JavaScript Jabber

JavaScript Jabber celebrates its 400th episode with former host Dave Smith and some other familiar voices. Each of the panelists talks about what they’ve been up to. Dave hasn’t been on the show for 3 years, but he and Jameson Dance have started a podcast called Soft Skills Engineering where they answer questions about the non-technical side of engineering. When he left the show he was the director of engineering on Hire View, and currently he works for Amazon on Alexa. Christopher Buecheler has been on several JSJ, RRU, and MJS episodes. His time is divided between contracting for startups and his own company closebrace.com, a tutorial and resource site for JavaScript developers.  Dan Shapir has also been on JSJ as a guest, and is currently works for Wix doing performance tech. He enjoys speaking at conferences, such as JS Camp in Bucharest, Romania and the YGLF conference. Steve Edwards was previously on MJS 078. He started on Drupal in the PHP world, switched to JavaScript, and then a few years ago he star

Valeri Karpov is a maintainer on Mongoose, has started a few companies, and works for a company called Booster Fuels. Today’s topic debugging with Async/Await. The panel talks about some of the challenges of debugging with Async. AJ, however, has never encountered the same problems, so he shares his debugging method. Valeri differentiates between .catch vs try...catch, and talks about why he prefers .catch. There are two ways to handle all errors in an async function without leading to an unhandled promise rejection. The first is to wrap the entire body of the async function in a try...catch, has some limitations. Calling an async function always returns a promise, so the other approach is calling .catch on the promise to handle any errors that occur in that function body. One of the key differences is if you return a promise within an async function, and that return promise is wrapped in a try...catch, the catch block won’t get called if that promise is rejected, whereas if you call .catch on the promise tha

Guest Paige Niedringhaus has been a developer full time for 3 years, and today she is here to talk about Node 12. One of the things she is most excited about is the ES6 support that is now available, so things that used to require React, Angular, or Vue can now be done in Node. The require function will not have to be used in Node 12. AJ is worried about some of these changes and expresses his concerns. Paige assures him that in the beginning you won’t have to switch things to imports. You may have to change file extensions/types so Node can pick up what it’s supposed to be using. They are also trying to make it compatible with CommonJS.Node 12 also boasts an improved startup time. The panel discusses what specifically this means. They talk about the code cache and how Node caches the built in libraries that it comes prepackaged with. The V8 engine is also getting many performance enhancements. Paige talks about the shift from promises to async. In Node 12, async functions will actually be faster than promise

Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent is a self taught web developer from west France. He has worked for BBC, The Guardian, and The Financial Times in the UK. He has also worked in the US for SalesForce and currently works for Shopify on their Polaris design system. Shopify has multiple design systems, and Polaris is open source. Today the panel is talking about design systems and developer tooling around design systems. To begin, Kaelig explains what a design system is. A design system is all of the cultural practices around design and shipping a product. It includes things like the words, colors, spacing grid system, and typography, plus guidance on how to achieve that in code. The panelists discuss what has made design systems so popular. Design systems have been around for a while, but became popular due to the shift to components, which has been accelerated by the popularity of React. The term design system is also misused by a lot of people, for it is much more than having a Sketch file. Next, they talk about whethe

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 Rai

Mike North is the Ember guy at Frontend Masters and LinkedIn’s web developer trainer. Today the panel is talking about the upcoming Ember update, which Mike calls a total reinvention of the way you build with Ember. Finally, they are letting go of the cruft and stuff they had to hold on to in order to support IE8 and using modern interfaceThe panel talks about some of the issues with IE8, and agree that the reason Ember felt its age because it was built for IE8. Ember 314 is moving from the past into the present, a sleek modern way to build apps. Mike talks about how easy the new Ember is to use. Mike talks about the excitement in the Ember community because the new build is focused on stability and seamlessness. Charles talks about his less seamless experience with the Angular community. For context, Mike North’s first frontend masters course was recorded in 2014, and he’s only had to change two lines of code. Ember is the only framework that has managed to go all the way from IE7/IE8 to today without a majo

