4

074 JSJ Grunt with Ben Alman

Panel Ben Alman (twitter github blog) AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Ryan Florence (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:34 - Ben Alman Introduction Bocoup 02:54 - “Cowboy” Cowboy Coder 06:53 - The Birth of Grunt Ender make rake jake 14:34 - Installing Globally & Plugins JSHint grunt-cli lodash async 20:43 - Managing the project and releasing new versions 22:32 - What is Grunt? What does it do? jQuery libsass SASS stylus 26:39 - Processes & Building Features node-task guard grunt-contrib-watch node-prolog 35:29 - The Node Community and reluctance towards Grunt 41:35 - Why the separation of task loading and configuration? 46:18 - Contributions and Contributing to Grunt 55:18 - What Ben would have done differently building Grunt Ease of Upgrade Picks Web Components (Ryan) Eliminate Sarcasm (Ryan) Bee and PuppyCat (Jamison) MONOPRICE (AJ) AJ O'Neal: Moving to GruntJS (AJ) The Best Map Ever Made of America’s Racial Segregation (Chuck) Clean Off Your Desk (Chuck) Polygon (Ben) My Brother, My Brother and Me (Ben) Echofon (Ben) Bocoup (Ben) Next Week Maintainable JavaScript with Nicholas Zakas Transcript RYAN:  We’re potty training my son right now. So, I was up like eight times cleaning poo off of everything. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at BlueBox.net.]  [This episode is sponsored by Component One, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to Wijmo.com and check them out.]  [This podcast is sponsored by JetBrains, makers of WebStorm. Whether you’re working with Node.js or building the frontend of your web application, WebStorm is the tool for you. It has great code quality and code exploration tools and works with HTML5, Node, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, Harmony, LESS, Sass, Jade, JSLint, JSHint, and the Google Closure Compiler. Check it out at JetBrains.com/WebStorm.] CHUCK:  Hey everybody and welcome to episode 74 of the JavaScript Jabber Show. This week on our panel, we have AJ O’Neal. AJ:  I’m eating beef jerky. CHUCK:  Jamison Dance. JAMISON:  Hello. CHUCK:  We have a special guest. I guess you’re a guest in filling in for Merrick and Joe and that’s Ryan Florence. RYAN:  Hey, how’s it going? I don’t know if I can fill two shoes, but I will try. CHUCK:  Well, you have two feet, right? RYAN:  Okay. Well, that’s four shoes. CHUCK:  [Chuckles] I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.TV. We also have another special guest and that is Ben Alman. BEN:  Yo! What’s up, everyone? CHUCK:  So, do you want to introduce your self, Ben, since you haven’t been on the show before? BEN:  I’m Ben Alman. Oh, okay. [Laughter] AJ:  That’s not conceited. RYAN:  That’s really all he needs. BEN:  That’s it. The show’s over, roll credits. So yeah, I’m Ben. You can find me online as @cowboy on Twitter or GitHub and I’m at BenAlman.com. And if you Google me, I have finally got enough SEO juice to beat the other Ben Alman who’s the Orthopedic Surgeon for sick children in Canada. So screw you, guy who helps sick kids. [Laughter] BEN:  No, it’s cool. It’s cool, right? But for a while, I was like, “Damn this guy.” But I can’t do anything because he helps sick children. So there’s another Benjamin Alman out there doing things for society and me, I just code. So, I work at Bocoup. We’re at Bocoup.com. Our logo is a rooster, Bob the Rooster, and we make a lot of cool web and open web and open source stuff. And so, I do training there. I teach people JavaScript and jQuery. But I also work on open source tools. I spend a lot of my time, actually, behind the scenes in Node writing JavaScript, experimenting, R&D, writing tools, et cetera. CHUCK:  Awesome. So,




4

084 JSJ Node with Mikeal Rogers

In this episode, the panelists talk Node with Mikeal Rogers.




4

094 JSJ BonsaiJS with Tobi Reiss

The panelists talk to Tobi Reiss, the creator of BonsaiJS.




4

104 JSJ Hypermedia APIs with Steve Klabnik

The panelists discuss hypermedia APIs with Steve Klabnik




4

114 JSJ Asynchronous UI and Non-Blocking Interactions with Elliott Kember

The panelists talk to Elliot Kember about asynchronous UI and non-blocking interactions.




4

124 JSJ The Origin of Javascript with Brendan Eich

The panelists talk to Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript.




4

134 JSJ Quilljs with Jason Chen

The panelists discuss Quilljs with its' creator, Jason Chen.




4

140 JSJ Using Art to Get and Keep People Interested in Programming with Jenn Schiffer

The panelists talk to Jenn Schiffer about using art to get and keep people interested in programming.




4

141 JSJ Firefox OS with Jason Weathersby

The panelists talk about Firefox OS with Jason Weathersby.




4

142 JSJ Share.js with Joseph Gentle

The panel discusses Share.js with Joseph Gentle




4

143 JSJ Teaching Programming and Computer Science with Pamela Fox

Pamela Fox and the rest of the gang talk about teaching programming and Computer Science.




4

144 JSJ Marionette.js 2.0 with Sam Saccone

The panelists talk to Sam Saccone about Marionette.js 2.0.




4

145 JSJ Meteor.js with Matt DeBergalis

The panelists talk to Matt DeBergalis about Meteor.js.




4

146 JSJ React with Christopher Chedeau and Jordan Walke

The panelists talk to Christopher Chedeau and Jordan Walke about React.js Conf and React Native.




4

147 JSJ io.js with Isaac Schleuter and Mikeal Rogers

The panelists talk to Isaac Schleuter and Mikeal Rogers about io.js.




