Potluck — Freelancing × Leveraging your experience × Component size × Dealing with mediocrity × How to spend “extra time” × Rust vs Node × Free hosting? × More!

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about how to identify and work on your weaknesses. Logrocket - Sponsor LogRocket lets you replay what users do on your site, helping you reproduce bugs and fix issues faster. It’s an exception tracker, a session re-player and a performance monitor. Get 14 days free at LogRocket. Show Notes 2:45 - Why care about weaknesses? If we avoid the things we’re afraid of or bad at we’ll always grow in lopsided ways 7:32 - As a developer What skills / languages are you not good at or afraid of? 14:06 - As an employee Communication Company and personal goals Efficiency Compatibility 16:54 - As a human How you treat people Sharing your time What you’re neglecting Your living space Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

27 Touko 201922min

In this episode Wes and Scott talk about the cool parts of CSS! From filters to variables, here are some cool (and amazing) things you can do with CSS in 2019. Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your errors, track them with Sentry. Sentry is open-source error tracking that helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real time. Cut your time on error resolution from five hours to five minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code “tastytreat”. Sanity - Sponsor Sanity.io is a real-time headless CMS with a fully customizable Content Studio built in React. Get a Sanity powered site up and running in minutes at sanity.io/create. Get an awesome supercharged free developer plan on sanity.io/syntax. Show Notes 2:28 - Clip path 6:35 - Filters 16:24 - Background mix blend mode 21:47 - Border images 25:46 - Multiple background images 27:47 - Multiple background gradients 28:25 - Radial gradients 29:06 - Multiple box-shadows 34:30 - HEX + Alpha 40:41 - Viewport units 42:17 - Calc 44:32 - CSS variables 47:44 - Text decoration Links Can I use Clippy - CSS clip generator CSS Filters Tweet: Using mix-blend-mode:multiply CSS blend mode generator Lea Verou Codepen - Scott’s digital text animations Steve Schoger Mother-effing HSL Diana Adrianne ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Solar string lights Wes: Digital Calipers Shameless Plugs Wes: Wes’ Courses — use coupon code “syntax” at checkout and get and extra $10 off. Scott: Animating React Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

22 Touko 201958min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes are back with another AMA. This time they talk about their spouses, careers outside of tech, lots of favorites (movies, colors, clothes), and more! Clubhouse - Sponsor Clubhouse is the first project management software that brings everyone together so that teams can focus on what matters: creating products that customers love. Clubhouse provides a perfect balance of simplicity and structure for better cross-functional collaboration. Check out https://clubhouse.io/syntaxpodcast and get your first two months free. Show Notes 2:58 - What do your wives do? 6:40 - If you had to choose a different career, what would you do? If you started learning another (programming) language today, what would it be? 11:50 - Favorites (e.g. colors, movies, brands, etc.) 18:08 - Who inspires you? 26:19 - What’s your ratio of client work, learning new tech, and teaching via your courses, talks or Syntax.fm? You guys seem awfully busy, and it’s making me feel kinda lazy. Links Pigeonhole Live Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

20 Touko 201929min

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk all about side hustles with special guest Courtland Allen, from Indie Hackers! They talk about the story behind Indie Hackers, how to start your own side hustle, where to find ideas, listener questions, and more. LogRocket - Sponsor LogRocket lets you replay what users do on your site, helping you reproduce bugs and fix issues faster. It’s an exception tracker, a session re-player and a performance monitor. Get 14 days free at LogRocket. Freshbooks - Sponsor Get a 30 day free trial of Freshbooks at Freshbooks and put SYNTAX in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Show Notes 1:05 - What’s the back story behind Indie Hackers? 5:30 - What is a side hustle? 11:21 - How do you validate your idea? 13:15 - What are some different types of side hustles? 31:55 - What about people who don’t like marketing? 33:57 - What are some important pieces of side hustles? 39:04 - How do you sell a business? 42:40 - Listener Questions: Q: How do you stop the side hustle from affecting your main job in regards to things like overtime, sleep and commitment? Q: Should you frame yourself as a one-man-band or as a company? Q: Have you heard stories of people living in cheap places, making bank? Are there any white whales you have been chasing to interview? Links Carrd Balsamiq Mockups Flickity Nomad List Evan You Evan You Patreon Park.io Making $125,000 a Month as a Solo Founder with Mike Carson of Park.io Patreon Drift Stripe ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Courtland: Post-it Notes and Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger Scott: Akimbo Wes: Elastic Wallet Shameless Plugs Courtland: IndieHackers Podcast Scott: Animating React Wes: CSS Grid Course Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

15 Touko 201957min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about Shadow Doms - what they are, the individual pieces involved with them, why they’re important, and how to get started using them. Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your errors, track them with Sentry. Sentry is open-source error tracking that helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real time. Cut your time on error resolution from five hours to five minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners can get two months for free by visiting Sentry and using the coupon code “tastytreat”. Show Notes 2:41 What is the shadow DOM? 4:25 What elements are shadow DOM? 5:47 Styling shadow DOM elements 8:54 Creating your own 9:22 Frameworks Links Using shadow DOM Shadow DOM v1: Self-Contained Web Components Polymer Svelte 3 Wildhoney - ReactShadow Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

