office Extensions with Javascript with Tristan Davis and Sean Laberee

This episode is live at the Microsoft Build 2017 with Charles Max Wood and AJ O’Neal. We have Tristan Davis and Sean Laberee from the Office Team at Microsoft. Tune in and learn more about what’s new with Microsoft Office Extensions!

[00:01:25] – Introduction to Tristan Davis and Sean Laberee

Tristan Davis and Sean Laberee are Program Managers on the Microsoft Office team, focused on Extensibility.

Questions for Tristan and Sean

[00:01:45] – Extending Office functionality with Javascript

Office isn’t just an application on Windows that runs on your PC. It is running on iPhone, iPad, Android tablet, and apps on the browser with Office Online. The team needs a new platform, add-ins, which allow you to build apps that run across all places. It’s HTML and Javascript. HTML for all the UI and a series of Javascript module calls for the document properties. Sometimes we call it OfficeJS.

[00:03:20] – This works on any version of Office?

It works on Office on Windows, Mac, Online and iPad.

[00:03:55] – HTML and CSS suck on mobile?

There are things that you’re going to want to do when you know you’re running on a mobile device. If you look at an add-in running on Outlook for iPhone, the developer does a lot of things to make that feel like part of the iPhone UI. Tristan believes that you could build a great add-in for Office using HTML and JavaScript.

[00:05:20] – Are these apps written with JavaScript or you have a Native with WebView?

Office itself is Native. All of it is Native code but the platform is very much web. The main piece of it is pointing at the URL. Just go load that URL. And then, you can also call functions in your JavaScript.

[00:06:35] – Why would you do this? How does it work?

The add-in platform is a way to help developers turn Word, Excel and PowerPoint into the apps that actually solve user’s business problems. The team will give you the tools with HTML and JavaScript to go and pop into the Word UI and the API’s that let you go manipulate the paragraph and texts inside of Word. Or in Excel, you might want to create custom formulas or visualizations. The team also let people use D3 to generate their own Excel charts.

And developers want to extend Office because it’s where a lot of business workers spend their days 0 in Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel.

[00:10:00] – How did this get delivered to them?

There are 2 ways to get this delivered. One, there’s an Office Store. Second, if you go into Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, there’s a store button and you can see tons of integrations with partners.

For enterprises, IT can deploy add-ins to the users’ desktops without having stress about deploying MSI’s and other software deployments that the web completely rids off. The add-ins make a whole lot of pain the past completely go away.

[00:11:00] – Everybody in the company can use a particular plug-in by distributing it with Office?

That’s right. You can go to Office 365 add-in experience. Here’s the add-in and you can to specific people or everyone who’s part of a group.

For the developer’s perspective, if you have the add-in deployed to your client, you could actually push updates to the web service and your users get the updates instantly. It’s a lot faster turn-around model.

[00:14:20] – What about conversations or bot integrations?

There’s the idea of connectors at Teams. You can subscribe to this web book and it’ll publish JSON. When the JSON is received, a new conversation inside of Teams or Outlook will be created. For example, every time someone posts on Stack Overflow with one of the tags that team cares about, it posts on Outlook.

It’s a great way to bring all the stuff. Rather than have 20 different apps that are shooting 20 different sets of notifications, it’s just all conversations in email, making do all the standard email things.

And in the connector case, it’s a push model. The user could choose what notifications they want.

You’d also learn things like bots. You can have bots in Teams and Skype. The users can interact with them with their natural language.

[00:18:40] – How about authentication?

As long as you’re signed into Office, you can call JavaScript API to give you an identity token for the sign in user and it will hand you a JWT back. That’s coming from Azure Active Directory or from whatever customer directory service. That’s standard.

If you want to do more, you can take that identity token and you can exchange that for a token that can call Microsoft graph. This app wants to get access to phone, are you okay with that? Assuming the user says yes, the user gets a token that can go and grab whatever data he wants from the back-end.

[00:20:00] – Where does it store the token?

That’s up to the developer to decide how they want to handle that but there are facilities that make sure you can pop up a dialog box and you can go to the LO-flow. You could theoretically cache it in the browser or a cookie. Or whatever people think is more appropriate for the scenario.

[00:20:55] – What does the API actually look like from JavaScript?

If you’re familiar with Excel UI, you can look at Excel API. It’s workbook.worksheets.getItem() and you can pass the name of the worksheet. It can also pass the index of the worksheet.

[00:22:30] – What’s the process of getting setup?

There’s a variety of options. You can download Office, write XML manifest, and take a sample, and then, side loads it into Office. You can also do that through web apps. There’s no install required because you can go work against Office Online. In the Insert menu, there’s a way to configure your add-ins. There’s upload a manifest there and you can just upload the XML. That’s going to work against whatever web server you have set up.

So it’s either on your local machine or up in the cloud. It’s as much as like regular web development. Just bring your own tools.

[00:24:15] – How do you protect me as a plug-in developer?

There’s an access add-in that will ask your permission to access, say, a document. Assume, they say yes, pipes are opened and they can just go talk to those things. But the team also tries to sandbox it by iframes. It’s not one page that has everybody’s plug-ins intermingle that people can pole at other people’s stuff.

[00:27:20] – How do you support backward compatibility?

There are cases where we change the behavior of the API. Every API is gated by requirement set. So if a developer needs access to a requirement set, he gets an aggregate instead of API’s that he can work with but it isn’t fixed forever.

But it’s not at that point yet where we end up to remove things completely. In Office JS, we’ve talked about API’s as one JavaScript library but really, it’s a bootstrap that brings in a bunch of other pieces that you need.

[00:30:00] – How does that work on mobile? Do they have to approve download for all components?

You can download components by using the browser that the operating system gives. It’s another one of the virtues of being based on the web. Every platform that has a web browser can have JavaScript execution run-time. It allows for the way that their app guidelines are written.

[00:33:15] – How about testing?

It’s a place where there’s still have work to do. There’s a bunch of open-source projects that partners have started to do that. What they’ve done is they’ve built a testing library. Whatever the mock is, it's just a thing on Github. It is open-source friendly. So the team could be able to contribute to it. “Here’s an interesting test case for this API. I want to make sure that it behaves like this.

[00:35:50] – Could you write it with any version for JavaScript e.g. TypeScript?

A Huge chunk of the team is big TypeScript fans. They’ve done a lot of work to make sure that TypeScript experience is excellence.

Type is basically a collection of typing files for TypeScript. There’s a runtime process that parses your TypeScript, gives you feedback on your code, and checks for errors. You can also run it in the background.

There’s an add-in called Script Lab. Script Lab is literally, you hit the code button and you get a web IDE right there. You can go start typing JavaScript code, play with API’s, and uses TypeScript by default. It’ll just actually load your code in the browser, executes, and you can start watching.

[00:39:25] – Are there any limitations on which JavaScript libraries you can pull in?

There a no limitations in place right now. There are partners that use Angular. There are partners that are big React fans. If you’re a web dev, you can bring whatever preferences around frameworks, around tools, around TypeScript versus JavaScript.

[00:45:20] – What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen done with this API?

Battleship was pretty cool. There’s also Star Wars entering credits theme for PowerPoint.

[00:46:40] – If a developer is building a plug-in and get paid for it, does Microsoft take credit for that?

There are 2 ways that folks can do it. You can do paid add-ins to the store. Either you do the standard perpetual 99 cents or you can do subscriptions, where it’s $2.99/month. Tristan encourages that model because integrations are just a piece of some larger piece of software.

But Microsoft is not in the business of trying to get you to pay me a little bit of 10 cents a dollar. It’s really in the business of making sure that you can integrate with Office as quickly as possibly can.

When the users go to the store, they can use the same Microsoft account that you use to buy Xbox games or movies in the Xbox, Windows apps in the Windows store.

[00:52:00] – The App Model

If folks are interested in the app model, they should go to dev.office.com to learn more about it because that’s where all the documentation is. Check out our Github. Right there in the open, there’s the spec. Literally, the engineers who are coding the product are reading the same marked-down files in the same repo that you, as a developer, can come and look at. And you can comment. You can add issues like you could have a dialogue with that PM. Under the OfficeDev, you’ll find a tunnel repository that contains samples. Our docs are there.

Picks

AJ O'Neal

• Lithium

Charles Max Wood

• Miracle Morning by Hal Erod
• Clean Code by Uncle Bob Martin
• Ketogenic diet

Tristan Davis

• Amazon Echo
• Microbiome

Sean Laberee

• Running
• Garmin watch

MJS 026 Chris Coyier

This week’s episode is a My JavaScript Story with Chris Coyier. He is from the ShopTalk Show and CodePen. Listen to learn more about Chris!

How did you get started programming?
Chris has an atypical story. good time in life. He is from a small town in Madison, Wisconsin and had a very privileged upbringing. He went to a nice high school that had a programming elective in his high school. He took a class that taught Turbo Pascal and loved it. He had a lot of fun doing it and became set on doing it in college.

How do you go from that to professional web developer?

Have to give up on it first. He almost got a degree in university management computer systems, which was more management focused than programming focused. He tried and gave up on Java. He then tried graphic design and ended up getting a degree in that. He got into digital prepress at print jobs where he designed documents. It was fun but it was not as fun as being a “real programmer” would be in his mind. He then got a job at an agency doing web developer work. During this time JavaScript was not on his radar.

How do you get from front-end work to building something like CodePen and starting a front-end podcast?

He has made his career his hobby. He loves doing this stuff. When he was building websites for the first time he started CSS tricks. It became really fun. He grew it over ten years. Because it’s his career and hobby he got better over time. All of his time was spent helping friends, writing, or at conferences. He then decided to build CodePen with some of his friends.

What are you working on these days?

Chris wants to be careful not to be working on too many things at once. His top priority is CodePen, which he says is hard to keep up with what developers want there. The second priority is CSS tricks. He likes to publish quality articles for people to read. This third priority is his podcast.

What’s the thing you’ve done that you’re the proudest of?

CodePen is what has been so continually rewarding. This last month he is all money accounted for. He is really proud of CodePen because they made a company from nothing. He and his coworkers have made the podcast over a decade of growing an audience and it feels entrepreneurial.

Charles’ most proud thing is the decision to go full time with his podcast for the last year and a half.

Picks

Chris:

• CodePen https://codepen.io/
• ShopTalk www.shoptalkshow.com
• Alien Covenant http://www.alien-covenant.com/

Charles:

• www.getacoderjob.com
• React Native www.reactnative.com
• www.gocd.org
• JS Dev Summit https://jsdevsummit.com/

Links

• GitHub https://github.com/chriscoyier
• Twitter https://twitter.com/chriscoyier
• https://chriscoyier.net/

MJS 027 Chris Anderson

This episode is a My JavaScript Story with guest Chris Anderson. Chris works at Microsoft, specifically on Azure Functions and WebJobs SDK. Hear how he got his start, how he has contributed to the community, as well as a bit about what it’s like being a Program Manager for Microsoft. 

[00:01:50] ]How did you get into programming?

In college Chris was an aerospace engineer. His first taste of working with code was at an internship at Lockheed Martin. Most of his daily work was with spread sheets so he learned Visual Basic to help handle that. He found himself interested in writing code more so he took an intro in C summer course and then things snowballed. When he finished that semester, he talked to advisor about switching to Computer Science. Immediately landed into JavaScript. Chris talks about having a ‘clicking moment’ while in a topics class. A classmate was talking about NodeJS and so he tried it out and hasn’t stopped using it since.

[00:03:36] What about programing appealed to you?

Chris says that programming made him have a sense of having superpowers. In aerospace he learned how planes worked and that was fun, but programming had an immediately feedback on what he was working on. He adds that it made sense in the way that programming is a universal toolset for no matter what field you’re in. Charles adds that he dug into coding after working in tech support and needing it.

[00:05:22] Have you worked with JavaScript before learning about Node?

Chris’ first real coding experience was with his internship. He taught himself JavaScript on the job and after a few months found himself really liking it. He felt like JavaScript felt more natural and expressive. Javascript empowered him to work on the client side and the server side and he felt empowered to do full stack.

[00:06:55] Was this before Microsoft?

Microsoft’s hiring process for college graduates you apply the year you graduate and go through a handful of interviews. He got hired into a team working on databases, working in SQL server. He wanted to work in developer tools and learned how to use power shell and SQL works and how powerful it was. He started moving back and pushing NodeJS onto SQL. There was a driver for SQL purely in JavaScript called TDS and he would make pull requests and contributed to that. He talks about searching internally looking for other work and finding a mobile services team that needed a NodeJS person so he started there. Later he started WebJobs and then later Functions, as an effort to make NodeJS technology work with a .Net technology called Webjobs SDK. Functions exists because he wanted to add a NodeJS to a .Net product.

[00:11:07] ] Did you find pushing NodeJS into a well developed language ecosystem risky?

Chris talks about helping push adoption of .Net and creating prototype ideas, and it sparking from that. His goal was to make customers more productive.

[00:12:02] Having fun at work

Chris talks about the team culture being fun at times. Sometimes as a developer you get buffered by Project Managers, but in the case developers spend a lot of time talking to customers. They are excited so they have loads of interactions, helping develop diverse ideas. Charles adds that the preconception to how the environment feels in Microsoft tends to be negative but from talking to people who work there, things seem to be more open than expected. Chris points to open source concepts that really makes working with Microsoft great.