4

148 JSJ i.cx and EveryBit.js with Matt Asher and Dann Toliver

02:24 - Dann Toliver Introduction

02:35 - Matt Asher Introduction

02:51 - EveryBit.js and I.CX

03:43 - Architecture

06:54 - Sustainability and The Pieces of the System

21:56 - Decentralization

25:20 - Audience: Why Should I Care?

27:38 - Getting Started: Nuts and Bolts

  • Frontend Agnostic
  • Storage and Performance
  • Users and Data Management
    • Payload Properties
    • Metadata
    • Graph Database
      • Adding New Relationships
      • Adding Heuristics
      • Resource Allocator Component
        • Local Storage
        • RAM

34:55 - Scaling and Server Cost

36:23 - Cloud Storage and Management (Security & Trust)

47:22 - Implementing Cryptographic Primitives

55:13 - The Firefox Sync Tool Project

Picks

[Twitch.tv] Kylelandrypiano (Jamison)
"Visualizing Persistent Data Structures" by Dann Toliver (Jamison)
Probability and Statistics Blog (Jamison)
Seeed Studio (Tim)
Adafruit Industries (Tim)
SparkFun Electronics (Tim)
American Sniper by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen, and Jim DeFelice (Chuck)
Introducing Relay and GraphQL (Dann)
The Clojurescript Ecosystem (Dann)
Read-Eval-Print-λove (Dann)
React Native (Matt)




4

149 JSJ Passenger Enterprise with Node.js with Hongli Lai and Tinco Andringa

Check out RailsClips on Kickstarter!!

02:39 - Hongli Lai Introduction

03:08 - Tinco Andringa Introduction

03:23 - Phusion Passenger

06:13 - Automation

08:37 - Parsing HTTP Headers

  • Hooking

12:44 - Meteor Support

15:37 - Future Added Features?

17:12 - Passenger Enterprise

20:03 - Concurrency and Multithreading  

23:33 - Setting Up on a Server for a Node.js Application

25:06 - Union Station Monitoring Tool (Union Station Teaser)

Picks

Emily Claire Reese: Playing Catch-Up (Jamison)
Jason Punyon: Providence: Failure Is Always an Option (Jamison)
Active Child: You Are All I See (Jamison)
FFmpeg (Chuck)
YouTube (Chuck)
Developers' Box Club (Chuck)
Ruby Remote Conf (Chuck)
DevChat.tv Kickstarter (Chuck)
Dash (Hongli)
In the Balance: An Alternate History of the Second World War by Harry Turtledove (Hongli)
phusion-mvc (Tinco)
Union Station Teaser (Tinco)
Radio 1's Live Lounge (Tinco)




4

154 JSJ Raygun.io Error Reporting and Workflow with John-Daniel Trask

02:35 - John-Daniel Trask Introduction and Background

04:57 - Raygun.io

06:23 - Crash Reporting The Right Way

  • Error Grouping
  • Suppress Notifications

10:06 - Most Common Errors

12:05 - Source Maps

19:16 - Managing Error Reporting in Gross Environments

22:17 - Determining Where The Issue Is

24:45 - Do People Write Their Own Errors?

26:23 - Frameworks Support

28:28 - Collecting Data: Privacy and Security

30:01 - Does working in error reporting make you judgemental of others’ code?

  • “DDOSing Yourself”

32:42 - Planning for Rare Exceptions

33:36 - Tactics to Cut Down on Messages

35:53 - Gathering Basic Debugging Information

37:58 - Getting the BEST Information

42:24 - The Backend: Node.js

43:24 - “Creating an Application”

Picks

LDS Connect (AJ)
LDS I/O (AJ)
TED Talk About Nothing (Dave)
OlliOlli 2 Soundtrack (Jamison)
Jurassic Park (Joe)
 
ng-vegas (Joe)
WASD CODE 87-Key Illuminated Mechanical Keyboard with White LED Backlighting - Cherry MX Clear (Chuck)
Grifiti Fat Wrist Pad (Chuck)
Thank You
Rails Clips Kickstarter Backers! (Chuck)
Mastery by Robert Greene (Chuck)
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Chuck)
The Pirates of Silicon Valley (John-Daniel)
littleBits (John-Daniel)




4

164 JSJ Rendr with Spike Brehm

Get your Ruby Remote Conf tickets and check out the @rubyremoteconf Twitter feed for exciting updates about the conference.

 

02:22 - Spike Brehm Introduction

03:07 - rendr

06:24 - Why the back and forth between server-side and client-side applications?

20:28 - Tools That Help

22:21 - Why do this? Who gets statically and dynamically rendered pages?

30:26 - DOM and String-based Templating

33:11 - Use Cases

36:08 - Why does Isomorphic JavaScript get so much hate?

Picks

The Paleolithic Diet (Aimee)
Programming Throwdown (Aimee)
Listen to other people’s views (Chuck)

AJ O'Neal: Access web pages through your home network via SSH (AJ)
AJ O'Neal: Reverse VPN: turn any private device into public cloud server (AJ)
Alt (Spike)
Tame Impala (Spike)




4

174 JSJ npm 3 with Rebecca Turner and Forrest Norvell

Don’t miss out! Sign up for Angular Remote Conf!

 

02:28 - Forrest Norvell Introduction

02:37 - Rebecca Turner Introduction

03:05 - Why npm 3 Exists and Changes in npm 2 => 3

  • Debugging
  • Life Cycle Ordering
  • Deduplication

08:36 - Housekeeping

09:47 - Peer Dependency Changes

15:38 - The Rewrite Process and How That Enabled Some of the Changes Coming Out

22:50 - shrinkwrapping

27:00 - Other Breaking Changes?

  • Permissions

30:40 - Tiny Jewels

33:24 - Why Rewrite?