13 Touko 201914min

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk to Travis Neilson about his career at Google, the challenges he faced, how to choose projects tips for devs wanting to get better at design, and more. Stackbit - Sponsor Build modern JAMStack websites in minutes. Stackbit lets you combine any theme, site generator and CMS without complicated integrations. Join the beta today by visiting stackbit.com/syntaxfm. Sanity - Sponsor Sanity.io is a real-time headless CMS with a fully customizable Content Studio built in React. Get up and running by typing npm i -g @sanity/cli && sanity init in your command line. Get an awesome supercharged free developer plan on sanity.io/syntax. Show Notes 2:43 - Career path On ambitions and where it all started 23:15 - Being all in On how to choose your next project 33:31 - Working at Google On the day-to-day at Google, the challenges of a big team, and constraints 43:23 - Design tips for developers Advice for devs who want to get better at design but are struggling Thoughts on CSS frameworks The one thing devs often get wrong about design Links Travis Neilson’s Website Travis Neilson’s Podcasts Helvetica — Gary Hustwit How one typeface took over movie posters Just My Type: A Book About Fonts Work-Life Balance is a Joke ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Travis: Cults and Extreme Belief and Google Method Podcast Scott: Sony Noise Canceling Headphones WH1000XM3 Wes: Little People Big Dreams Book Series Shameless Plugs Wes’ Courses & Wes’ Youtube Animating React How to Use Adobe XD Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

8 Touko 201956min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes discuss different error handling strategies. Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your errors, track them with Sentry. Sentry is open-source error tracking that helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real time. Cut your time on error resolution from five hours to five minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code “tastytreat”. Show Notes 2:07 - Try / Catch This can be done at call time or inside the function 4:10 - Higher Order Function Makes a function that returns a new function which in turn calls your original function (but with a .catch chained on) 7:46 - Handle the error when you call it Use async/await but chain a .catch onto the end 9:03 - Node.js Unhandled Rejection Event process.on('unhandledRejectionEvent', callback) 9:40 - What do do with those errors Send to error tracking service Possible to give the user a reference number Display good error text to user Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

6 Touko 201912min

It’s another potluck episode in which Wes and Scott answer your questions! This month - Media Queries, NPM Vulnerabilities, Web VR and AR, Fullstack JS vs JAMstack for freelancers, switching jobs, and more! Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your errors, track them with Sentry. Sentry is open-source error tracking that helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real time. Cut your time on error resolution from five hours to five minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code “tastytreat”. Freshbooks - Sponsor Get a 30 day free trial of Freshbooks at freshbooks.com/syntax and put SYNTAX in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Show Notes 2:46 Q: I recently started a static site so I want as much of the site as possible to change layout with just CSS for responsive design. I am comfortable with media queries but find often times the design is very different between sizes. It is easy to tame the complexity of repeated data for the different component views keeping everything in sync but is it good practice to put two completely different component level views in a single HTML file? Does the repeated data in the static HTML have any effect on SEO? 7:08 Q: How should a mid developer know when its time to leave the current company? Is tech stack (e.g frameworkless) a decent reason even though he/she is happy at the place, but feels like they are not growing enough? 11:19 Q: Should I worry about the critical vulnerabilities when installing an NPM package? 15:06 Q: I’ve had the idea for styling one site two different ways (professional/artistic) and giving visitors a button to toggle between the two. Too gimmicky? Secondary: how did you pick your brand colors? 20:19 Q: Any SICK TIPS on career change? I’m a full-time employee with two kids and a lovely wife, who wants a fulfilling career. I throw as much time in as I can to study, but I feel like it isn’t enough to apply for jobs. 20:49 Q: Within the next two years, how well do you think WebVR and WebXR technologies would fit within mainstream web development (think A-Frame, SparkAR, React 360 in normal websites and applications)? 30:39 Q: Should I learn Fullstack JS or JAMstack for freelancing? 35:34 Q: Is front-end development dying? 37:30 Q: How do you deal with CSS-in-JS when you have one-off stuff, or coupled components/selectors like a [CSS] grid container and a grid child (think grid-area)? CSS-in-JS feels very verbose for this use case. 42:07 Q: Scott always talks about Meteor. I thinks its really cool too. What’s the future of it and why didn’t it take off? It seems to have slowed down. They seem to have moved on to other projects like GraphQL stuff. Links Influx WebVR WebXR Google Maps will use a core Waze feature to improve public transit ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: The Making of a Manager Wes: DeWalt Oscillating Tool Shameless Plugs Wes: Wes’ Courses — use coupon code “syntax” at checkout and get and extra $10 off. Scott: Animating React Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

1 Touko 201951min