[14:40] What does a Program Manager do on a team?

Chris talks about how his job is to explore the issues and talk to customers and then prioritize how to make things better. He talks about doing whatever he can to make the product successful with the customers, including building a prototype of an idea, taking a sort of position similar to an entrepreneur. Charles adds that it’s refreshing to find that someone in the Program Manager also being technical sufficient and hands on. Chris talks about how teams are built naturally and pulled together with a group of people who love what they are doing.

[00:16:52] Does the Azure Functions team use Azure Functions to make Azure Functions work?

Chris talks about not using Azure functions under the covers, for the most part it’s built on top of the app service technology stack like web apps and mobile apps. Things that power that is what powers the Azure functions, like Angular. A lot of the engineering pieces are on top of that. They do use Azure for various Microsoft internal things. All of the tests they build are functions to test functions.

[00:18:24] How did you and your team come to use Angular?

Chris was working on the prototype for Azure Functions. Amed had experience with working on front end applications and he wanted to try out Angular 2 even though it was still in beta. He found that had the right amount of stuff out of the box. Additionally it had typescript which meshed well. They tend to pick things that people on the team know well and not as much as trying to stay tied into Microsoft supported systems. Chris talks about doing one or two major refactoring.

How much Angular have you worked on yourself?

Amed works the most on Angular, Chris’ job as Program Manager puts in him in a place where his commits don’t go into production, but he will often write prototypes. He played around a lot with the Monaco editor and adding features for that. As far as outside of that, he has written a few tutorials for using Functions plus Angular as well as written his wedding website with Angular.

[00:22:33] What other extracurricular projects have you worked on?

Chris talks about doing a lot of side projects for a while. One working with ExpressSocket.io. He also built a middleware project where you can write middleware into Functions. Plenty of little projects he puts on GitHub and never finishes. Chris talks about wishing he could switch hats between being the Program Manager and a developer.

[00:23:42] Is there anything in particular you feel like you’ve contributed to Angular?

Chris talks about improving by putting in loads of pull requests for tons of JavaScript libraries and a few NodeJS libraries. He would like to be more involved in the start of those processes. Chris says he hopes to maybe be involved in the next Node version update. He really likes the Node community.

Picks

Chris

Mountain Dew Pitch Black
The Expanse Series on SciFi
Application Insights

Charles

Wheel of Time
Coolage
Dog Company
Data Dog

Links

Twitter
GitHub

Panel:

Amy Knight

Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: 

Nick Disabato

In this episode, Java Script Jabbers talk with Nick Disabato. Nick is a newbie to JavaScript Jabber. Nick is the founder of Draft, an interaction design agency where he does research driven A/B testing of E-commerce business.

This is a practical episode for those who are running a business and doing marketing for the products and services. Nick talks about A/B testing for a number scenarios within the company, such as for websites, funnels, and various marketing mechanisms. Nick further goes into how this helps companies strategically increase revenue by changing things such as websites design or building funnels.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Testing of changes of Copy, Websites, etc.
• What does it mean of changes, Tools, Framework, Plugins, etc
• Does it matter what tools you use? Framework that works within your stack
• How do make we company money
• Researching for the next test
• Testing for conversion rate to decide which design to go implement - Variant
• Responsibility for the designs
• Feature and getting pay for the service
• Learn more about the resources and Copy Hackers
• Large organization or developers, or a QA department
• Optimization teams
• Usability tests and coming up with A/B tests
• Expertise
• Why should be care?
• And much more!

Links:

Draft

Nick Disabato

@nickd

ConversionXL

AB Testing Manual

Wider Funnels 

Copy Hackers

Picks:

Amiee

• Nodevember 

Charles

• Mike Gehard 
• Admin LTE

Nick

• HotJar.com

Panel:

Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: 

Chris Dias

PJ Meyer

In this episode, Charles is at Microsoft Connect 2017 in NYC. Charles speaks with Chris Dias and PJ Meyer about Visual Studio Code and Live Sharing. Chris and PJ explain more on their demo at Microsoft Connect on Live Collaborative Editing and Debugging. Learn more about the new features with Visual Studio Code and the efficient workflows with screen sharing, and much more.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Demo of Live Collaborative Editing and Debugging explained
• New Features with VS Code
• Developer productive
• Debugging pain points
• Getting feedback
• New in VS Code
• Language support and Java Debugger
• Live Share
• Debugging from different machines and platforms
• Multi-Stage Docker File
• TypeScript compiler
• More on debugging with Cosmos db
• Debugging in the Cloud?
• Docker Extensions
• Data Bricks
• Updated python tools
• Coming up with Visual Studio Code in the next 6 months
• TypeScript and Refactoring
• Getting the word out about code -  Word of mouth?
• Number of people using VS Code?
• Envision for what VS Code is becoming?
• Preparing for a keynote and processes?
• And much more!

Links:

• https://code.visualstudio.com
• https://github.com/chrisdias
• GitHub.com/microsoft
• @code

Picks:

Chris

• Pizza

PJ

• Deli

Charles

• Coupon Pass for tourist in NYC

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: Nishant Thacker

In this episode, JavaScript Jabber speaks with Nishant Thacker. Nishant is the technical product manager for all things big data at Microsoft. Nishant mentions the many new technologies and announcements he is in-charge of at Microsoft.

Nishant is on the show to talk about Big Data and gives advice on how to process data and acquire deep insight of your customers. This is a great episode to understand the development of data systems that are the backbone of some marketing tools.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Processing Metrics
• Processing into report and usable information
• Data lake
• Collecting data points
• Creating and maintaining the data lake in its raw form
• Scale up engines and limits
• Commodity machines and leverage
• Big data means to scale out
• Specialized engines for audio and video files
• How to have a cohesive report?
• Writing and Querying across data
• Storing raw data and retrieve data
• Data cluster
• What does the data box look like?
• And much more!

Links:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishantthacker
• @nishantthacker

Picks:

Nishant

• Robot I

Charles

• Zoom H6
• Shure SM 58
• Lavalier Mics

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Guest: Nick Disabato

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Nick Disabato. Nick is a return guest how was recent on JavaScript Jabber episode 283   talking about AB testing. Also, Nick is an interaction designer from Chicago and runs a consultancy called Draft, who do research AB testing for online stores to increase conversion rate without increase ad spend. Nick talks about his current work, and his journey into programming, more on testing, and contributions to the JavaScript Community.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• How much programming do you do day today?
• Programming activities
• Interacting with programmers to deliver products
• What was your introduction to programmer
• Logo - Turtle
• Cue Basic
• How did that get you to where you are today?
• Did not want to be a mathematician
• Never been to art school?
• Being a creative person but not visual
• Describe the creative, design, position you are in.
• Wire Frames
• Verbal communication
• Web development, etc.
• Front facing pages
• How did you get into JavaScript and how much do you have to know?
• Where are the bottlenecks?
• Which framework is the best?
• What are you working on now?
• and much, much more!

Links: 

• https://draft.nu
• https://nickd.org/bio/
• draftsletters.com
• @nickd

Picks

Charles

• Dash Pro 
• convo.com

Nick

• Visual Web Optimizer 
• Designing for Accessibility 

Panel: 

AJ O’Neal

Joe Eames

Aimee Knight

Special Guests: Chris Ferdinandi

In this episode, JavaScript Jabber panelist speak with Chris Ferdinandi. Chris teaches vanilla JavaScript to beginners and those coming from a design background. Chris mentions his background in Web design and Web Develop that led him JavaScript development. Chris and the JSJ panelist discuss the best ways to learn JavaScript, as well as resources for learning JavaScript. Also, some discussion of technologies that work in conjunction with vanilla JavaScript.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Teaching JavaScript - Beginners and Design patrons
• Web Design and Web Development
• CSS Tricks 
• Todd Motto
• How to do jQuery Things without jQuery
• Doing things like mentors (Todd)
• When JavaScript makes sense.
• CSS is easier to learn then JS?
• Being good at CSS and JS at the same time?
• How about Node developers?
• jRuby, DOM
• Documentation
• And much more!

Links:

• https://github.com/cferdinandi
• https://gomakethings.com
• @ChrisFerdinandi
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/cferdinandi
•  

Picks:

AJ

• Discover Card
• Mistborn 

Aimee

• Your Smart Phone is Making You Stupid…
• Crypto Currency

Joe

• Mystic Vale
• Kedi

Chris

• https://gomakethings.com
• Teva Mush

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Aimee Knight

Corey House

AJ O'Neal

Special Guests: Ben Coe, Aaron Abramov, and Issac Schleuter

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists talk with Ben Coe, Aaron Abramov, and Issac Schleuter about test coverage and testing tools. They talk about the different tools and libraries that they have contributed to the coding community, such as NYC, conf, and Jest. They also discuss what test coverage is actually about and when using test coverage tools is necessary.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• What have you contributed to the testing tools community?
• npm
• NYC tool and instanbul project
• conf
• Jest
• These libraries were developed to be easy and have “batteries included”
• False positives with test coverage
• Encourage testing practices that don’t practice in a superficial way
• Test coverage is about making sure you test every state a public API can get into
• Think through the test you’re writing first
• Barriers against testing
• Don’t spike the code too quickly
• Provides guardrails for newer developers to contribute to open source projects
• Use tests to understand the system
• How to spend your time better
• When you need tests
• Value is very short term
• TDD
• And much, much more!

Links:

• @BenjaminCoe
• @AaronAbramov_
• Issac’s GitHub

Picks:

Charles

• React Roundup
• Views on Vue
• Adventures in Angular
• React Dev Summit 2018

Aimee

• Galentine’s Day
• Dnote CLI

AJ

• The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

Corey

• We are hive project guidelines
• Tip: You can install node as a dependency on your project

Ben

• Hack Illinois 2018
• C8

Aaron

• Reason

Issac

• The Tap 100
• Krypton App
• Friendly Fire Podcasts

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• Aimee Knight
• AJ ONeal

Special Guests: Peggy Rayzis

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists talk about Apollo with Peggy Rayzis. Peggy is an open source engineer on the Apollo team where she primarily focuses on client stuff, working on Apollo Client, and also other libraries. Previously, she was a UI engineer at Major League Soccer where she worked primarily with React and React Native. She discusses what GraphQL is and how it is used, as well as how they use it in the Apollo team to make their lives as developers easier. They also touch on when it would work best to use GraphQL and when it is not ideal to use it.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• AiA 127 Episode
• Peggy intro
• What is GraphQL?
• What is a Typed Query Language?
• What is a schema?
• Where do schemas get defined?
• GraphQL SDL
• Apollo Stack and Apollo Server
• Tracing and cash control
• Apollo Engine
• How GraphQL Replaces Redux
• GraphQL cuts down on front-end management
• Apollo Link State
• The best code is no code
• Apollo Client allows for greater developer productivity
• Does the conversation change if you’re not using Redux or in a different ecosystem?
• When is the right time to use this?
• Data doesn’t have to be graph shaped to get the most out of GraphQL
• Analyze schema with Apollo Engine
• Is there a way to specify depth?
• Max Stoiber blog post
• How would people start using this?
• HowtoGraphQL.com
• And much, much more!

Links:

• React Dev Summit
• JS Dev Summit
• Apollo
• AiA 127 Episode
• Apollo Client
• Major League Soccer
• React
• React Native
• GraphQL
• GraphQL SDL
• Apollo Server
• Apollo Engine
• How GraphQL Replaces Redux
• Apollo Link State
• Redux
• Max Stoiber blog post
• HowtoGraphQL.com
• @PeggyRayzis
• Peggy’s GitHub
• Peggy’s Medium

Picks:

Charles

• GraphQL Ruby
• WordPress GraphQL
• Hogwarts Battles Board Game
• Pandemic Legacy
• Risk Legacy

Aimee

• How GraphQL Replaces Redux
• JavaScript Meetup in LA

AJ

• Simple.com
• BroccoliWallet.com
• The Four by Scott Galloway

Peggy

• Workshop.me
• Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Merrick Christensen

This week on My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Merrick Christensen. Christensen works at a company called Webflow, where they try to empower people to create software without code. The company is similar to Squarespace or Wix, except they give 100% design control to the client.

Christensen talks about his journey into programming, starting by creating websites for his childhood band. He moved on from Microsoft to Dreamweaver, and his Dad got him started with some freelance jobs to create websites for people, which really sparked his interest. Christensen discusses his path to where he is as a programmer today.