36:00 - npm’s Focus on the Front End

42:04 - Transitioning to npm 3

42:54 - Installing npm 3

44:11 - Packaging with io.js and Node.js

45:16 - Being in Beta

Picks

Slack List (Aimee)
Perceived Performance Fluent Conf Talks (Aimee)
Paul Irish: How Users Perceive the Speed of The Web Keynote @ Fluent 2015 (Aimee)
Subsistence Farming (AJ)
Developer On Fire Episode 017 - Charles Max Wood - Get Involved and Try New Things (Chuck)
Elevator Saga (Chuck)
BrazilJS (Forrest)
NodeConf Brazil (Forrest)

For quick testing: `npm init -y`, configure init (Forrest)
Where Can I Put Your Cheese? (Or What to Expect From npm@3) @ Boston Ember, May 2015 (Rebecca)
Open Source & Feelings Conference (Rebecca)
bugs [npm Documentation] (Rebecca)
docs [npm Documentation] (Rebecca)
repo [npm Documentation] (Rebecca)




4

184 JSJ Web Performance with Nik Molnar

Submit a talk or buy a ticket! Check out JS Remote Conf!

 

02:30 - Nik Molnar Introduction

02:50 - What Microsoft’s Cross-Platform and Open Tooling Team Does

03:41 - Microsoft and Open Source

05:25 - Performance

08:15 - Is good, clean architecture at odds with high-performance code?

09:41 - Latency and Bandwidth

20:23 - Hierarchy of Needs for Users of Software

24:36 - Controlling Performance

  • “Performance Budget”

26:21 - The Cost of Performance (ROI)

31:57 - Speed Index

41:50 - Avoiding the “It feels fast on my machine” Syndrome

45:03 - RUM = Real User Monitoring

  • Navigation Timing
  • Resource Timing
  • User Timing

46:24 - Synthetic Testing

47:50 - Performance Audits

50:39 - Do Less

More From Nik

Picks

UtahJS 2015 (Dave)
ES6 Overview in 350 Bullet Points (Jamison)
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (High Frequency Training) (Jamison)
Chris Zacharias: Page Weight Matters (Jamison)
React Rally Talks (Jamison)
MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins (Chuck)
Rush Revere and the Star-Spangled Banner by Rush Limbaugh (Chuck)
Visual Studio Code (Nik)
High Performance Browser Networking by Ilya Grigorik (Nik)
Nik's Pluralsight Courses (Nik)




4

194 JSJ JavaScript Tools Fatigue

JS Remote Conf starts tomorrow! Get your ticket TODAY!

 

03:59 - JavaScript Tools Fatigue

09:25 - Are popular technologies ahead of public consumability?

12:53 - Adopting New Things / Churn Burnout

18:02 - Non-JavaScript Developers and Team Adoption

30:49 - Is this the result of a crowdsourced design effort?

35:44 - Human Interactions

45:00 - Tools

47:03 - How many/which of these tools do I need to learn?

Picks

Julie Evans: How to Get Better at Debugging (Jamison)
Totally Tooling Tips: Debugging Promises with DevTools (Jamison)
Making a Murderer (Jamison)
Scott Alexander: I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (Jamison)
@SciencePorn (Dave)
postcss (Aimee)
Cory House: The Illogical Allure of Extremes (Aimee)
Kerrygold Natural Irish Butter (Aimee)
Star Wars (Joe)
@iammerrick (Joe)
Greg Wilson: What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True (Joe)
The U.S. Military (Joe)

Operation Code (Aimee)
Ruby Rogues Episode #184: What We Actually Know About Software Development and Why We Believe It's True with Greg Wilson and Andreas Stefik (Chuck)
Serial Podcast (Chuck)




4

204 JSJ Free Code Camp with Quincy Larson

03:10 - Quincy Larson Introduction

03:20 - Free Code Camp

04:47 - Quincy’s Background

06:43 - Curriculum and Non-Profit Projects

09:47 - Keeping the Curriculum Updated

10:30 - Enrollment; Starting & Finishing

12:20 - Resources for Learning

15:39 - Funding

16:06 - Working Through a Self-Paced System vs Structure

17:17 - Nonprofits

19:51 - Learning to Work on Non-Greenfield Code

21:47 - Getting Hired After the Program

23:21 - Marketing and Media

26:07 - Sustaining Living While Running This Program

27:31 - The Future of Free Code Camp

28:34 - Long-term Sustainability

29:44 - Hypothetical Monetization and Contribution

33:51 - Coding as a form of art or function?

36:55 - Partnerships

37:53 - Making Free Code Camp More Effective

39:18 - Criticism?

40:29 - Curriculum Development and Evolution

43:02 - Is Free Code Camp for everybody?

  • Read, Search, Ask

46:09 - The Community

51:07 - Getting Involved in Free Code Camp

Picks

Our Greatest Fear — Marianne Williamson (AJ)
The Rabbit Joint - The Legend of Zelda (AJ)
Nintendo (Twilight Princess HD Soundtrack) (AJ)
Steve Wozniak: The early days @ TEDxBerkeley (AJ)
Favor of the Pharaoh (Joe)
The Goldbergs (Joe)
The Best Podcast Rap (Chuck)
Word Swag (Chuck)
Cecily Carver: Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Learning How to Code (Quincy)
Code for the Kingdom (Aimee)
diff-so-fancy (Aimee)




4

214 JSJ Pebble with Heiko Behrens and François Baldassari

Check out Newbie Remote Conf!