Episode SummaryDominik Kundel works as developer evangelist at Twilio. Dominik talks about the history of Twilio, which actually started with integrating phone calls into apps and then moved to SMS integration. Today Charles and Dominik are talking about how the SMS message approach can augment your user experience. Since many people are not familiar with implementing SMS, Dominik talks about how Twilio can help. Twilio created was a supernetwork where they work with carriers and gateways around the world to ensure that they provide reliable services. They also focus heavily on making sure that the developer experience is great.Uber and Lyft are two of the companies that use Twilio, and Dominik shares some of the interesting things that they’ve accomplished. He is particularly excited about phone number masking to support privacy. Uber and Lyft use phone number masking so that your driver doesn’t see your real number and you don’t see theirs. Instead, each of you sees a Twilio number. This use case is becomin

Episode SummarySurma is an open web advocate for Google currently working with WebAssembly team. He was invited on the show today to talk about using web workers and how to move work away from the browser’s main thread. His primary platform is bringing multithreading out of the fringes and into the web. The panel talks about their past experience with web workers, and many of them found them isolated and difficult to use. Surma believes that web workers should pretty much always be sued because the main thread is an inherently bad place to run your code because it has to do so much. Surma details the differences between web workers, service workers, and worklets and explains what the compositer is. The panel discusses what parts should be moved off the main thread and how to move the logic over. Surma notes that the additional cost of using a worker is basically nonexistent, changes almost nothing in your workflow, and takes up only one kilobyte of memory. Therefore, the cost/benefit ratio of using web worker

Episode SummaryDouglas 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 ab

Episode SummaryTodd Gardner is a software developer, podcaster on the show Script and Style, startup founder,  and comedy host for Pub Conf, a ‘comedy after party for developers’. Since he was last on the show 6 years ago, he has seen his startup TrackJS become quite successful. TrackJS is a JavaScript error monitoring service which gives you visibility into your client side experience. It’s different from other tools because focused on simplicity, so you’ll never need a guy on your team dedicated solely to TrackJS because everyone can use it.The panel begins by talking about debugging methods and tools. Some rely solely on the debugger built into their platform while others prefer to use a third party service. They discuss the necessity of using a third party debugger and if there are better solutions than just the built in debugger. They then discuss what to do after you’ve fixed a bug, such as if it is necessary to write a test to make sure it was completely fixed They talk about things to do to make debug

Episode SummaryAdam Leventhal is the CEO and cofounder of Transposit. Transposit was born from the desire to build a way for developers to work with lots of different APIs, take authentication and pagination off the table, and let developers focus on the problems they’re trying to solve. Transposit is a serverless platform that’s free and gives you a combination of SQL or JavaScript to start playing with your API.Since interacting with API data securely can be difficult, the panel discusses how Transposit might replace the personally built tools and how does it compare to JAMstack. They talk about some common things that people do wrong with security. Transposit is often used as the full backend, and Adam shares how that works. There is a list of APIs that Transposit can talk to, and you can build your own connector. You can also work with JavaScript and SQL simultaneously. Chris Ferdinandi asks some more specific questions about how Transposit can work with email lists. Adam clarifies the difference between

SponsorsSustain Our SoftwareSentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit  Adventures in BlockchainPanelCharles Max WoodEpisode Summary In today’s show, Chuck talks about the recent tweet thread about 10x engineers. He goes through each of the points in the tweet and talks about each of them in turn. There are only two points he sort of agrees with, and believes the rest to be absolute garbage. One of the issues with this tweet is that it doesn’t define what a 10x engineer is. Defining a 10x engineer is difficult because it is also impossible to measure a truly average engineer because there are many factors that play into measuring productivity. Chuck turns the discussion to what a 10x engineer is to him and how to find one. A 10x engineer is dependent on the organization that they are a part of, because they are not simply found, they are made. When a 10x engineer is added to a team, the productivity of the entire team increases. Employers have to consider firstly what you need in your team and how a perso

SponsorsAdventures in BlockchainSentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit  My Ruby StoryPanelAimee Knight Chris BuechelerAJ O’NealWith Special Guest: Brian LonsdorfEpisode SummaryBrian Lonsdorf works for Salesforce, specializes in functional programming, and wrote a book called Professor Frisby’s Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Programming. Brian talks about when he got into functional programming and when in their career others should be exposed to it. He talks about the fundamental tenets of functional programming (static mathematical functions), how it differs from object oriented programming, and how to manipulate data in a functional environment. The panel wonders if it is possible to use functional and object oriented programming together and discuss the functional core imperative shell. Brian talks about what is ‘super functional’ and why JavaScript isn’t, but includes methods for making it work. He shares some of the trade-offs he’s found while doing functional programming. Brian defines a mo

SponsorsGitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT Sentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit  Views on VuePanelCharles Max WoodJoe EamesEpisode SummaryToday Joe and Charles are discussing how to stay current in the tech field. Since looking at all the new technology can be overwhelming, they advise listeners on what to focus on, which will differ depending on your career. Joe brings up that one of the top reasons people choose a job is because it has a technology they want to learn. Joe and Charles discuss trends in the tech world, such as the rise and fall of Rails. They discuss what to do if you’re happy with what you’re doing now but want your career to stay viable. While it is important to continue moving along with technology, they agree that the stuff that’s really important is the stuff that doesn’t change. Charles believes that if you have a solid knowledge on a subject that isn’t necessary current, that is still very valuable. Joe and Charles discuss the importance of having

SponsorsGitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMITSentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit  PanelChris BeuchelerAJ O’NealAimee KnightWith Special Guest: Chris BiscardiEpisode SummaryChris 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. Chr

SponsorsRxJS LivePanelCharles Max WoodChristopher BeuchelerEpisode SummaryToday Charles and Christopher discuss what can you do with JavaScript. They talk about the kinds of things they have used JavaScript to build. They discuss non-traditional ways that people might get into JavaScript and what first drew them to the language. They talk about the some of the non-traditional JavaScript options that are worth looking into. Christopher and Charles talk about some of the fascinating things that have been done with JavaScript, such as Amazon Alexa capabilities, virtual reality, and games. They spend some time talking about JavaScript usage in game creation and building AI. They talk about how they’ve seen JavaScript change and progress during their time as developers. They talk about areas besides web that they would be interested in learning more about and what kinds of things they would like to build in that area. They finish by discussing areas that they are excited to see improve and gain new capabilites. Li

SponsorsSentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit  PanelCharles Max WoodAJ O’NealJoe EamesAimee KnightWith Special Guest: Evan WeaverEpisode SummaryEvan Weaver is the CEO and cofounder of FaunaDB, a serverless database and a great way to get started with GraphQL. Evan talks about what went into building the FaunaDB and his background with Twitter. FaunaDB arose from trying to fix Twitter’s scalability issues, and the panel discusses scalability issues encountered in both large and small companies. They talk about the difference between transient and persistent data. They discuss how to develop locally when using a serverless database and the importance of knowing why you’re using something. Evan talks about how developing locally works with FaunaDB. He addresses concerns that people might have about using FaunaDB since it is not backed by a tech giant. Evan talks about some of the services FaunaDB offers and talks about the flexibility of its tools. He talks about how to get started with FaunaDB and what

SponsorsRxJS LivePanelCharles Max WoodChristopher BeuchelerAimee KnightEpisode SummaryToday’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 ch

SponsorsSentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit  PanelCharles Max WoodWith Special Guest: Anatoliy ZaslavskiyEpisode SummaryAnatoliy Zaslavsky works for Hover, made framework called Pickle.js, and has been on JavaScript Jabber before. Today Chuck and Anatloliy are talking about the importance of mental health. Anatoliy has Bipolar Disorder, and he talks about what it is and his experience with it and how his manic and depressive episodes have affected him. Thankfully, his employers at Hover have been extremely supportive. Chuck and Anatoliy talk about what people should do when they are suffering from a mental illness so that they can do the things they love again. Some of the best ways of coping with mental health issues are to keep a lifeline out to friends and family, go to a professional therapist, stay on a consistent exercise and sleep pattern, and stay away from substances. They talk about how to support someone that is suffering from a mental illness. Anatoliy talks about some of the symptoms a

SponsorsSentry– use the code “devchat” for $100 credit  RxJS LivePanelCharles Max WoodChristopher BeuchelerAJ O’NealWith Special Guest: John SomnezEpisode SummaryJohn is the founder of Bulldog Mindset andSimple Programmer, which teaches software developers soft skills, and the author of a couple books. He specializes in creating a personal brand and marketing. He addresses the rumors of him leaving software development and gives an introduction to marketing yourself as a software developer and its importance. The panel discusses their experience with consulting and how marketing themselves has paid off. John talks about the importance of having soft skills. In his opinion, the most important soft skills for programmers are communication, persuasion and influence, people skills and charisma. He talks about highlight those soft skills. The truth is, more and more people are hiring for people skills rather than technical skills. The panel discusses more about the importance of people skills.John talks about ways