In particular, We dive pretty deep on:

• How did you get into programming?
• Getting into JavaScript
• Infogenix job
• Red Olive job using Flash
• Got into JavaScript through ActionScript
• Discovered Moo Tools
• Flex
• Steve Jobs says no Flash on iPhone
• Why Moo Tools and not jQuery?
• Liked flexibility of JavaScript
• How did you get into Angular?
• Angular was trendy at the time and was easier to use
• New code base with React
• Backbone
• Programming as an art form
• Webflow
• Meta-layers
• Working a remote job
• Framework Summit
• Angular, React, View, and Backbone
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Linode.com/MyAngularStory
• Webflow
• Squarespace
• Wix
• Framework Summit
• @iamMerrick
• MerrickChristensen.com
•  

Picks:

Merrick

• Sho Baraka
• Grid Critters
• Flex Zombies
• Charles
• Fresh Books
• Lyft
• Game Vice
• Audio-Technica 2100

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: Matt Hernandez and Amanda Silver

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber/Adventures In Angular, panelists discuss Visual Studio Code and the VS Code Azure Extension with Matt Hernandez and Amanda Silver at Microsoft Build. Amanda is the director of program management at Microsoft working on Visual Studio and VS Code. Matt works on a mix between the Azure and the VS Code team, where he leads the effort to build the Azure extensions in VS code, trying to bring JavaScript developers to Azure through great experiences in VS Code. They talk about what’s new in VS Code, how the Azure extension works, what log points are, and much more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Amanda intro
• Matt intro
• What’s new in VS Code?
• VS Code core
• VS Live Share
• Shared Terminal
• Now have Linux support
• Live Share is now public to the world for free
• What would you use Shared Terminal for?
• Are there other things coming up in VS Code?
• Constantly responding to requests from the community
• Live Share works for any language
• How does the Azure extension work?
• Azure App Service
• Storage extension
• Azure Cosmos DB
• What are log points?
• All a part of a larger plan to create a better experience for JS developers
• Visual debuggers
• Is it the same plugin to support everything on Azure?
• Want to target specific services that node developers will take advantage of
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Visual Studio
• VS Code
• Azure
• Live Share
• Azure Cosmos DB
• Microsoft Build
• Azure App Service
• Amanda’s GitHub
• @amandaksilver
• Matt’s GitHub
• @fiveisprime

Picks:

Charles

• Orphan Black
• Shout out to VS Code team
• Battle of the Books

Matt

• The Customer-Driven Playbook by Travis Lowdermilk
• The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey
• Yes, And by Kelly Leonard
• Digital Marketing For Dummies by Ryan Deiss
• Ed Gets His Power Back Kickstarter

Amanda

• Microsoft Quantum Development Kit for Visual Studio Code
• Iggy Peck, Architect
• Tek by Patrick McDonnell

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: Rachel MacFarlane and Matt Bierner

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists discuss Visual Studio Code with Rachel MacFarlane and Matt Bierner, who are both developers on Visual Studio Code. They talk about what the workflow at Visual Studio Code looks like, what people can look forward to coming out soon,  and how people can follow along the VS Code improvements on GitHub and Twitter. They also touch on their favorite extensions, like the Docker extension and the Azure extension and their favorite VS Code features.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Rachel and Matt intro
• Month to month workflow of Visual Studio Code
• VS Code JavaScript, TypeScript, and Mark Down support
• Working on GitHub and within the community
• Check out new features incrementally with insiders
• Community driven work
• What is coming out in Visual Studio Code?
• GitHub helps to determine what they work on
• Working on Grid View
• Improved settings UI
• Highlighting unused variables in your code
• Improvements with JS Docs
• Dart
• Visual Studio Extension API
• How do people follow along with the VS Code improvements?
• Follow along on GitHub and Twitter
• Download VS Code Insiders
• Have a general road map of what the plan is for the year
• Technical debt week
• What do you wish people knew about VS Code?
• Favorite extensions
• Docker extension and Azure extension
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Visual Studio Code
• JavaScript
• TypeScript
• Dart
• VS Code GitHub
• @Code
• VS Code Insiders
• Docker extension
• Azure extension
• Rachel’s GitHub
• Matt’s GitHub
• MattBierner.com
• @mattbierner

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• Linode
• FreshBooks

Picks:

Charles

• Orphan Black
• Avengers: Infinity War
• Fishing

Rachel

• GitLens

Matt

• The Bronx Warriors

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• AJ O’Neal

Special Guests: Johannes Schickling

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists discuss Prisma with Johannes Schickling. Johannes is the CEO and co-founder of GraphCool and works with Prisma. They talk about the upcoming changes within GraphCool, what Prisma is, and GraphQL back-end operations. They also touch on the biggest miscommunication about Prisma, how Prisma works, and much more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• JSJ Episode 257
• MJS Episode 055
• Raised a seed round
• Rebranding of GraphCool
• What are you wanting to do with the seed money you raised?
• Focused on growing his team currently
• Making GraphQL easier to do
• The change in the way people build software
• What is Prisma?
• Two things you need to do as you want to adopt GraphQL
• Apollo Client and Relay
• GraphQL on the back-end
• Resolvers
• Resolving data in one query
• Prisma supports MySQL and PostgreSQL
• How do you control access to the GraphQL endpoint that Prisma gives you?
• Biggest miscommunication about Prisma
• Prisma makes it easier for you to make your own GraphQL server
• Application schemas
• How do you blend your own resolvers with Prisma?
• And much, much more!

Links:

• JSJ Episode 257
• MJS Episode 055
• GraphCool
• Prisma
• GraphQL
• Apollo Client
• Relay
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• @schickling
• Johannes’ GitHub
• Schickling.me
• Prisma Slack

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• Linode
• FreshBooks

Picks:

Charles

• Audible
• The 5 Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman
• Facebook Backyard Homesteader Groups
• CharlesMaxWood.com
• Sling TV
• Roku Express

AJ

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Johannes

• Figma
• Netlify Functions
• GraphQL Europe

Panel: 

• Joe Eames
• Aimee Knight
• AJ O'Neal
• Joe Eames

Special Guests: Christine Legge

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panel talks to Christine Legge about functional programming with Ramda. Christine is a front-end software engineer and just recently got a new job in New York working at Google. Ramda is a utility library in JavaScript that focuses on making it easier to write JavaScript code in a functional way. They talk about functional programming and what it is, using Ramda in Redux, and referential transparency. They also touch on why she first got into Ramda, compare Ramda to Lodash and Underscore, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Chirstine intro 
• Works as a front-end software engineer
• What is Ramda? 
• JavaScript
• Utility library like Lodash and Underscore
• Lodash and Underscore VS Ramda
• Functional programming
• Ramda and Functional programming as a mindset
• Ramda at ZenHub
• Ramda with Redux and React
• What is referential transparency?
• Why would you use Ramda VS Lodash or Underscore?
• Why she first got into Ramda
• Didn’t always want to be a programmer
• Background in Math
• Learning functional programming as a new programmer
• Erlang
• DrRacket and Java
• Ramda makes it easy to compose functions
• Creating clean and reusable code
• How do you start using Ramda?
• And much, much more! 

Links:

• Ramda
• Lodash
• Underscore
• ZenHub
• Redux
• React
• Erlang
• DrRacket
• @leggechr
• Chirstine’s GitHub

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Digital Ocean

Picks:

Charles

• Home Depot Tool Rental
• Podcast Movement
• CES
• VRBO

Aimee

• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Jeremy Fairbank Talk – Practical Functional Programming

AJ

• Goat’s Milk

Joe

• Topgolf
• Framework Summit

Christine

• Dan Mangan
• Reply All Podcast

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• AJ O’Neal
• Aimee Knight

Special Guests: Valeri Karpov 

In this episode, the panel talks with programmer, Valerie Karpov from Miami, Florida. He is quite knowledgeable with many different programs, but today’s episode they talk specifically about Async/Await and Promise Generators. Val is constantly busy through his different endeavors and recently finished his e-book, “Mastering Async/Await.” Check-out Val’s social media profiles through LinkedIn, GitHub, Twitter, and more.

Show Topics:

1:20 – Val has been on previous episodes back in 2013 & 2016.

1:37 – Val’s background. He is very involved with multiple companies. Go checkout his new book!

2:39 – Promises generators. Understand Promises and how things sync with Promises. Val suggests that listeners have an integrated understanding of issues like error handling.

3:57 – Chuck asks a question.

6:25 – Aimee’s asks a question: “Can you speak to why someone would want to use Async/Await?”

8:53 – AJ makes comments.

10:09 – “What makes an Async/Await not functional?” – Val

10:59 – “What’s wrong with Promises or Async/Await that people don’t like it?” - AJ

11:25 – Val states that he doesn’t think there really is anything wrong with these programs it just depends on what you need it for. He thinks that having both gives the user great power.

12:21 – AJ’s background is with Node and the Python among other programs.

12:55 – Implementing Complex Business Logic.

15:50 – Val discusses his new e-book.

17:08 – Question from Aimee.

17:16 – AJ answers question. Promises should have been primitive when it was designed or somewhat event handling.

17:46 – The panel agrees that anything is better than Call Backs.

18:18 – Aimee makes comments about Async/Await.

20:08 – “What are the core principles of your new e-book?” – Chuck

20:17 – There are 4 chapters and Val discusses, in detail, what’s in each chapter.

22:40 – There could be some confusion from JavaScript for someone where this is their first language. Does Async/Await have any affect on the way you program or does anything make it less or more confusing in the background changes?

24:30 – Val answers the before-mentioned question. Async/Await does not have anyway to help with this (data changes in the background).

25:36 – “My procedural code, I know that things won’t change on me because it is procedural code. Is it hard to adjust to that?” – AJ

26:01 – Val answers the question.

26:32 – Building a webserver with Python. 

27:31 – Aimee asks a question: “Do you think that there are cases in code base, where I would want to use Promises? Not from a user’s perspective, but what our preferences are, but actual performance. Is there a reason why I would want to use both or be consistent across the board?”

28:17 – Val asks for some clarification to Aimee’s question.

29:14 – Aimee: “My own personal preference is consistency. Would I want to use Promises in ‘x’ scenario and/or use Async/Await in another situation?”

32:28 – Val and AJ are discussing and problem solving different situations that these programs

33:05 – “When would you not want to use Async/Await?” – AJ

33:25 – Val goes through the different situations when he would not use Async/Await. 

33:44 – Chuck is curious about other features of Async/Await and asks Val.

36:40 – Facebook’s Regenerator

37:11 – AJ: “Back in the day, people would be really concerned with JavaScript’s performance even with Chrome.” He continues his thoughts on this topic.

38:11 – Val answers the AJ’s question.

39:10 – Duck JS probably won’t include generators.

41:18 – Val: “Have anyone used Engine Script before?” The rest of the panel had never heard of this before.

42:09 – Windows Scripting Host

42:56 – Val used Rhino in the past.

43:40 – Val: “Going back to the web performance question...”

47:08 – “Where do you see using Async/Await the most?” – Chuck

47:55 – Val uses Async/Await for everything on the backend because it has made everything so easy for him.

48:23 – “So this is why you really haven’t used Web Pack?” – AJ

49:20 – Let’s go to Aimee’s Picks!

50:18 – AJ’s story, first, before we get to Promises.

54:44 – Let’s transition to Promises Finally.

54:53 – Val talks about Promises Finally.

59:20 – Picks

Links:

• JavaScript
• Valeri Karpov’s GitHub
• Valeri Karpov’s Twitter
• Valeri Karpov’s LinkedIn
• New E-Book: Mastering Async/Await
• Node
• Python
• Windows Scripting Host
• Facebook’s Regenerator
• Rhino

Sponsors:

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Digital Ocean
•  

Picks:

Charles

• YouTube Video “IKEA” by Coulton
• Conference
• Amazon Prime Day

Aimee

• Blog Post Article

AJ

• IKEA
• https://ppl.family

Val

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/serve
• http://bit.ly/ultimate-skiing
• http://asyncawait.net/jsjabber
• New E-Book: Mastering Async/Await

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Sérgio Crisóstomo

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Sérgio Crisóstomo. Charles is now interviewing podcast listeners, not just guest speakers. Check-out toady’s episode to hear Sérgio’s background as a musician and as a programmer. Also, to hear Sérgio’s latest projects and how he fell in-love with Sweden and ended up moving there!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

1:46 – Chuck: How did you get into programming?

1:53 – Sérgio: As a child, I got interested into gaming. I wrote coding. Spectrum.

2:22 – Chuck: I think that makes you about my age.

2:41 – Sérgio: I was born in 1978.

2:51 – Sérgio: I had a cousin who got inspired by me and we started doing things together. We would show each other what we were doing. Better games and better computers came around. Turned out that I came back to it later in life.

3:29 – Chuck: what got you interested?

3:30 – Sérgio: It was all about problem-solving. There was no book. It was trial and error. It was magic. I was doing small steps, and it was empowering to me.

4:29 – Chuck: I used Logo. How did you get into programming at the professional-level?

4:45 – Sérgio: It was a long journey. My family was deep into a musical background. I went to the conservatory. I had a background in math, music, and physics. I went into programming because my father pushed me towards that direction. I did my Master’s in violin. After that I moved to Sweden. I really liked Sweden’s educational system. After 20 years I got into program working. I faked it until I made it. I had no one who could help me day-to-day life. I love solving problems. I found myself helping people in Portugal and other countries, since their English wasn’t strong. I liked that I was helping the community. That made me feel good about c

10:15 – Chuck: You switch from PHP to Node? What was the reasoning to that?

11:30 – Chuck: What things have you built in JavaScript?

11:47 – Sérgio: I started doing some freelance work. In the beginning it was helping friends.

13:22 – Chuck: Football – do you mean soccer or football?

13:35 – Sérgio: One day in the school, we got a new principal that the school didn’t like. I left because I wasn’t happy. I was a fulltime musician, and looked at this fulltime-programming job. I went to an interview where there were code quizzes. I loved the challenges. I had to choose between two different careers. After some negotiations it was a great fit for me. I got to be in-charge of different projects. Right now, I am a senior developer. It’s a small company but it is growing.