 

02:11 - Heiko Behrens Introduction

02:42 - François Baldassari Introduction

03:04 - JavaScript and Pebble

06:40 - Watch vs Phone

09:32 - Memory Constraints and Code Size Limitations

26:24 - Advantages of Writing in JavaScript

32:09 - Capabilities of the Watch

37:08 - Running Web Servers

39:29 - Resources

41:58 - Voice Capabilities

43:06 - UI For the Round Face vs Square Face

46:18 - Future Pebble Milestones

 

Picks

 

See Also




4

224 JSJ Cypress.js with Brian Mann

Angular Remote Conf and React Remote Conf

 

03:18 - Brian Mann Introduction

03:33 - Cypress.io

04:09 - Selenium

08:56 - Cypress vs Selenium

16:54 - Similarities: Cypress and Protractor

18:22 - Mocking API Data

20:40 - Getting Started with Cypress and The Migration Process

21:54 - Testing

30:31 - Handling Data on the Backend

34:16 - What’s coming next in Cypress?




4

234 JSJ JAMStack with Brian Douglas and Matt Christensen

1:00 Intro to guests Brian Douglas and Matt Christensen

2:20 Definition of JAMStack

8:12 JAMStack and confusion over nomenclature

12:56 JAMStack and security, reliability and performance

17:05 Example of traffic spike for company Sphero

18:26 Meaning of hyperdynamic

20:35 Future and limits of JAMStack technology

26:01 Controlling data and APIs versus using third parties

28:10 Netlify.com and JAMStack

31:16 APIs, JavaScript framework and libraries recommended to start building on JAMStack

35:13 Resources and examples of JAMStack: netlify.comNetlify blogJAMStack radioJAMStack SF Meetup

QUOTES:

“I think in the next couple of years we’re going to see the limits being pushed a lot for what you can do with this.” - Matt

“Today we’re starting to see really interesting, really large projects getting built with this approach.” - Matt

“If you can farm 100% of your backend off to third parties, I feel like that really limits a lot of the interesting things you can do as a developer.” - Brian

PICKS:

Early History of Smalltalk (Jamison)

React Rally 2016 videos (Jamison)

FiveStack.computer (Jamison)

Falsehoods programmers believe about time (Aimee)

Nodevember conference (Aimee)

48 Days Podcast (Charles)

Fall of Hades by Richard Paul Evans (Charles)

Jon Benjamin Jazz (Brian)

RailsConf 2016 (Brian)

React Native (Brian)

Book of Ye Podcast (Brian)

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (Matt)

Sequoia Capital website

Sphero website

Isomorphic rendering on the Jam Stack by Phil Hawksworth

SPONSORS:

Front End Masters

Hired.com




4

240 JSJ Visual Studio Code with Chris Dias

Previous Episodes with Visual Studio Code’s Team:

JSJ Episode 199, Visual Studio Code with Chris Dias and Erich Gamma

JSJ Episode 221, Visual Studio Code with Wade Anderson

1:45 - What’s new at Visual Studio Code

3:42 - Confusion with Javascript versus separate languages

7:15 - Choosing your tools carefully

8:20 - Integrated shell and docker extensions

12:05 - Agar.io Extensions and extension packs

16:15- Deciding what goes into Visual Studio Code and what becomes an extension

18:20 - Using Github Issues and resolving user complaints

22:08 - Why do people stray away from VS proper?

23:10 - Microsoft and VS legacy

27:00 - Man hours and project development

31:30 - The Visual Studio default experience

37:10 - What are people writing with VS Code?

39:20 - Community versus developer views of VS Code

41:40 - Using Electron

44:00 - Updating the system

44:50 - How is Visual Code written?

48:00 - The future of Visual Code Studios

Picks:

Don McMillan (AJ)

Daplie Wefunder (AJ)

Daplie (AJ)

Facebook feed blocker plug-in (Charles)

Tab Wrangler (Charles)

Smart Things (Chris)

Wood Pizza Ovens (Chis)

PJ Mark, Chris’ friend and marketer (Chris)




4

241 JSJ Microsoft Docs with Dan Fernandez

0:55 - Dan Fernandez and his work

7:50 - Walkthrough of the doc experience

15:00 - Editable nature of the doc

21:00 - Test driving a language

26:30 - Catering to the user

32:30 - Open Source

34:40 - User feedback

37:30 - Filters and Tables of Content

40:45 - Form submissions

41:50 - Community contributors

Picks:

Ghostbusters (AJ)

Daplie (AJ)

Daplie Wefunder (AJ)

.NET Rocks (Charles)

ScheduleOnce (Charles)

Devchat.tv 2017 Conferences (Charles)

Disable HTML5 Autoplay (Dan)

Visual Studio Code (Dan)

JSJ episode Visual Studio Code with Chris Diaz and Eric Gamma (Charles)




4

242 JSJ Visual Studio and .NET with Maria Naggaga

1:15 - Introducing Maria Naggaga

2:32 - .NET new developers

3:55 - NYC Microsoft bootcamp

6:25 - Building a community of .NET programmers

7:25 - Why would a Javascript developer care about .NET?

9:30 - Getting started with .NET

15:50 - The power of asking questions

22:45 - Recruiting new programmers to the industry

37:00 - Javascript and C#

48:30 - Running .NET on Raspberry Pi

Picks:

Super Cartography Bros album by OverClocked ReMix (AJ)

Daplie (AJ)

Daplie Wefunder (AJ)

The Eventual Millionaire (Charles)

Devchat Conferences (Charles)

15- Minute Calls (Charles)

Codeland Conference (Maria)

March by Congressman John Lewis (Maria)

Microsoft Virtual Academy (Maria)




4

243 JSJ Immutable.js with Lee Byron

1:05 - Introducing Lee Byron

1:55 - Immutable.js

4:35 - Modifying data and operations using Immutable.js

7:40 - Explaining Big-O notation in layman’s terms

11:30 - Internal tree structures and arrays

15:50 - Why build with Immutable.js?

23:05 - Change detection with a mutable

25:00 - Computer science history

34:35 - Other positives to using mutables

37:50 - Flux and Redux

39:50 - When should you use a mutable?