15:48 – Advertisement  E-book!

16:31 – Chuck: It’s interesting to see how you weren’t happy with your original job and how you got into programming fulltime.

17:29 – Sérgio: It’s important to have a good perspective. I am used to meeting people because I worked with choirs, orchestras, dance, and people and I can use those tools that I learned with musicians and transfer over to programming. Since I was good in JavaScript that helped me. Also, it was good that I was head-in-chief, because of my background of being a teacher. I found similarities and made it happen. That was my way in.

19:36 – Chuck: I find that very interesting. Yes, in the larger markets they might have their pick, but if you look into the smaller markets they might need you.

20:21 – Sérgio: People will invest into you if you are willing to learn and stay for a while.

20:48 – Chuck: What is the community like over in Sweden?

21:12 – Chuck: Do you have a lot of communities/boot camps out there to help people to code out in Sweden?

21:32 – Sérgio: Yes. It’s a really active community, and I have been involved helping connect people. People are curious and wanting to grow. It’s really open.

22:39 – Chuck: How do you start a program like that?

22:53 – Sérgio: I went to MEETUP.COM. 

23:45 – Sérgio: I fell in-love with the concept of Sweden’s education system. I was there touring and decided I wanted to move to Sweden. It was worth staying. Sweden is having different political winds now. They are open to foreigners. I am a Swedish citizen now.

25:18 – Chuck: What are you working on now?

25:26 – Sérgio answers Chuck’s question.

26:45 – Chuck: Anything else?

26:54 – Sérgio: I can talk about music a lot! I find a lot of programmers are musicians, too.

27:23 – Chuck: One more question. I have met, too, a lot of programmers who are musicians, too. What is the correlation?

27:43 – Music has a lot of mathematics. You have to play on time and solve problems all the time. I was in a workshop with musicians and entrepreneurs, and I learned a lot in this workshop. There are different attitudes when conducting. There is problem solving and managing people. I see the connections there.

Links:

• Meetup.com
• Sergio’s GitHub
• Sergio’s Website
• Sergio’s Website
• Sergio’s Twitter

Sponsors:

• Code Badges
• Digital Ocean
• Cache Fly

Picks:

Charles

• Views on Vue – DevChat
• Code Badge - Kick Starter

Sérgio

• Chopin!
• Checkout Sweden if you want a job as a programmer! Email me!

Panel:

• AJ O’Neal
• Aimee Knight
• Joe Eames
• Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: Chris Heilmann

In this episode, the panel talks with programmer, Chris Heilmann. He has written books about JavaScript, in addition to writing a blog about it and is an educator about this program.  He currently resides in Berlin, Germany. Let’s welcome our special guest and listen to today’s episode!

Show Topics:

2:19 – Chuck talks.

2:41 – Chris: He has talked about JavaScript in Berlin upon an invitation. You can get five different suggestions about how to use JavaScript. The best practices, I have found, are on the projects I am on now. JavaScript was built in ten days. My goal is to help people navigate through JavaScript and help them feel not disenfranchised. 

5:47 – Aimee: The overall theme is...

5:54 – Panelist: I really like what you said about helping people not feeling disenfranchised.

6:47 – Chris: There is a lot of peer pressure at peer conferences

7:30 – Aimee chimes in with some comments.

7:50: Chris: I think we need to hunt the person down that put...

8:03 – Panelist: A good point to that is, I try to avoid comments like, “Well, like we ALL know...”

8:27 – Chris: There are things NOT to say on stage. It happens, but we don’t want to say certain things while we are teaching people. We are building products with different groups, so keep that in mind.

9:40 – Aimee: My experience in doing this is that I have found it very rewarding to share embarrassing experiences that I’ve had. My advice would to tell people to let their guard down. It’s encouraging for me.

10:26 – Chris: It helps to show that you are vulnerable and show that you are still learning, too. We are all learning together. 90% of our job is communicating with others.

11:05 – Chuck: Now, I do want to ask this...

11:35 – Chris answers.

12:24 – What makes you say that? (Question to Chris)

12:25 – Chris answers.

13:55 – Chuck: The different systems out there are either widely distributed or...

You will have to work with other people. There is no way that people can make that on their own. If you can’t work with other people, then you are a hindrance.

14:31 – Aimee chimes in.

14:53 – Chris: They have to be very self-assured. I want to do things that are at the next level. Each developer has his or her own story. I want to move up the chain, so I want to make sure these developers are self-assured.

16:07 – Chris: Back to the article...

18:26 – Chuck: Yes, I agree. Why go and fight creating a whole system when it exists.

18:54 – Chris chimes in with some comments.

19:38 – Panelist: I still use console logs.

19:48 – Chris: We all do, but we have to...

19:55 – Aimee: In the past year, I can’t tell you how much I rely on this. Do I use Angular? Do I learn Vue? All those things that you can focus on – tools.

10:21 – Chris: We are talking about the ethics of interfaces. Good code is about accessibility, privacy and maintainability, among others. Everything else is sugar on top. We are building products for other people.

22:10 – Chuck: That is the interesting message in your post, and that you are saying: having a deep, solid knowledge of React (that is sort of a status thing...). It is other things that really do matter. It’s the impact we are having. It’s those things that will make the difference. Those things people will want to work with and solves their problems.

23:00 – Chris adds his comments. He talks about Flash.

24:05 – Chris: The librarian motto: “I don’t know everything, but I can look “here” to find the answer.” We don’t know everything.

24:31 – Aimee: Learn how to learn.

24:50 – Chris: There is a big gap in the market. Scratch is a cool tool and it’s these puzzle pieces you put together. It was hard for me to use that system. No, I don’t want to do that. But if you teach the kids these tools then that’s good. 

24:56 – Chuck: Here is the link, and all I had to do was write React components.

26:12 – Chris: My first laptop was 5x more heavy then this one is. Having access to the Internet is a blessing.

27:24 – Advertisement

28:21 – Chuck: Let’s bring this back around. If someone has gone through boot camp, you are recommending that they get use to know their editor, debugging, etc.

Chris: 28:47 – Chris: Yes, get involved within your community. GitHub. This is a community effort. You can help. Writing code from scratch is not that necessary anymore. Why rebuild something if it works. Why fix it if it’s not broken?

31:00 – Chuck talks about his experience.

31:13 – Chris continues his thoughts.

Chris: Start growing a community.

32:01 – Chuck: What ways can people get involved within their community?

32:13 – Chris: Meetup. There are a lot of opportunities out there. Just going online and seeing where the conferences

34:08 – Chris: It’s interesting when I coach people on public speaking. Sharing your knowledge and learning experience is great!

34:50 – Chuck: If they are learning how to code then...by interacting with people you can get closer to what you need/want.

35:30 – Chris continues this conversation.

35:49 – Chris: You can be the person that helps with x, y, z. Just by getting your name known then you can get a job offer.

36:23 – Chuck: How do you find out what is really good content – what’s worth your time vs. what’s not worth your time?

36:36 –Chris says, “That’s tricky!” Chris answers the question.

37:19: Chris: The best things out there right now is...

38:45 – Chuck: Anything else that people want to bring up?

39:00 – Chris continues to talk.

42:26 – Aimee adds in her thoughts.

Aimee: I would encourage people to...

43:00 – Chris continues the conversation.

Chris: Each project is different, when I build a web app is different then when I build a...

45:07 – Panelist: I agree. You talked about abstractions that don’t go away. You use abstractions in what you use. At some point, it’s safe to rly on this abstraction, but not this one. People may ask themselves: maybe CoffeeScript wasn’t the best thing for me.

46:11 – Chris comments and refers to jQuery.

48:58 – Chris continues the conversation.

Chris: I used to work on eight different projects and they worked on different interfaces. I learned about these different environments. This is the project we are now using, and this will like it for the end of time. This is where abstractions are the weird thing. What was the use of the abstraction if it doesn’t have longevity? I think we are building things too soon and too fast.

51:04 – Chris: When I work in browsers and come up with brand new stuff.

52:21 – Panelist: Your points are great, but there are some additional things we need to talk about. Let’s take jQuery as an example. There is a strong argument that if you misuse the browser...

53:45 – Chris: The main issue I have with jQuery is that people get an immediate satisfaction. What do we do besides this?

55:58 – Panelist asks Chris further questions.

56:25 – Chris answers.

Chris: There are highly frequent websites that aren’t being maintained and they aren’t maintainable anymore.

57:09 – Panelist: Prototypes were invented because...

57:51 – Chris: It’s a 20/20 thing.

58:04 – Panelist: Same thing can be said about the Y2K.

58:20 – Panelist: Yes, they had to solve that problem that day. The reality is...

58:44 – Chris: We learned from that whole experience.

1:00:51 – Chris: There was a lot of fluff around it.

1:01:35 – Panelist: Being able to see the future would be a very helpful thing.

1:01:43 – Chris continues the conversation.

1:02:44 – Chuck: How do people get ahold of you?

1:03:04 – Twitter is probably the best way.

1:03:32 – Let’s go to picks!

1:03:36 - Advertisement

Links:

• JavaScript
• So you Learned Java Script, what now? – Article
• WebHint
• Article by James Sinclair
• Clank!
• Angular
• GitHub
• Meetup
• Chris Heilmann’s Twitter
• Chris Heilmann’s Website
• Chris Heilmann’s Medium
• Chris Heilmann’s LinkedIn
• Chris Heilmann
• Chris Heilmann’s GitHub
• Smashing Magazine – Chris Heilmann
• jQuery
• CoffeeScript
• React
• Elixir

Sponsors:

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Digital Ocean
• Cache Fly
•  

Picks :

Amiee

• Hacker News -  How to deal with dirty side effects in your pure functional JavaScript

AJ

• KeyBase

Joe

• Framework Summit
• Clank
• ASMR

Charles

• Get a Coder Job Course
• The Iron Druid Chronicles
• Framework Summit

Chris

• Web Unleashed Toronto
• Kurzgesagt
• It Is Just You, Everything’s Not Shit

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Christiané Heiligers

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Dr. Christiané Heiligers who is new to the industry. Her background is in physics where she has her Ph.D. in the field. Listen to today’s episode to hear her background, experience with the different programs/languages, and much more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

Beginning – Advertisement: Code Badges!

1:07 – Christiané: Hello!

1:17 – Chuck: I like hearing people’s stories from our community. Tell us where you come from and who you are?

1:33 – Christiané: I am from South Africa, and have been in the US for 2 years now. My formal training is in physics. I have been a researcher with lab coats and test tubes. Through immigration, which took 2 years. I couldn’t be still, and started learning code on my own. I enjoyed the art. I had to use Python, and then I was hooked. I enjoyed the functional programming and other things. I had some experience with Ruby on Rails. I enjoy development because its problem solving, methodically approach, and uses your creative side, too. My preference is a Mac, need the Internet and decided to go to camps and take courses.

I snagged a job a week before I graduated!

4:36 – Chuck: your journey, thus far. You said that you couldn’t be idle – so why code?

4:53 – Guest: The UK is cold you don’t want to do anything outside! From South American I couldn’t stand the cold. I kept busy indoors – hint the code. You can’t get bored – frontend or backend.

5:28 – Chuck: Can you give us background on the Grace Hopper Academy.

5:40 – Guest: Sure! It’s based in NY City.

6:26 – Chuck: Did you move somewhere or was it remote?

6:30 – Guest: I had to live somewhere e

6:51 – Chuck: Where did you

6:55 – Guest: NY City. There were 16 of us in the course.

7:14 – Chuck: Why did you feel like you had to go to coding school?

7:25 – Guest: I am impatient with myself. The home-life you ask yourself: “Am I doing the right thing? Am I going in the right direction?” I wanted to go and pick up some skills.

7:56 – Chuck: You go through Grace Hopper – is this how you got into JavaScript?

8:11 – Guest: I didn’t know a line of JavaScript.

I did my application code line in Ruby.

My husband has been in software development my whole life.

9:16 – Chuck: What have you done with JavaScript since learning it?

9:24 – Guest: Some card playing games for my nieces in South Africa.

10:50 – Guest: Stack Overflow is wonderful.

11:05 – Chuck.

11:11 – Guest: I wasn’t actively contributing, but I did...

11:30 – Chuck: What is it like being a prof

11:37 – Guest: It’s addictive. When I am writing code in the frontend / backend side. It’s always learning.

12:11 – Chuck: What’s next for you?

12:18 – Guest: I would love to continue this journey. Maybe into the DevOps, but my passion happens with React. The Hapi Framework.

13:10 – Guest: The community is wonderful to work with – everyone is very helpful.

13:22 – Chuck: People are usually talking about Express and not Hapi.js.

13:35 – Guest: I have some contact names you can call.

13:43 – Guest: I am working on a few small projects right now. Some Angular sites that need assistance. Helping out where I can. It’s a small team that I am working with. There is only a few of us.

14:31 – Chuck: Usually people stick with one. What’s your experience using the different frameworks?

14:40 – Guest: It’s an eye-opener! React vs. Angular.

15:07 – Chuck: How can people find you?