46:10 - Using Immutable.js instead of the built-in Javascript option

51:50 - Learning curves and learning materials

54:50 - Bowties

Picks:

Contractor by Andrew Ball

17 Hats (Charles)

Asana (Charles)

Call of Duty Infinite Warfare (Joe)

LEGO Star Wars (Joe)

Advent of Code (Lee)

 




4

244 JSJ Visual Studio with Sam Guckenheimer

1:05 - Introducing Sam Guckenheimer

2:45 - Continuous integration with Visual Studio

4:15 - Visual Studio on Macs

5:55 - Is Visual Studio just for C#?

8:45 - Container support and the Cloud

14:20 - Docker and Visual Studio

17:40 - Communicating with multiple services

24:15 - Talking to clients about change and working with transformation

33:00 - Telemetry and collecting data

37:50 - Xamarin forms

47:50 - Deployment with changed endpoints

Picks:

Daplie Wefunder (AJ)

Unroll.Me (Charles)

Focused Inbox on Outlook (Sam)

WhiteSource (Sam)

The Girl On The Train (Sam)

The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carre (Sam)




4

JSJ 245 Styled Components and react-boilerplate with Max Stoiber

On today's episode, Aimee and Chuck welcome Maximillian "Max" Stoiber to the show. Max hails from Austria and is an expert in open source development at Think Mill. Tune in to JSJ 245 Styled Components and React-Boilerplate with Max Stoiber.




4

JSJ 246 GraphQL and Apollo with Uri Goldshtein

On today's episode, Charles Max Wood and Aimee Knight discuss GraphQL and Apollo with Uri Goldshtein. Uri is a core developer at Meteor Development Group, and is an expert with GraphQL and Apollo.




4

JSJ 247 Building a Development Environment with Cory House

On today's episode, Charles Max Wood, AJ O'neal, Joe Eames, and Aimee Knight discuss Building a Development Environment with Cory House. Pluralsight recently added a course on this. Tune in to know more!




4

JSJ 248 Reactive Programming and RxJS with Ben Lesh

On today's episode, Charles Max Wood, Joe Eames, and Tracy Lee discuss Reactive Programming and RxJS with Ben Lesh. Ben works at Netflix and also has a side job for Rx Workshop with Tracy. He is the lead author of RxJS 5. Tune in to learn more about RxJS!




4

MJS #004: Isaac Schlueter

On today's episode, Charles Max Wood shares My JS Story Isaac Schlueter. Isaac is the co-founder and chief executive officer at NPM. Listen to his interesting javascript story, and learn how you can connect with him!




4

JSJ 249 Loading and Optimizing Web Applications with Sam Saccone and Jeff Cross

On today's episode, Charles Max Wood, Joe Eames, and Aimee Knight discuss Loading and Optimizing Web Applications with Sam Saccone and Jeff Cross. Tune in to their interesting talk, and learn how you can improve user experience and performance with better loading!




4

JSJ 254 Contributor Days with Tracy Lee

On today's JavaScript Jabber Show, Aimee Knight and Charles Max Wood discuss Contributor Days with Tracy Lee. Tracy is a Google Developer Expert and a co-founder of This Dot Media and This Dot Labs. She's passionately into helping startups create a connection with investors. Part of what she's been up to lately is what this episode is about. Tune in to learn about it!




4

MJS #014: Kim Carter

On this week's episode of My JS Story, Charles Max Wood interviews Kim Carter. Kim is a software engineer, architect, web developer, entrepreneur, and the founder of BinaryMist Ltd. He recently appeared as a guest in episode 251, and talked about InfoSec for Web Developers. Also, he is currently writing a powerbook series and runs InfoSec conferences based in New Zealand. Stay tuned to know more about his journey in programming!




4

JSJ 264 Mendel with Irae Carvalho




4

MJS #024 Aaron Frost

MJS 024 Aaron Frost

This episode can double as a My JavaScript Story and a My Angular Story and features Aaron Frost. Aaron has been on both JavaScript Jabber and Adventures in Angular. He has been a principal engineer for four years and recently organized his fourth NG-Conf.

How did you get into programming?

Aaron was working as a loan officer when he decided he needed a new career. He went to work at an accounting support phone center. There he discovered he was good at Sequel. He tried out for the QA team; the UA automation made sense to him. He became a senior QA and in 2010 jumped to working in development full time. He knew JavaScript; which made everyone wanted to hire him. He learned JQuery too.

What was it about JavaScript that really got you excited about it?

In Utah when he was working for a company, he had never learned JavaScript; he was told he had to learn jQuery to do browser extensions. The first night he learned jQuery he decided he loved the language. He stuck with it for three to four months. After that, he learned actual JavaScript. He explains that it just “fits in his head,” and made him feel well equipped and powerful.

How do you get to Angular?

He worked for a big, local corporation in Utah with powerful developers. The JavaScript community was strong there. They used Backbone and one day he emailed the developers. He suggested they Angular. One of the developers asked Aaron to help with the conversion. They were writing less code in Angular than in Backbone. It saved time.

Sometime after that, his friend Kip Lawrence suggested that they go to an Angular Conference. When they looked up conferences they couldn’t find any. They decided to start their own Angular conference after that.

How do you become a GDE?

There is a GDE app where you nominate yourself. In order to be picked, you have to meet a lot of criteria. You have to answer a lot of questions. There are things they want you to have done to prove you stand out and are a leader in the community. They want more than someone who is just smart. They want people who have presented at conferences, made open source contributions, written books, etc.

What else have you done in JavaScript or Angular?

One of the very first projects Aaron did is one that he considers one of the coolest. He built a browser extension for his twin brother’s real estate website that solved a captcha. He then marketed it to other people. He believes it is one of the most fun problems to solve.

What are you working on these days?                      