15:14 – Guest: LinkedIn, Twitter, Tallwave, etc.

15:37 – Chuck: Picks!

15:40 – Advertisement!

Links:

• React
• Angular
• Grace Hopper Academy
• Christiané’s Instagram
• Christiané’s Facebook

Sponsors:

• Code Badge
• Cache Fly
• Get A Coder Job

Picks:

Charles

• Podcasts that Chuck listens to:
  • Code Newbie
  • Our podcasts through DevChat
• Food – Kedo Diet – 2 Keto Dudes

Christiané Heiligers

• Hapi Framework
• Hapi Slack Channel – Hapi.js

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Christine Legge

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Christine Legge who is a computer software engineer who works for Google in New York. Previous employment includes Axiom Zen, and Vizzion, Inc. She and Chuck talk about her background, past and current projects, and her future goals.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

1:07 – Hello!

1:10 – Chuck: You were on Episode 328 in the past. Tell us about yourself!

1:24 – Christine: I started working with Google about 2 weeks ago. In the past I worked in Vancouver, Canada.

2:05 – Chuck: Let’s start with how you got into programming?

2:14 – Christine: When I was in HS I wasn’t interested at all into computers. I wanted to do applied math in Toronto Canada for college. For engineering you have to take an introduction to programming in the 1^st year. I had a 4-hour computer science course in the morning and I dreaded it. I dropped out 3 months later b/c I didn’t like the program. Surprisingly, enough, I did like the computer science course. I went back to Vancouver and I said to my parents that I wanted an office job. I went to the YMCA center and wanted to be hired. The man there asked if I had any interest in data entering, and I started working for him. I worked 4 hours a week with him where he taught me C+. I decided to go back to school for it.

5:37 – Chuck: What did you like about it?

5:43 – Christine: I liked the problem solving part of it. I like how you can break things down. The technology doesn’t interest me that much, but I like the problem-solving aspect. The guy wasn’t that up-to-date with the newest technologies either.

6:53 – Chuck: You have a 4-year degree in computer science.

7:05 – Yes that and statistics, too.

7:13 – Chuck: I was going to say “nerd.”

How do you go from desktop applications to web apps?

7:25 – Christine: I worked with a company part-time and fulltime depending on the year/season.

I didn’t know what web development was but I thought that THAT was computer science. I thought that if I knew how to do web development then I was going to be good to go. This company asked: What do you want to do? And I answered that I wanted to do web development b/c I thought that’s what I was lacking. I basically got thrown into it. I didn’t understand anything at all. It took me to write one line of CSS and it took 4 hours.

10:35 – Why did JavaScript attract you more so than C# or other languages that you’ve used?

10:43 – It’s simpler and you don’t need a lot of setup; from top to bottom. I am working in typescript, I like it even more, but I like how Java is more free to do what you want. I like functional programming in JavaScript. I like the big community for Java, and there are tons of applications for it. I really like how flexible the language is. You can do functional and oriented or you can combine the two. You aren’t constrained.

12:00 – Chuck: You get in, you work through JavaScript, were you only doing backend?

12:14 – Christine: Yep, backend.

13:00 –Chuck: I know you talked at the conference, and what are you most proud of?

13:14 – Christine: To be honest, no. My mentor (Pablo) at the last company – he wrote a book about D3. He started learning and writing the book. To me that I had thought that all these people are experts from the get go. I realized that everyone has to start somewhere to eventually become an expert. I do want to make an impact even outside of my job. I don’t have anything new that I’ve been working on. It’s a goal for me within the next couple of months.

15:30 – Chuck: I understand that.

15:36 – Christine: I haven’t found that balance, yet. When I gave that talk during Developer Week I was moving and stressed out. “I am NEVER doing this again!” It was over and it was very rewarding. People gave good feedback, and I would like to do that again.

16:56 – Chuck: People have different experience with that kind of stuff. People are interested in different things. So you’ve been working on moving and all that stuff right? What would you like to dive back into?

17:32 – Christine: Yes we are using Angular 2 and typescript and a Reactive Library. Angular is interesting to me. I would like to dive into the dependency injection in Angular. I really like typescript.

19:24 – Chuck: Have you looked at resources?

19:39 – Christine: I read the documentation so far. Like for React I just read the documentation but I haven’t found a central source just, yet. Not a single source. The docs are okay to get started but I haven’t found that they were enough.

20:50 – Chuck: This is about your story. I worked through the Tour of Heroes, and that helped me with Angular. It’s in the Angular Documentation.

21:23 – Christine: When you are starting at a new job I want to make sure I’m settled-in. And now I want to start thinking at a high-level of how these things work. I think the cool thing working here is that you can talk to the people who are working on Angular and get some insight that way.

22:27 – Chuck: People are usually very approachable.

22:34 – Christine: Yes, I agree. To be apart of the communities people want you to use their stuff.

22:48 – Chuck: Do you have another talk in mind when you are ready to give your next talk?

22:59 – Christine: Not sure. I have one thing on my list right now and that’s it.

23:42 – Chuck: I haven’t looked at RJX documentation but I think it’s pretty easy to pick-up. Ben who is the main developer RJX joined the team last year.

24:04 – Christine: It’s a lot of promises. When I figure it out that’s how something would work if it were a promise then I can usually get there.

24:25 – Chuck: Yeah.

24:38 – Christine: I kind of want to make connections in the office rather than me trying to do myself. I don’t want to waste time. Working on those connections would be good.

25:20 – Chuck: Let’s do some picks!

25:30 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 30-Day Trial!

Links:

• React
• Angular
• Vue.js
• JavaScript
• Ember
• Elm
• jQuery
• Christine Legge’s LinkedIn
• Christine Legge’s Twitter
• Christine Legge’s GitHub

Sponsors:

• Cache Fly
• Get A Coder Job
• Fresh Books

Picks:

Charles

• My Calendar Software – BusyCal and Google Calendar
• Google Calendar just started appointment slots

Christine

• Podcast: The Pitch
• Podcast: How I Built This

Panel:

• Aimee Knight
• AJ O’Neal
• Aaron Frost
• Christopher Ferdinandi

Special Guests: Christopher Buecheler

In this episode, the panel talks with Christopher Buecheler who is an author, blogger, web developer, and founder of CloseBrace. The panel and Christopher talk about stepping outside of your comfort zone. With a technological world that is ever changing, it is important to always be learning within your field. Check out today’s episode to learn more!

Show Topics:

0:00 – Advertisement: KENDO UI

1:08 – Aimee: Our guest is Christopher Buecheler – tell us about yourself and what you do.

1:22 – Guest: I run a site and help mid-career developers. I put out a weekly newsletter, too.

2:01 – Aimee: It says that you are a fan of “getting comfortable being uncomfortable”?

2:15 – Guest: I am a self-taught developer, so that means I am scrambling to learn new things all the time. You are often faced with learning new things. When I learned React I was dumped into it. The pain and the difficulty are necessary in order to improve. If you aren’t having that experience then you aren’t learning as much as you could be.

3:26 – Aimee: I borrow lessons that I learned from ice-skating to programming.

3:49 – Guest: I started running a few years ago for better health. It was exhausting and miserable at the start and wondered why I was doing it. Now I run 5 times a week, and there is always a level of being uncomfortable, but now it’s apart of the run. It’s an interesting comparison to coding. It’s this idea of pushing through.

5:01 – Aimee: If you are comfortable you probably aren’t growing that much. In our industry you always have to be learning because things change so much!

5:25 – Guest: Yes, exactly. If you are not careful you can miss opportunities.

6:33 – Panel: You have some ideas about frameworks and libraries – one thing that I am always anxious about is being able to make sense of “what are some new trends that I should pay attention to?” I remember interviewing with someone saying: this mobile thing is just a fad. I remember thinking that she is going to miss this opportunity. I am worried that I am going to be THAT guy. How do you figure out what sort of things you should / shouldn’t pay attention to?

7:47 – Guest: It is a super exhausting thing to keep up with – I agree. For me, a lot of what I pay attention to is the technology that has the backing of a multi-million dollar company then that shows that technology isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. The other thing I would look at is how ACTIVE is the community around it?

9:15 – Panel: Is there a strategic way to approach this? There is so many different directions that you can grow and push yourself within your career? Do you have any kinds of thoughts/tips on how you want your career to evolve?

10:00 – Guest: I am trying to always communicate better to my newsletter audience. Also, a good approach, too, is what are people hiring for? 

11:06 – Aimee: Again, I would say: focus on learning.

11:30 – Panel: And I agree with Aimee – “learn it and learn it well!”

12:01 – Panel: I want to ask Chris – what is CloseBrace?

12:17 – Guest: I founded it in November 2016, and started work on it back in 2013.

14:20 – Panel: It was filled with a bunch of buzz worthy words/title.

14:32 – Guest continues his thoughts/comments on CloseBrace.

16:54 – Panel: How is the growth going?

17:00 – Guest: It is growing very well. I put out a massive, massive tutorial course – I wouldn’t necessarily advice that people do this b/c it can be overwhelming. However, growth this year I have focused on marketing. I haven’t shared numbers or anything but it’s increased 500%, and I am happy about it.

18:05 – Panel: Are you keeping in-house?

18:13 – Guest: I think it would be cool to expand, but now it is in-house. I don’t want to borrow Egg Head’s setup. I would love to cover MORE topics, though.

19:05 – Panel: You are only one person.

19:08 – Guest: If I can get the site creating more revenue than I can hire someone to do video editing, etc.

19:35 – Panel: I think you are overthinking it.

19:45 – Guest.

19:47 – Advertisement – Sentry.io

20:47 – Guest.

21:30 – Aimee: There are SO many resources out there right now. Where do you think you fit into this landscape?

21:44 – The landscape is cluttered, but I feel that I am different b/c of my thoroughness. I don’t always explain line by line, but I do say how and why things work. I think also is my VOICE. Not my radio voice, but the tone and the approach you take with it.

23:25 – Panel: I was trying to copy folks in the beginning of my career. And at some point I realized that I needed to find my own style. It always came down to the reasons WHY I am different rather than the similarities. Like, Chris, you have these quick hits on CloseBrace, but some people might feel like they don’t have the time to get through ALL of your content, because it’s a lot. For me, that’s what I love about your content.

24:46 – Christopher: Yeah, it was intentional.

25:36 – Panel: Good for you.

25:49 – Guest: I am super device agnostic: Android, Mac, PC, etc. I have a lot of people from India that are more Microsoft-base.

26:28 – Aimee: I think Egghead is pretty good about this...do you cover testing at all with these things that you are doing? It’s good to do a “Hello World” but most of these sites don’t get into MORE complex pieces. I think that’s where you can get into trouble. It’s nice to have some boiler point testing, too.

27:18 – Guest answers Aimee’s question.

28:43 – Aimee: We work with a consultancy and I asked them to write tests for the things that we work with. That’s the value of the testing. It’s the code that comes out.

29:10 – Panel: Can you explain this to me. Why do I need to write tests? It’s always working (my code) so why do I have to write a test?

29:39 – Guest: When working with AWS I was writing...

31:01 – Aimee: My biggest thing is that I have seen enough that the people don’t value testing are in a very bad place, and the people that value testing are in a good place. It even comes back to the customers, because the code gets so hard that you end up repeatedly releasing bugs. Customers will stop paying their bills if this happens too often for them.

33:00 – Panel: Aimee / Chris do you have a preferred tool? I have done testing before, but not as much as I should be doing.

33:25 – Aimee: I like JEST and PUPPETEER.

33:58 – Guest: I like JEST, too.

34:20 – Aimee: Let’s go to PICKS!

34:35 – Advertisement – eBook: Get a coder job!

Links:

• JavaScript
• jQuery
• React
• Elixir
• Elm
• Vue
• JEST
• Puppeteer
• Podflix
• Autojump
• Brutalist Web Design
• YouTube: Mac Miller
• Balloon Fiesta
• DocZ
• CloseBrace
• Christopher Buecheler’s Website
• Christopher Buecheler’s LinkedIn
• Christopher Buecheler’s GitHub
• Go Learn Things – Chris Ferdinandi

Sponsors:

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Cache Fly
• Get a Coder Job

Picks:

Aimee

• Podflix

Chris F.

• AutoJump 
• Brutalist Web Design
• Mac Miller Tiny Desk Concert

AJ

• Canada Dry with Lemonade

Aaron

• ABQ Ballon Festival
• Joe Eames DND Recording Channel

Christopher

• Docz
• South Reach Trilogy
• Jeff Vandermeer

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Chris McKnight

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Chris McKnight who is a software developer who knows Angular, Ruby, Node.js, and iOS. He went to college at Louisiana State University and graduated with a computer science degree from LSU. They talk about Chris’ background, past/current projects, among other things. Check out today’s episode to hear the panel talk about JavaScript, Angular, C and C++, Node, React, and much more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job!

1:12 – Chuck: Hello! Introduce yourself, please!

1:15 – Guest: I am a software engineer outside of Nashville, Tennessee. I work for a medium consultancy company. I know JavaScript, Angular, NativeScript, and JS, too.

1:41 – Chuck: Cool! Tell us your story and how you got into programming?