Aaron has a side project, which is a remote communication app for remote workers to use. He is working on how to make the NG-Conf bigger and better each year. He is also spending time being a dad.

Is there an overarching thing you’ve learned over the last 7 or so years of programming?

The thing that keeps recurring is that there is a need for engineers to focus on solving problems for users and less on having perfect code. He has noticed that developers make decisions to try to make perfect code that can sink a company. Developers should be more business focused than tech problems. It is more responsible for making a business profitable. Solve problems for the user first and don’t try to replace a language that’s working.

Picks

Aaron:

Charles:

Links




4

JSJ 274: Amazon Voice Services and Echo Skills with Terrance Smith

JSJ 274 Amazon Voice Services and Echo Skills with Terrance Smith

On today’s episode of JavaScript Jabber, we have panelists Joe Eames, Aimee Knight, Charles Max Wood, and we have special guest Terrance Smith. He’s here today to talk about the Amazon Alexa platform. So tune in and learn more about Amazon Voice Services!

[01:00] – Introduction to Terrance Smith

Terrance is from Hacker Ferrer Software. They hack love into software.

[01:30] – Amazon Voice Service

What I’m working on is called My CareTaker named probably pending change. What it will do and what it is doing will be to help you be there as a caretaker’s aid for the person in your life. If you have to take care an older parent, My CareTaker will be there in your place if you have to work that day. It will be your liaison to that person. Your mom and dad can talk to My CareTaker and My CareTaker could signal you via SMS or email message or tweet, anything on your usage dashboard, and you would be able to respond. It’s there when you’re not.

[04:35] – Capabilities

Getting started with it, there are different layers. The first layer is the Skills Kit for generally getting into the Amazon IoT. It has a limited subset of the functionality. You can give commands. The device parses them, sends them to Amazon’s endpoint, Amazon sends a call back to your API endpoint, and you can do whatever you want. That is the first level. You can make it do things like turn on your light switch, start your car, change your thermostat, or make an API call to some website somewhere to do anything.

[05:50] – Skills Kit

Skills Kit is different with AVS. Skills Kit, you can install it on any device. You’re spinning up a web service and register it on Amazon’s website. As long as you have an endpoint, you can register, say, the Amazon Web Services Lambda. Start that up and do something. The Skills Kit is literally the web endpoint response. Amazon Voice Services is a bit more in-depth.

[07:00] – Steps for programming

With the Skills Kit, you register what would be your utterance, your skill name, and you would give it a couple of sets of phrases to accept. Say, you have a skill that can start a car, your skill is “Car Starter.” “Alexa tell Car Starter to start the car.” At which point, your web service will be notified that that is the utterance. It literally has a case statement. You can have any number of individual conditional branches outside of that. The limitation for the Skills Kit is you have to have the “tell” or “ask” and the name of the skill to do whatever. It’s also going to be publicly accessible. For the most part, it’s literally a web service.

[10:55] – Boilerplates for AWS Lambda

Boilerplates can be used if you want to develop for production. If you publish a skill, you get free AVS instance time. You can host your skill for free for some amount of time. There are GUI tools to make it easier but if you’re a developer, you’re probably going to do the spin up a web service and deal it that way.

[11:45] – Do you have to have an Amazon Echo?

At one point, you have to have the Echo but now there is this called Echoism, which allows you to run it in your browser. In addition to that, you can potentially install it on a device like a Raspberry Pi and run Amazon Voice Services. The actual engine is on your PC, Mac, or Linux box. You have different options.

[12:35] – Machine learning

There are certain things that Amazon Alexa understand now that it did last year or time before that like understanding utterances and phrases better. A lot of the machine learning is definitely under the covers. The other portion of it Alexa Voice Service, which is a whole engine that you have untethered access to other portions like how to handle responses. That’s where you can build a custom device and take it apart. So the API that we’re working with here is just using JSON and HTTP.

[16:40] – Amazon Echo Show

You have that full real-time back and forth communication ability but there is no video streaming or video processing ability yet. You can utilize the engine in such a way that Amazon Voice Services can work with your existing tool language. If you have a Raspberry Pi and you have a camera to it, you can potentially work within that. But again, the official API’s and docs for that are not available yet.

[27:20] – Challenges

There’s an appliance in this house that listens to everything I say. There’s that natural inclination to not trust it, especially with the older generations. Giving past that is getting people to use the device. Some of the programming sides of it are getting the communication to work, doing something that Alexa isn’t pre-programmed to do. There isn’t a lot of documentation out there, just a couple of examples. The original examples are written in Java and trying to convert it to Node or JavaScript would be some of the technical challenges. In addition, getting it installed and setup takes at least an hour at the beginning. There’s also a learning curve involved.

[29:35] – Is your product layered in an Echo or is your product a separate device?

Terrance’s product is a completely separate device. One of the functionality of his program is medicine reminders. It can only respond to whatever the API calls from Amazon tells you to respond to but it can’t do anything like send something back. It can do an immediate audio response with a picture or turn on and off a light switch. But it can’t send a message back in like two hours from now. You do want your Alexa device to have (verbally) a list of notifications like on your phone. TLDR, Terrance can go a little further with just the Skills Kit.

[32:00] – Could you set it up through a web server?

Yes. There are examples out there. There’s Alexa in the browser. You can open up a browser and communicate with that. There are examples of it being installed like an app. You can deploy it to your existing iPhone app or Android app and have it interact that way. Or you can have it interact independently on a completely different device like a Raspberry Pi. But not a lot of folks are using it that way.

[33:10] – Monetization

Amazon isn’t changing anything in terms of monetization. They make discovery a lot easier though. If you knew the name of the app, you could just say, “Alexa, [tell the name of the app].” It will do a lazy load of the actual skill and it will add it to your available skill’s list.