2:00 – Guest: I was a really big nerd in high school and grew up in Louisiana, USA. There was one other person in the school that knew what I was talking about. I was learning C++ and Visual Studio in 2003. That was really back in the day and Microsoft Foundation class was a thing. I moved onto PHP and started working for a company in Baton Rouge after graduating college. I have a computer science degree with a secondary discipline in mathematics. I graduated from LSU and got a job offer before I graduated. Doing some part-time work for them b/c they were swamped. I was writing PHP and they said that they used jQuery a lot.

4:47 – Chuck: You got started and you said you used C and C++, why those languages?

5:05 – Guest: I did a little bit of Java, but it was the “new kid on the block.” I wanted to get into a program that was user-friendlier.

6:21 – Chuck: I took C and C++ classes in college. Eventually I did Ruby on Rails. I totally understand why you went that way.

6:44 – Guest: I picked-up Rails, because a company (that I worked for at the time) used it. I usually reached for jQuery among other options.

7:31 – Chuck: When did you start taking JavaScript seriously?

7:40 – Guest: 2012-2013. Frustrations of not using JavaScript as good as I could. For jQuery you have to call when you have an issue. Then you run into all of these bugs, and...

9:18 – Chuck: It sounds like it was more out of necessity.

9:30 – Guest: Yep, exactly. Those pain points have been reduced b/c I have been using Type Script and Angular and now version 6 and version 7. You try to call a number method on a string and vice versa, and app development time.

10:03 – Chuck: ...it has a process running with it.

10:13 – Guest: Catching a lot of those easy mistakes (bugs) and it’s a 5-10 minute fix. It takes a lot of that away. Sometimes you can say: I want to ignore it.

Or it doesn’t give you runtime guarantees.

Some other libraries out there have been on the forefront of fixing those problems. REST TYPE is an example of that.

11:39 – Chuck: When I talk to people about JavaScript a lot of times I get basically that they are saying: I started doing more things in Node or React – I fell in love with the language. Your reasons for starting JavaScript are because “I hated running into these problems.” Did you start loving to work in JavaScript?

12:11 – Guest: I did start loving it but it took a while. I could write a short amount of code and then at the end I get a result.

Another thing that bothers me is FILTER. What does it return? It’s actually FIND and FIND INDEX and you use the pattern of filter and run this expression and give me index zero.

14:16 – Chuck: What work have you done that you are proud of?

14:20 – Guest: I started a new job last month; beforehand I worked at a mortgage company. I was proud of the Angular application and applications that I worked on. 

16:55 – Chuck: How did you get into Angular?

17:00 – Guest: Interesting story. October of 2016 – at this time I was all against Angular. However someone came to me and said we have to...

At the time I wasn’t impressed with the language. I learned about Angular at the time, though, and learned through Egghead. I learned a lot in 2 days, and I got pretty decent at it. I was writing Angular applications pretty quickly, and it made sense to me.

20:53 – Chuck: I am a fan of the CLI b/c that’s what we have in Rails. It’s really nice. What are you working on these days?

21:13 – Guest: Less on Angular b/c of the new job. I will do Angular on my free time. I work on Angular at nighttime. I build some things in React these past few weeks.

23:07 – Chuck: Any part of your experience that could help people?

23:17 – Guest: Learn what’s happening under the hood of libraries such as jQuery. Explore and find resources to help you. Keep learning and keep at it. Tools are so god now – such as Prettier and Lint – they will tell me “you don’t want to do this.” Use the tooling and learn the fundamentals. Also, use Babel! Those are my tips of advice.

25:55 – Chuck: That’s solid. Yes, the fundamentals and the poly-fills will fill in the gaps. So now it’s: what do I want to stack on top of this? Once you know the fundamentals.

26:55 – Guest: Learn what the frameworks and libraries are doing.

Don’t get overwhelmed. That’s my advice.

28:16 – Chuck: Where can people find you?

28:24 – Guest: GitHub and Twitter. I’ve been working on a website, but not ready, yet.

29:08 – Chuck: Picks!

29:15 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 30-Day Trial!

35:45 – Cache Fly

Links:

• React
• Angular
• Vue.js
• JavaScript
• Ember
• Elm
• jQuery
• Node
• Find and Find Index
• NativeScript
• Lint
• Babel
• Prettier
• Christopher’s GitHub
• Christopher’s Twitter

Sponsors:

• Cache Fly
• Get A Coder Job
• Fresh Books

Picks:

Chris

• Angular Explorer
• VS Code
• Finance – Staying out of Debt – Swish App

Chuck

• Discord
• DomiNations

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Rob Eisenberg

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Rob Eisenberg who is a principal software engineer at InVision, and is the creator of Caliburn.Micro, Durandal, and Aurelia. Today, they talk about Rob’s past and current projects among other things.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

1:40 – Chuck: Our special guest is Rob Eisenberg. We’ve had you on Adventures on Angular (09 and 80), JavaScript Jabber, and others like Episode 203.

2:36 – Rob: That was over the period of 4 years all of those podcasts. I am getting older.

2:50 – Chuck: Anything that you’ve done that you want to talk about?

3:04 – Rob: I am known for opensource work over the years. Maybe we can talk about my progression through that over the years.

3:25 – Chuck: How did you get into this field?

3:29 – Rob: When I was 8 years old my dad wanted to buy a computer. We went to Sears and we bought our first computer. You’d buy the disk drive and the keyboard looking unit. You could by a monitor, we didn’t, but we used a black and white TV for our monitor. Later we bought the colored monitor and printer. That’s where my fascination started. We set up the computer in my bedroom. We played games. I got intrigued that you could write code to make different games.

It was just magical for me. As being an adult engineer I am trying to go back to that moment to recapture that magical moment for me. It was a great creative outlet. That’s how I first started. I started learning about Q basic and other flavors of Basic. Then I heard about C! I remember you could do anything with C. I went to the library and there wasn’t the Internet, yet. There were 3 books about C and read it and re-read it. I didn’t have any connections nor a compiler. When I first learned C I didn’t have a compiler. I learned how to learn the codes on notebook paper, but as a kid this is what I first started doing. I actually saved some of this stuff and I have it lying around somewhere. I was big into adventure games. That’s when I moved on C++ and printed out my source code! It’s so crazy to talk about it but at the time that’s what I did as a kid. In JHS there was one other kid that geeked-out about it with me. It was a ton of fun.

Then it was an intense hobby of mine. Then at the end of HS I had 2 loves: computers and percussion. I was composing for music, too. I had to decide between music or coding. I decided to go with music. It was the best decision I ever made because I studied music composition. When you are composing for dozens of instruments to play one unified thing. Every pitch, every rhythm, and it all works together. Why this note and why that rhythm? There is an artistic side to this and academia, too. The end result is that music is enjoyed by humans; same for software.

I did 2 degrees in music and then started my Master’s in Music. I then realized I love computers, too, how can I put these two together? I read some things on audio programming, and it stepped me back into programming. At this time, I was working in music education and trying to compose music for gamming. Someone said look at this program called C#! I don’t know cause...how can you get any better than C++?!

In 2003 – I saw a book: teach yourself C# in 24 hours. I read it and I was enthralled with how neat this was! I was building some Windows applications through C#. I thought it was crazy that there was so much change from when I was in college.

17:00 – Chuck: You start making this transition to web? What roped you in?

17:25 – Rob: I realized the power of this, not completely roped in just, yet. Microsoft was working (around this time) with...

19:45 – (Continued from Rob): When Silver Light died that’s when I looked at the web. I said forget this native platform. I came back to JavaScript for the 2^nd time – and said I am going to learn this language with the same intensity as I learned C++ and C#. I started working with Durandal.

21:45 – Charles: Yeah, I remember when you worked with the router and stuff like that. You were on the core team.

21:53 – Rob: The work I did on that was inspired by screen activation patterns.

23:41 – Rob (continued): I work with InVision now.

24:14 – Charles: I remember you were on the Angular team and then you transitioned – what was that like?

24:33 – Rob comments.

25:28 – Rob (continued): I have been doing opensource for about 13 years. I almost burned myself a few times and almost went bankrupt a few times. The question is how to be involved, but run the race without getting burned-out. It’s a marathon not a sprint.

These libraries are huge assets. Thank God I didn’t go bankrupt but became very close.

The more popular something if there are more varieties and people not everyone is so pleasant. It’s okay to disagree. Now what are the different opinions and what works well for your team and project? It’s important to stay to your core and vision. Why would you pick THIS over THAT?

It’s a fun and exciting time if you are

28:41 – Charles: What are you

28:47 – Rob: InVision and InVision studio. It’s a tool for designing screens. I work on that during the day and during the night I work on Aurelia.

30:43 – Chuck: I am pretty sure that we have had people from InVision on a show before.

31:03 – Rob comments.

Rob: How we all work together.

31:20 – What is coming in with Aurelia next?

31:24 – Rob: We are trying to work with as much backwards compatibility as we can. So you don’t see a lot of the framework code in your app code. It’s less intrusive. We are trying next, can we keep the same language, the same levels, and such but change the implementation under the hood. You don’t learn anything new. You don’t have new things to learn. But how it’s implemented it’s smaller, faster, and more efficient. We have made the framework more pluggable to the compiler-level. It’s fully supported and super accessible.

Frameworks will come and go – this is my belief is that you invest in the standards of the web. We are taking that up a notch. Unobtrusiveness is the next thing we want to do. 

We’ve always had great performance and now taking it to the next level. We are doing a lot around documentation. To help people understand what the architectural decisions are and why? We are taking it to the next level from our core. It’s coming along swimmingly so I am really excited. We’ve already got 90% test coverage and over 40,000 tests.

37:33 – Chuck: Let’s get you on JavaScript Jabber!

38:19 – Chuck: Where can people find you?

38:22 – Twitter, and everywhere else. Blog!

39:17 – Chuck: Picks?

39:23 – Rob dives in!

Links:

• jQuery
• Angular
• JavaScript
• Vue
• C++
• C#
• InVision
• Aurelia
• Aurelia Blog by Rob
• Rob Eisenberg’s Twitter
• Rob’s Website
• Rob’s LinkedIn
• Rob’s GitHub
• Rob’s Episode 9
• Rob’s Episode 80
• Rob’s Episode 203

Sponsors:

• Get A Coder Job
• Fresh Books
• Cache Fly

Picks:

Rob

• Database: Orbit DB
• Robit Riddle
• The Wingfeather Saga

Charles

• Used to play: Dungeons and Dragons
• Little Wizards
• Park City, UT
• VRBO

Sponsors

• Netlify
• Sentry use the code "devchat" for $100 credit
• Clubhouse

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• AJ O’Neal
• Aimee Knight
• Aaron Frost
• Chris Ferdinandi
• Joe Eames
• Tim Caswell

Notes:

This episode of JavaScript Jabber has the panelists reminiscing on the past. First, they discuss the projects they’re working on. Tim has joined MagicLeap doing JavaScript and C++. Aaron Frost is one of the founders of HeroDevs. AJ works at Big Squid, a company that takes spreadsheets and turns them into business actions, and is expecting a daughter. Aimee has been exploring developer advocacy, but wants to focus primarily on engineering. She is currently working at MPM. Joe has taken over the CEO position for thinkster.io, a company for learning web development online. Chris switched from being a general web developer specializing in JavaScript and has started blogging daily rather than once a week, and has seen an increase in sales of his vanilla JavaScript educational products. Charles discusses his long term goal for Devchat.tv. He wants to help people feel free in programming, and help people find opportunities though the Devchat.tv through empowering content.

Next, the panelists discuss their favorite episodes. Some of the most highly recommended episodes are

JSJ 124: The Origin of Javascript with Brendan Eich (1:44:07)

JSJ 161: Rust with David Herman (1:05:05)

JSJ 336: “The Origin of ESLint with Nicholas Zakas” (1:08:01)

JSJ 338: It’s Supposed To Hurt, Get Outside of Your Comfort Zone to Master Your Craft with Christopher Buecheler (43:36)

JSJ 218: Ember.js with Yehuda Katz (42:47)

Last, the panelists discuss what they do to unwind. Activities include working out, reading, playing Zelda and Mario Kart, studying other sciences like physics, painting miniatures, and Dungeons and Dragons.

Picks:

Charles Max Wood

• Villainous Board Game

Joe Eames

• Azul Stained Glass Board Game

AJ O’Neal

• https://www.digikey.com/
• Magnetic Hourglass: Amazon | Hobby Lobby $6 

Aimee Knight

• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/well/mind/work-schedule-hours-sleep-productivity-chronotype-night-owls.html

Aaron Frost

• Matrix PowerWatch
• https://twitter.com/ChloeCondon

Chris Ferdinandi

• https://learnvanillajs.com/

Tim Caswell

• https://www.magicleap.com/
• https://textonascreen.rocks/
• https://history.lds.org/saints

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan
• Clubhouse
• CacheFly

Host: Charles Max Wood

Special Guest: Miško Hevery

Episode Summary

In this episode of My JavaScript Story, Charles hosts Miško Hevery, creator of Angular and Senior Computer Scientist at Google.

Miško was introduced to computers when his father brought a Sinclair ZX Spectrum home for them to play with. When they moved to the United States from Czech Republic, Miško attended Rochester Institute of Technology and studied Computer Engineering. After working for companies such as Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Intel, and Xerox, he joined Google where created the Angular framework. For more on the story of how Miško created AngularJS, listen to the ‘Birth of Angular’ episode on the Adventures in Angular podcast here.

Miško is currently working on Angular Ivy at Google and plans to restart a blog in the future.

Links

• Adventures in Angular: The Birth of Angular
• JavaScript Jabber: Dependency Injection in JavaScript with Vojta Jína & Misko Hevery
• Miško's Twitter
• Miško's GitHub
• Miško's Medium
• Miško's LinkedIn
• How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk
• https://devchat.tv/my-angular-story/

 Picks

Miško Hevery:

• Prusa3D - 3D Printers from Josef Prusa

Charles Max Wood:

• The Kingfountain Series by Jeff Wheeler

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan
• Clubhouse
• CacheFly 

Host: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Christopher Buecheler

Episode Summary

In this episode of My JavaScript Story, Charles hosts Christopher Buecheler, novelist, web developer and founder of CloseBrace, a JavaScript tutorial and resource site.

Christopher is a self-taught full-stack web developer with extensive experience in programming with JavaScript, jQuery, React.js, Angular.js, and much more. Listen to Christopher on the  JavaScript Jabber podcast.

Christopher started CloseBrace because he really enjoys helping people and giving back to the community. In his spare time, he writes science fiction novels and is also working on a web application for knitting called Stitchly with a friend.

Links

• https://devchat.tv/js-jabber/jsj-338-its-supposed-to-hurt-get-outside-of-your-comfort-zone-to-master-your-craft-with-christopher-buecheler/
• CloseBrace
• React.js
• https://twitter.com/closebracejs
• Christopher Buecheler’s Twitter
• Christopher Buecheler’s Website
• Christopher Buecheler’s LinkedIn
• Christopher Buecheler’s GitHub
• https://closebrace.com/categories/five-minute-react
• contact@closebrace.com
• http://stitchly.io/
• Christopher Buecheler's Amazon link
• Elixir by Christopher Buecheler
• https://devchat.tv/my-javascript-story/
• https://www.facebook.com/DevChattv
• https://www.facebook.com/javascriptjabber
• https://devchat.tv/my-javascript-story/

Picks

Christopher Buecheler:

• Bracket Pair Colorizer
• Highlight Matching Tag
• https://gitlens.amod.io/
• Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Charles Max Wood:

• Language Server Extension Guide
• RRU 015: Visual Studio Code with Rachel MacFarlane and Matt Bierner LIVE at Microsoft Build
• VoV 015: Visual Studio Code with Rachel MacFarlane and Matt Bierner LIVE at Microsoft Build

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan
• Clubhouse
• CacheFly 

Host: Charles Max Wood

Special Guest: Chris Ferdinandi

Episode Summary

In this episode of My JavaScript Story, Charles Max Wood hosts Chris Ferdinandi, a Senior Front-End Engineer at Mashery. Chris is also a panelist on the podcast JavaScript Jabber and runs Go Make Things.

Chris started out his career as in Human Resources, decided he wanted to go into development after he was asked to work on a coding project by his manager and he really enjoyed it. He got his first coding job as an entry level developer after attending a web development conference.

Chris authors Vanilla JavaScript Pocket Guides which are short, focused e-books and video courses made for beginners.

Links

• JavaScript Jabber: How To Learn JavaScript When You’re Not a Developer with Chris Ferdinandi
• Vanilla JavaScript Pocket Guides
• Go Make Things
• Chris' GitHub
• Chris' Twitter
• Chris' LinkedIn
• Mashery
• https://devchat.tv/my-javascript-story/

Picks

Chris Ferdinandi:

• Accessibility: Back to the Future by Bruce Lawson
• Ralph Breaks the Internet | Disney Movies

Charles Max Wood:

• Running along San Francisco Bay
• Marriage

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan
• CacheFly 

Host: Charles Max Wood

Special Guest: Isaac Schlueter

Episode Summary

In this episode of My JavaScript Story, Charles Max Wood hosts Isaac Schlueter, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at NPM.

Listen to Isaac’s journey as a developer on the podcast My Java Story on this episode and on the podcast My Angular Story on this episode.

Isaac recently switched roles from Chief Executive Officer to Chief Product Officer, he explains the reasoning behind this switch. He talks about NPM Enterprise and its value proposition. He talks about projects he is working on currently and also the future of NPM. He also talks about the current available positions at NPM, both in Oakland, CA and remote.

Links

• My JavaScript Story Isaac Schlueter
• My Angular Story Isaac Schlueter
• JavaScript Jabber Node & NPM with Isaac Schlueter
• Isaac's Twitter
• NPM's Twitter
• NPM's blog
• NPM website
• https://devchat.tv/my-javascript-story/

Picks

Isaac Schlueter:

• Ink
• Umbrella Academy Netflix
• I Love Hue
• Do By Friday

Charles Max Wood:

• The Expanse (TV Series)
• The Travelers (TV Series)
• Podfest Multimedia Expo
• Netlify
• Eleventy
• We're Alive
• Charles’ Personal Blog
•  

Sponsors

• Sentry use code “devchat” for 2 months free

• Triplebyte $1000 signing bonus

Panel

• Charles Max Wood

• Aimee Knight

• Chris Ferdinandi

• AJ O’Neal

• Joe Eames

Joined by Special Guest: Chris DeMars

Episode Summary

Special guest Chris DeMars is from Detroit, MI. Currently, he works for Tuft and Needle and is an international speaker, Google developer expert, Microsoft mvp, and web accessibility specialist. He comes from a varied work background, including truck driving and other non-tech jobs.

Today the panel discusses web accessibility for people with disabilities. According to a study done by WebAIM, 97.8% of homepages tested had detectable WCAG 2 failures. The panel discusses why web accessibility is doing so poorly. Chris talks about some of the biggest mistakes he sees and some very simple fixes to make sites more accessible. Chris talks about the importance of manual testing on screen readers and emphasizes that it is important to cover the screen to make sure that it really works with a screen reader. Chris talks about some of the resources available for those who wish to increase accessibility on their sites.

The team discusses tactics for prioritizing accessibility and if there is a moral obligation to make sites accessible to those with disabilities. Chris talks about his experience making accessibility a priority for one of the companies he worked for in the past. They discuss the futue of legal ramifications for sites that do not incorporate accessibility, and what responsibility falls on the shoulders of people who regularly use assistive devices to notify companies of issues. They finish the show with resources available to people who want to learn more.

Links

• The DOM

• Semantic markup writings

• Alt attribute

• Axe by DeQue

• Bootstrap

• Aria lable

• WebAim study

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Charles Max Wood:

• LootCrate

Aimee Knight:

• Implementing Git in Python tutorial

Chris Ferdinandi:

• "Fighting Uphill" by Eric Bailey

• “The Web We Broke” by Ethan Marcotte

• AllBirds sneakers

• Newsletter

AJ O’Neal:

• Golang Channel vs Mutex vs WaitGroup

• Nobuo Uematsu

• The Best Way to Tin Enameled Wire

Joe Eames:

• Gizmos board game

• Thinkster.io accessibility course (not released yet)

Chris DeMars:

• Dixxon Flannel Company

• Aquis.com accessibility simulator

• Refactr accessibility workshop in June

• Follow Chris

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan

• CacheFly

Host: Charles Max Wood

Joined By Special Guest: Christian Heilmann

Episode Summary

Christian is a Principal Software Development Engineer at Microsoft, working out of Berlin, Germany.

Links

• JavaScript Jabber 332: “You Learned JavaScript, Now What?” with Chris Heilmann

• https://christianheilmann.com/

• Christian's Twitter

• Christian's LinkedIn

• Christian's Medium

• Christian's GitHub

• https://www.facebook.com/javascriptjabber

• https://twitter.com/JSJabber

• https://www.facebook.com/DevChattv

Picks

Christian Heilmann:

• https://webhint.io/

• http://csstricks.com/

• https://dev.to/

• https://codepen.io/

• Microsoft Edge Insider

Charles Max Wood:

• Privacy Badger - Google Chrome

• Emacs

• Adventures in DevOps - new podcast on https://devchat.tv/

Sponsors

• Datadog  

• Sentry use code “devchat” for 2 months free

Panel

• Aimee Knight

• AJ O’Neal

• Charles Max Wood

With Special Guest: Rene Rubalcava

Episode Summary

Rene is a software developer for ESRI and works in spatial and mapping software. ESRI has been around since 1969 and has seen their work explode since they shifted to providing address and location services. Rene talks about how he thinks about location and mapping when building software around it and things that he has to approach in unique ways. The panel discusses some of their past experiences with location software. Some of the most difficult aspects of this software is changing time zones for data and actually mapping the Earth, since it is not flat nor a perfect sphere. Rene talks about the different models used for mapping the Earth.

Most mapping systems use the same algorithm as Google maps, so Rene talks about some of the specific features of ArcGIS, including the ability to finding a point within a polygon. Rene talks about what routing is, its importance, and how it is being optimized with ArcGIS, such as being able to add private streets into a regular street network.

The panel discusses how the prevalence of smartphones has changed mapping and GPS and some of their concerns with privacy and location mapping. One thing ESRI is very careful about is not storing private information. Rene talks about the kinds of things he has seen people doing with the mapping and location data provided by ArcGIS, including a Smart Mapping feature for developers, mapping planets, indoor routing, and 3D models. 

Links

• Webricate 

• Esri

• ArcGIS

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Rene Rubalcava:

• Old Man’s War series

• Always Be My Maybe

• Rene’s website

AJ O’Neal:

• INTL

• Colorful

• Time zones in Postgress

• Time zones in JavaScript

Aimee Knight:

• Advice to Less Experienced Developers

Charles Max Wood:

• Heber Half Marathon

• Netlify CMS

• Villainous

• Firefox

JSJ BONUS EPISODE: Observables and RxJS Live with Aaron Frost

Mon Jul 29 2019 13:00:56 GMT+0300 (+03)

Episode Number: bonus

Duration: 29:35

https://media.devchat.tv/js-jabber/JSJ_Bonus_Aaron_Frost.mp3

Host: Charles Max Wood

Joined by Special Guest: Aaron Frost

Episode Summary

Aaron Frost joins Charles to talk about what Observables are and why developers should learn about them and use them in their code. He explains the difference between Observables, Promises and Callbacks with an example. Aaron then invites all listeners to attend the upcoming RxJS Live Conference and introduces the impressive speaker line-up. The conference will take place on September 5-6 in Las Vegas and tickets are still available. Aaron also offers a $100 discount to all listeners with the code "chuckforlife". For any questions you can DM Aaron at his Twitter account.

Links

• RxJS Live Conference
• RxJS Conference Tickets
• Aaron's Twitter
• Promises
• Callbacks

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan
• CacheFly

Host: Charles Max Wood

Episode Summary

Charles talks about his journey as a podcaster and his mission with Devchat.tv. Devchat.tv  is designed to home podcasts that speak to all developer communities. Charles also plans Devchat.tv to host shows for technologies that are on the verge of a breakthrough and will be a lot more widely available in the near future such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). There are new shows being added continuously to reach out to new communities, some examples of which are: a Data Science show, a DevOps show and an Open Source show. As a kid, Charles would record his own shows on a tape recorder. He was always interested in technology. While studying Computer Engineering at Brigham Young University, he worked in the University's Operations Center. Upon graduation, he started working for Mozy where he was introduced to podcasts. Listen to the show to find out the rest of Charles' story, some of the lessons and tips he learned throughout his journey and the evolution of the shows on Devchat.tv. If there isn't a show for your community and you would like there one to be, reach out to Charles. Also if there was a podcast about a programming related subject that ended abruptly and you would like it to continue, reach out to Charles. Devchat.tv would like to host these podcasts.

Links

• Charles' Twitter
• EverywhereJS JavaScript Community
• EverywhereRB Ruby and Rails Community
• Find Your Dream Job As A Developer
• Devchat.tv on Facebook
• Devchat.tv

Picks

• EverywhereJS JavaScript Community
• EverywhereRB Ruby and Rails Community
• Netlify
• Eleventy
• https://github.com/cmaxw/devchat-eleventy

Sponsors

• RxJS Live

Panel

• Charles Max Wood

• Christopher Beucheler

• Aimee Knight

Episode Summary

Today’s episode is an exploration of the question “What is JavaScript?”. Each of the panelists describes what they think JavaScript is, giving a definition for both technical and non-technical people. They talk about how the different layers of JavaScript tie into their definitions. They agree that it’s incorrect to call JavaScript one of the ‘easy’ programming languages and some of the challenges unique to JavaScript, such as the necessity of backwards compatibility and that it is used in tandem with CSS and HTML, which require a different thinking method. They discuss the disdain that some developers from other languages hold for JavaScript and where it stems from. They discuss methods to level up from beginner to mid level JavaScript programmer, which can be tricky because it is a rapidly evolving language. They revisit the original question, “What is Java Script?”, and talk about how their definition of JavaScript has changed after this discussion. They finish by talking about the story they want to tell with JavaScript, why they chose JavaScript, and what is it they are trying to do, create, become through using the language. They invite listeners to share their answers in the comments. 