However, there is something called the Alexa Fund, which is kind of a startup fund that they have, which you can apply for. If you’re doing something interesting, there is a number of things you have to do. Ideally, you can get funding for whatever your product is. It is an available avenue for you.

[36:25] – More information, documentation, walkthroughs

The number one place to go to as far as getting started is the Amazon websites. They have the Conexant 4-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit. It has 4 mics and it has already a lot of what you need. You have to boot it up and/or SSH into it or plug it up and code it. They have a couple of these kits for $300 to $400. It’s one of the safe and simpler options.

There are also directions for the AVS sites which is under Alexa Voice Services, where you can go to the Github from there. There will give you directions using the Raspberry Pi.  If not that, there’s also the Slack chatroom. It is alexaslack.com. Travis Teague is the guy in charge in there.

Picks

Joe Eames

Aimee Knight

Charles Max Wood

Terrance Smith




4

MJS #034 John-David Dalton

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MJS 034: John-David Dalton

Today’s episode is a My JavaScript Story with John-David Dalton. JD talked about his contributions to the JavaScript community like Lo-Dash, Sandboxed Native, etc. Listen to learn more about JD!

[01:15] – Introduction to JD

JD has been on JavaScript Jabber. He talked about Lo-Dash.

[02:00] – How did you get into programming?

First website

This was when JD was a junior in high school. Then, he got involved with a flight squadron for a World War 1 online game. They needed a website so he created a GeoCities website for them. That’s what got him into JavaScript. He’d have to enhance the page with mouseover effects - cursor trail, etc.

JavaScript

From there, JD started created a Dr. Wiley little-animated bot that would say random things in a little speech bubble with the HTML on your page like a widget. He also passed an assignment turning a web page into an English class paper. He used to spend his lunch breaks learning JavaScript and programming. He also created a little Mario game engine – Mario 1 with movable blocks that you could click and drag and Mario could jump over it. That was back with the document.layers and Netscape Navigator.

Animation

JD wanted to be an animator in animation so he started getting into macro media flash. That led him to ActionScript, which was another ECMAScript-based language. He took a break from JavaScript and did ActionScript and flash animations for a while as his day job too.

PHP and JavaScript

JD started learning PHP and they needed to create a web app that got him right back into JavaScript in 2005. That was when AJAX was coined and that’s when Prototype JS came up. He was reading AJAX blog posts back then because that was the place to find all of your JavaScript news.

JS Specification

JD remembers being really intimidated by JavaScript libraries so he started reading the JavaScript specification. It got him into a deeper understanding of why the language does what it does and realized that there’s actually a document that he could go to and look up exactly why things do what they do.

[06:45] – What was it about JavaScript?

JD has been tinkering with programming languages but what he liked about ActionScript at the time was it is so powerful. You could create games with it or you could script during animations. He eventually created a tool that was a Game Genie for flash games that you could get these decompilers that would show you the variables in the game, and then, you could use JavaScript to manipulate the variables in the flash game. He created a tool that could, for example, change your lives to infinite life, grow your character or access hidden characters that they don’t actually put in the game but they have the animations for it.

JD was led to a page on the web archive called Layer 51 or Proto 51. That was a web page that had a lot of JavaScript or ActionScript snippets. There were things for extending the built-in prototypes - adding array methods or string methods or regex methods. That was how JavaScript became appealing to him. He has been doing JavaScript for almost 20 years. PHP also made him appreciate JavaScript more because, at the time, you couldn’t have that interface.

[09:30] – Lo-Dash, Sandboxed Native, Microsoft

Lo-Dash

Eventually, JD grew to respect jQuery because I became a library author. jQuery is the example of how to create a successful library. It’s almost on 90% of the Internet. He likes that right now but before, he was a hardcore Prototype fanboy. He didn’t like new tools either. He liked augmenting prototypes but over time, he realized that augmenting prototypes wasn’t so great whenever you wanted to include other code on your page because it would have conflict and collisions. Later on, he took Prototype, forked it, and he made it faster and support more things, which is essentially what he did with Lo-Dash.

Sandboxed Native

JD created something called Sandboxed Native, which got him into talking on conferences. Sandboxed Native extends the prototypes for the built-ins for your current frame. It would import new built-ins so you got a new array constructor, a new date constructor, a new regex, or a new string. It wouldn’t collide or step on the built-ins of the current page.

Microsoft

After that, JD ended up transitioning to performance and benchmarking. That landed him his Microsoft job a couple years later.

Picks

John-David Dalton

Charles Max Wood

 




4

JSJ 284 : Helping Developers Build Healthy Bodies

Panel:

Amiee Knight

Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: 

JC Hiatt

In this episode, JavaScript Jabbers speak with JC Hiatt. JC is a software consultant, and working a starting a company called DevLifts. DevLifts is a company that helps developers learn to live healthier lives. JC mentions this business was base on this health journey.

JC and the panel discuss output and mental clarity to get work done in a healthy fashion. Also, the benefits of eating a healthy diet, rather it is the Keto Diet or others types of healthy clean eating, there is a physical and mental benefit. JC and the panel talk about count macros, healthy food intake, and a basic outline of getting into ketosis. Also, the panel discusses finding the motivation to get into a healthy lifestyle to benefit work and your lifestyle.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

  • Mental Clarity
  • Keto Diet
  • Cutting out processed foods
  • Counting Macros
  • Getting into Ketosis
  • Supporting brain function
  • Motivation for a healthy lifestyle
  • Gaining energy
  • Getting started  - Walking, Eat Whole. Etc.
  • Pack your own lunch
  • Mindset change -  you are responsible for anyone else’s healthy choices
  • Drink Water
  • You can find a healthy balance and practice moderation
  • Cheat day?
  • Sugar
  • Sitting to0 long at work
  • Sleep - brain wave activity, caffeine, and light
  • Naps
  • And much more!

Links:

@jchiatt

@devlifts

devlifts.io

Picks:

Amiee

  • https://www.womenwhotech.com/panelist-bios
  • https://github.com/AllThingsSmitty/css-protips

Charles

JC




4

MJS 040: Kitson Kelly

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Guest: Kitson Kelly

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Kitson Kelly. Kitson is a return guest, previously on JavaScript Jabber 277. Kitson is the CTO at SitePen, and has been working and maintaining Dojo 2 for the last couple years.

Kitson talks about his journey as a developer. First, sparking his interest with old Atari games and getting his first computer in his early years.  Kitson talks about his education background and introduction to computers in high school and hang out with other in the same programming niche. Kitson talks about his challenges not having a degree in computer science, but still very successful as a developer after climbing the corporate latter.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

  • Atari Games and old first computer
  • Hangout with the computer nerds
  • Community college
  • No actual formal computer science degree
  • Tech Support and Self Taught
  • Challenges with not degree
  • Climbing the latter
  • Troubles even with a degree
  • Is a degree in computer science really needed?
  • Experience verses degree
  • Working with other people is important
  • Getting into JavaScript and Dojo
  • What kept you working in JavaScript
  • How do you get to being CTO and SitePen?
  • What are you most proud of with the work on Dojo
  • Contributions
  • Side Projects  - Dojo 2
  • and much, much more!

Links: 

Picks:

Kitson

Charles




4

MJS 041: Austin McDaniel

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Guest: Austin McDaniel

This week on My JavaScript Story/My Angular Story, Charles speaks with Austin McDaniel. Austin is a return guest and was previously featured on JavaScript Jabber episode 275 . Austin talks about his journey getting into programming as an 11year old, to recently, as a web developer with more complex technologies. Austin talks about building widgets, working in Angular, JavaScript, and more in-depth web development on many different platforms. Lastly, Austin talks about his contributions to NGX Charts and speaking at a variety of developer conferences.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 

  • How did you get into programming? 11 years old
  • Cue Basic
  • Web developer
  • College jobs was in web developing
  • IE6
  • Building Widgets
  • Components
  • jquery 
  • Web is the future
  • How did you get into Angular? 2013, v1.2
  • Backbone
  • Angular 1 & 2
  • NG X Charts
  • Speaking at Conferences
  • Augmented Reality and VR
  • Web AR
  • Angular Air Podcast
  • Working as a contractor with Google
  • and much, much more!

Links: 

Picks

Austin

Charles




4

JSJ 294: Node Security with Adam Baldwin

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

AJ O’Neal

Joe Eames

Special Guests: Adam Baldwin

In this episode, JavaScript Jabber panelist speak with Adam Baldwin. Adam is a return guest and has many years of application security experience. Currently, Adam runs the Node Security Project/Node Security Platform, and Lift Security. Adam discusses the latest of security of Node Security with Charles and AJ. Discussion topics cover security in other platforms, dependencies, security habits, breaches, tokens, bit rot or digital atrophy, and adding security to your development.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

  • What is  the Node Security Project/Node Security Platform
  • Dependency trees
  • NPM
  • Tokens and internal data
  • What does Node Security do for me?
  • NPX and NSP
  • Command Line CIL
  • Bit Rot or Digital Atrophy
  • How often should you check repos.
  • Advisories
  • If I NPM install?
  • Circle CI or Travis
  • NSP Check
  • What else could I add to the securities?
  • Incorporate security as you build things
  • How do you find the vulnerabilities in the NPM packages
  • Two Factor authentication for NPM
  • Weak Passwords
  • OL Dash?
  • Install Scripts
  • Favorite Security Story?
  • And much more!

Links:

Picks:

Adam

Charles

AJ

Joe




4

MJS 042: Kassandra Perch

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Guest: Kassandra Perch

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Kassandra Perch. Kassandra is a return guest from JavaScript Jabber episode 197. Kassandra is a developer relations engineer for IOpipe, that does AWS Lambda monitoring and visibility in the server-less space. 

Kassandra talks about her journey into program through game sharks or programming game cartridges. Also, furthering her interest in programming was taking computer science courses in college, and getting a part-time job in the technology field during college while networking. Kassandra shares her favorite contributions to javascript and open source projects. 

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

  • How did you get into programming? Game Sharks
  • Game Cartridges
  • Austin Meetup Group and JavaScript
  • Working in the open source community 
  • College courses
  • Contributions - Nodebotanist 
  • Interest in education  and being autistic 
  • Child of a teacher 
  • Serving the community 
  • Helping people with projects 
  • IOT - Internet of Things
  • Building Robots
  • Serverless 
  • What are you working on now? 
  • AVR Girl
  • and much, much more!

Links: 

Picks

Kassandra

Charles 




4

MJS 043: Nick Disabato

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: 

Picks

Charles

Nick




4

MJS 044: Ben Coe

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Guest: Ben Coe

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Ben Coe. Ben is the co-founder of attachments.me. Currently, work for NPM, and had worked for Freshbooks where he began his professional development career.  Ben talks about his journey into programming and learning JavaScript, and the many experiences into his successful dev career. Ben shares his contributions to the Javascript community and the open source world with technologies like Yargs and InstanbulJS.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

  • How did you get into programming?
  • Noodling around with old computers from Waterloo
  • Geo cites
  • How did you get into Javascript?
  • Working at Freshbooks
  • Backend infrastructure at NPM
  • How did you end up working at NPM?
  • Operations person at NPM
  • Dev Ops
  • What was it like being there in the early days?
  • Automation
  • Yargs
  • InstanbulJS
  • Product management at NPM
  • C8
  • What is next?
  • and much, much more!

Links: 

Picks

Ben

  • https://www.hackillinois.org
  • C8 tool