Links

• JQuery

• JavaScript

• JSON

• React.js

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Charles Max Wood:

• The Dungeoncast 

Aimee Knight:

• This Patch of Sky

Christopher Beucheler:

• Silversun Pickups album Widow’s Weeds

• Andrew Huang YouTube channel

Sponsors

• GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT

• Sentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit 

Panel

• Chris Beucheler

• AJ O’Neal

• Aimee Knight

With Special Guest: Chris Biscardi

Episode Summary

Chris is an independent consultant working with open source startups. He taught himself to program and started in open source. He talks about how he got into programming and how he learned to code. One of Chris’ current clients is Gatsby, a static site generator. Chris talks about his work with Gatsby themes, how he got started working with Gatsby, and how you can get started with Gatsby. Chris talks about how Gatsby differs from other static site generators and how difficult it is to use. The panel discusses possible use cases for Gatsby, and agree that if your site is going to get more complex and larger over time, something like Gatsby is what you want to use. Chris talks about what it’s like to migrate to Gatsby from another service. The panel discusses the pros and cons of server-side rendering. Chris talks about building more app-oriented sites with Gatsby and things that you can plug into a Gatsby theme besides a blog. The show concludes with Chris and the panelists agreeing that if you can write it in JavaScript, you can ship it in a Gatsby theme. 

Links

• Gatsby

• Shadowing

• Docker

• React

• GraphQL

• WordPress

• Hugo

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

AJ O’Neal:

• Sam Walton Made America: My Story

• Cinematic by Owl City

Aimee Knight:

• Some things that might help you make better software

Chris Beucheler:

• Venture Cafe Providence 

Chris Biscardi:

• Jason Lengstorf Twitch show

• Chris’ Blog

Episode Summary

Rachel Roumeliotis and Roger Magoulas from O'Reilly Media join Charles Max Wood at OSCON to talk about the process of content development for OSCON. Rachel is the Vice President of Content Strategy at O'Reilly and Roger is Vice President of Radar at O'Reilly.

Rachel and Roger talk about the history of OSCON Conference as well as the key technologies they wanted to cover this year such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Cloud-Native applications.

They then talk about the future of OSCON and the highlights they wat to cover next year such as security.

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan

• Adventures in DevOps

• Adventures in Blockchain

• CacheFly

Host: Charles Max Wood

Joined by Special Guests: Rachel Roumeliotis and Roger Magoulas

Links

• Rachel's LinkedIn

• Roger's LinkedIn

• Open Source & Software Development| O'Reilly OSCON

• O'Reilly Radar

• O'Reilly Media - Technology and Business Training

   

Episode Summary

Douglas is a language architect and helped with the development of JavaScript. He started working with JavaScript in 2000. He talks about his journey with the language, including his initial confusion and struggles, which led him to write his book JavaScript: The Good Parts.

Douglas’ take on JavaScript is unique because he not only talks about what he likes, but what he doesn’t like. Charles and Douglas discuss some of the bad parts of JavaScript, many of which were mistakes because the language was designed and released in too little time. Other mistakes were copied intentionally from other languages because people are emotionally attached to the way things “have always been done”, even if there is a better way.

Doug takes a minimalist approach to programming. They talk about his opinions on pairing back the standard library and bringing in what’s needed. Douglas believes that using every feature of the language in everything you make is going to get you into trouble. Charles and Douglas talk about how to identify what parts are useful and what parts are not.

Douglas delves into some of the issues with the ‘this’ variable. He has experimented with getting rid of ‘this’ and found that it made things easier and programs smaller. More pointers on how to do functional programming can be found in his book How JavaScript Works 

Charles and Douglas talk about how he decided which parts were good and bad. Douglas talks about how automatic semicolon insertion and ++ programming are terrible, and his experiments with getting rid of them. He explains the origin of JS Lint. After all, most of our time is not spent coding, it’s spent debugging and maintaining, so there’s no point in optimizing keystrokes.

Douglas talks about his experience on the ECMAScript development committee and developing JavaScript. He believes that the most important features in ES6 were modules and proper tail calls. They discuss whether or not progression or digression is occurring within JavaScript. Douglas disagrees with all the ‘clutter’ that is being added and the prevalent logical fallacy that if more complexity is added in the language then the program will be simpler. 

Charles asks Douglas about his plans for the future. His current priority is the next language. He talks about the things that JavaScript got right, but does not believe that it should not be the last language. He shares how he thinks that languages should progress. There should be a focus on security, and security should be factored into the language. 

Douglas is working on an implementation for a new language he calls Misty. He talks about where he sees Misty being implemented. He talks about his Frontend Masters course on functional programming and other projects he’s working on. The show concludes with Douglas talking about the importance of teaching history in programming. 

Panelists

• Charles Max Wood

With special guest: Douglas Crockford

Sponsors

• Sustain Our Software

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan

• Views on Vue

Links

• JavaScript: The Good Parts

• How JavaSript Works

• “This” variable

• ECMAScript

• C++

• JS Lint

• ECMA TC39

• Dojo

• Promise

• RxJS

• Drses

• Misty

• Tail call

• Frontend Masters course JavaScript the Good Parts

Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Charles Max Wood:

• Superfans by Pat Flynn

• SEO course Agency Unlocked by Neil Patel

Douglas Crockford:

• The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth

• Game of Thrones

• Follow Douglas at crockford.com

Jonathan Lee Martin is an instructor and developer. He got his start in teaching at Big Nerd Ranch doing 1-2 week trainings for mid to senior developers, and then transitioned to 16 week courses for career switchers. He also worked for Digital Crafts for a year, and then wanted to focus on building out his own personal teaching brand. One of his first steps toward building his own brand was to publish his book, Functional Design Patterns for Express.js.The inspiration for Jonathan’s book came from his experience teaching career switchers. He wanted to experiment in the classroom with teaching functional programming in a way that would be very approachable and applicable and dispel some of the magic around backend programming, and that became the template for the book. 

Jonathan loves the minimalist nature of Express.js and talks about its many uses. He believes that it knowing design patterns can take you pretty far in programming, and this view is related to his background in Rails. When he was working in Rails taming huge middleware stacks, he discovered that applying design patterns made builds take less time. He talks about other situations where knowing design patterns has helped. Express.js leans towards object oriented style over functional programming, and so it takes to these patterns well. Express.js has its shortcomings, and that’s where Jonathan’s favorite library Koa comes into play. 

The conversation switches back to Jonathan’s book, which is a good way to start learning these higher level concepts. He purposely made it appealing to mid and senior level programmers, but at the same time it does not require a lot of background knowledge. Jonathan talks about his teaching methods that give people a proper appreciation for the tool. Jonathan talks more about why he likes to use Express.js and chose to use it for his book. He cautions that his book is not a book of monads, but rather about being influenced by the idea of composition over inheritance. He talks about the role of middleware in programming. 

The panel asks about Jonathan’s toolchain and approach to writing books, and he explains how his books are set up to show code. They discuss the different forms required when publishing a book such as epub, MOBI, and PDF. Jonathan found it difficult to distribute his book through Amazon, so he talks about how he built his own server. Charles notes that your method of distributing your book will depend on your goal. If you want to make the most money possible, make your own site. If you want to get it into as many hands as possible, get it on Amazon.

Many of the JavaScript Jabber panelists have had experience publishing books, and Jonathan shares that you can reach out to a publisher after you’ve self-published a book and they can get it distributed. Jonathan believes that If he had gone straight to a publisher, he would have gotten overwhelmed and given up on the book, but the step by step process of self-publishing kept things manageable. The panelists discuss difficulties encountered when publishing and editing books, especially with Markdown. Jonathan compares the perks of self-editing to traditional editing. Though he does not plan to opensource his entire editing pipeline, he may make some parts available. The show concludes with the panelists discussing the clout that comes with being a published author. 

Panelists

• Charles Max Wood

• Christopher Buecheler 

• J.C. Hyatt

With special guest: Jonathan Lee Martin

Sponsors

• Adventures in Blockchain

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan

• The Freelancers’ Show

Links

• Big Nerd Ranch

• Digital Crafts

• JSJ 070: Book Club JavaScript Allonge with Reginald Braithwaite

• JavaScript Allonge by Reginald Braithwaite

• Functional Design Patterns for Express JS by Jonathan Lee Martin

• Node.js

• Express.js

• Koa

• Minjs 

• Sinatra

• Http.createserver

• Monads

• Middleware 

• Markdown

• Pandoc

• Diff-match-path library

• Epub

• MOBI

• LaTeX 

• Stripe Checkout

• Fstoppers

• Softcover

• Bookseller API 

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Picks

Christopher Buecheler:

• Cluisbrace.com newsletter

J.C. Hyatt:

• Corsair wireless charging mouse pad

Charles Max Wood:

• Magnetic whiteboard baskets

• Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books

Jonathan Lee Martin:

• Eric Elliot JS

• YellowScale

• Follow Jonathan and find his book at jonathanleemartin.com

Guests Chris heilmann and Zohair Ali are developers for Microsoft working on the Edge project. Today they are talking about Edge on Chromium and the future of developer tools. Edge will now be built in Chromium rather than being its own engine, aligning it more with what is being used on the open web right now. The Edge team wanted to seize the opportunity to bring something into the Chromium project based on the needs of real users and contribute to the open source web. Edge on Chromium won’t be limited to Windows 10 either, but will be available on Mac, Windows 7, and Windows 8. This project is still in beta with no set release date, so the Edge team is looking for people to test it out on Mac and tell them how it works. 

Chris and Zohair talk about the different parts of a web browser and what distinguishes Chrome from Chromium.  Chromium is not just a platform, it’s an entire browser that you can install. Google adds a bunch of Google services to Chromium, such as being able to sign into your Google account,  and that’s how you get Google Chrome. Similarly, the new Edge adds its own features on top of Chromium, so you can sign into your Microsoft account. By now the browser engines are so similar to each other that the users are looking for the user experience, interface, and services around it, so it made more sense for the Edge team to contribute to Chromium than to maintain their own engine and help it improve.

Chris and Zohair talk about some of the features in Edge on Chromium. One service they’re particularly excited about is the Collections feature, where you can drag images, text, etc into Collections and export it to Excel or Word. Collections was inspired by what users need, and they talk about some of the different use cases for it. The new Edge on Chromium will also have an IE mode for products that still require IE 11. If you define what services need IE 11, Edge will open an IE 11 tab within the browser so you will not have to jump between browsers. Unfortunately, this feature is only available on Windows. Edge on Chromium will also offer an integration with VS Code, called Elements for VS Code, which takes part of the developer tools from Edge and puts it inside VS Code. Since the tools are based on Chromium, it stays in the same context all the time so you don’t have to jump back and forth, and you can see the changes live in your browser. This feature is in beta right now and they are looking for people to test it. 

The Edge team talks about their process for creating tools. They are working on putting their tools into other languages so that they are accessible to more people. They talk about how they want to avoid creating Edge specific tools as much as possible because they want to make it better for everybody. One of their biggest struggles is everybody demands developer tools, but nobody wants to contribute, so they don’t have as much feedback and not as much outside contribution. That’s why they keep calling for people to try out the new Edge on Chromium and give them feedback. They want to make that change more transparent so that they build things that people want. They will have to make some of their own tools, but they make sure that they don’t have any third party dependencies. They mention that all Chrome extensions are compatible with Edge, so if it’s available in the Chrome webstore, you can add it to Edge, you just have to be sure to allow it. They talk about some of the testing tools available. The show concludes with a discussion of the fate of Chakra Node. 

Panelists

• AJ O’Neal

• Aimee Knight

• Dan Shapir

• Steve Edwards

With special guests: Chris Heilmann and Zohair Ali

Sponsors

• Tidelift

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan

• Views on Vue

Links

• Chromium

• Microsoft Edge Insider

• Microsoft Chakra Core

• Elements for VS Code

• MS Edge Driver

• Puppeteer 

Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Aimee Knight:

• Cypress testing library

Steve Edwards: 

• CSS Tricks Screencast episode 174: Using Local Overrides in Devtools

Dan Shapir:

• The Chronicles of Amber

AJ O’Neal:

• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

• Lover by Taylor Swift

Chris Heilmann:

• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

• TabNine

• doesthedogdie.com

Zohair Ali:

• Saga graphic novel series

Chris is an independent consultant working with open source startups. He taught himself to program and started in open source. He talks about how he got into programming and how he learned to code.

Chris' first access to programming was writing index.hml files when he was younger and again when he was majoring in Arts in university he was introduced to ActionScript.

Host: Charles Max Wood

Joined by Special Guest:  Chris Biscardi

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan

• iPhreaks

• Adventures in DevOps

• CacheFly

_______________________________________________________

"The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $2.99

_______________________________________________________

Links

• JSJ 386: Gatsby.js with Chris Biscardi

• Chris' LinkedIn

• Chris' Twitter

• https://www.twitch.tv/chrisbiscardi

Picks

Charles Max Wood:

• Follow Charles Max Wood on Instagram at CharlesMaxWood

• Follow Charles at https://devchat.tv/events/

• Suggest a topic/guests on podcast pages at https://devchat.tv

• Follow Devchat.tv on Instagram at devchat.tv

• Join us on Discord by going to https://discordapp.com/invite/z7RNTHR

• Go to Maxcoders.io to find out more about MaxCoders movement

Chris Biscardi:

• Follow Chris on Instagram at ChrisBiscardi

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