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

In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Syed Balkhi about his experiences blogging and developing plugins in the WordPress ecosytem. Hasura - Sponsor With Hasura, you can get a fully managed, production-ready GraphQL API as a service to help you build modern apps faster. You can get started for free in 30 seconds, or if you want to try out the Standard tier for zero cost, use the code “TryHasura” at this link: hasura.info. We’ve also got an amazing selection of GraphQL tutorials at hasura.io/learn. Sponsorname - Sponsor Show Notes 00:32 Welcome 01:52 Guest introduction WPBeginner WP Beginner YouTube CSS Tricks Smashing Magazine 04:33 What tips do you have for blogging and audience building? AnswerthePublic 09:09 How do you manage so many people? 13:07 What was your background before this all got big? 13:43 Sponsor: Hasura 15:01 How do you design your products? 18:40 YouTube, TikTok, and video 25:12 Why the WordPress hate? 29:03 What types of websites are being created in WordPress? Easy Digital Downloads WooCommerce MemberPress 34:13 Sponsor: Lightstep Incident Response 35:26 What schools are you building? Balkhi Foundation Pencils of Promise 40:51 Supper Club questions Copyhackers Swiped Uncanny Automator 53:07 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Streaks App Ready Player Two WP Forms AwesomeMotive 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

29 Jul 202256min

In this Potluck episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott answer your questions about resolving node version errors, using social media, bundler for building React component, and how does Syntax get made? Prismic - Sponsor Prismic is a Headless CMS that makes it easy to build website pages as a set of components. Break pages into sections of components using React, Vue, or whatever you like. Make corresponding Slices in Prismic. Start building pages dynamically in minutes. Get started at prismic.io/syntax. Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your code, track errors and monitor performance with Sentry. Sentry’s Application Monitoring platform helps developers see performance issues, fix errors faster, and optimize their code health. Cut your time on error resolution from hours to minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners new to Sentry can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code TASTYTREAT during sign up. Freshbooks - Sponsor Get a 30 day free trial of Freshbooks at freshbooks.com/syntax Show Notes OhMyPosh OhMyZ.sh Warp 02:34 How do you resolve errors when starting up a project with npm that you haven’t touched in awhile? 07:50 Any advice for using social media to network? 16:44 What bundler are you reaching for when building a React component library? tsdx Vite 18:37 Do you have experience with optimizing third party scripts like Google Analytics? Partytown 21:37 What’s your opinion on a “offline-first” mentality? PouchDB CouchDB Supabase MongoDB Realm 25:09 Sponsor: Prismic 26:48 How do you make web components with Svelte? Build web components in Svelte Using custom elements in Svelte 30:35 When talking about “responsive” web design do people generally mean using flexbox or grid? Responsive Design at 10 Responsive Web Design A Book Apart - Responsive Web Design 35:24 Sponsor: Sentry 36:53 Do you have any tips for staying in React-land for just spinning up a fresh site quickly? 40:47 Who or what helps you produce and distribute the podcast? Lemon Productions Chris Enns on Twitter 46:08 Should a majority of _lodash functions be considered deprecated follow up 48:18 Sponsor: Freshbooks 48:52 Do you have any tips or tricks to deal with backend data date issues? 52:23 Is the “col” system the peak of how we handle CSS, or should we start using more built-in functions? 55:25 Why you you need CSS Color Functions at runtime instead of just pre-calculating these values once as a build step using LESS or SASS? 58:58 SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× 03:12 Shameless Plugs ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Can tumbler glasses Wes: Car Sound Deadener Shameless Plugs Scott: LevelUp Tutorials Wes: Wes Bos Tutorials 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 Jul 20221h 4min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about Bun, a new all-in-one JavaScript runtime. What makes Bun so fast? What’s on Bun’s roadmap? And why do we need another JavaScript runtime? Lightstep Incident Response - Sponsor Streamline on-call, collaboration, incident management, and automation with a free 30-day trial of Lightstep Incident Response, built on ServiceNow. Usage-based pricing on active services promotes collaboration across your entire team to build a culture of service ownership. Listeners of Syntax will also receive a free Lightstep Incident Response T-shirt after firing an alert or incident. Pay for the services you use, not the number of people on your team with Lightstep Incident Response, built on ServiceNow. Streamline on-call, collaboration, incident management, and automation with a free 30-day trial. Fire an alert or incident today and receive a free Lightstep Incident Response t-shirt. Freshbooks - Sponsor Get a 30 day free trial of Freshbooks at freshbooks.com/syntax Show Notes 00:23 Welcome 01:21 Sponsor: Freshbooks 02:07 Sponsor: Lightstep Incident Response 03:20 What is Bun? Bun Deno 08:20 Why is Bun so fast? Zig 12:32 Module support 15:11 What’s not implemented yet in Bun? What’s not implemented in Bun yet 17:01 Config file in toml 18:08 Bun roadmap Bun roadmap 20:27 Why do we need another JavaScript environment? 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

25 Jul 202223min

In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Adam Cowley about how Neo4j Database can help when working with data for your next app. Gatsby - Sponsor Today’s episode was sponsored by Gatsby, the fastest frontend for the headless web. Gatsby is the framework of choice for content-rich sites backed by a headless CMS as its GraphQL data layer makes it straightforward to source website content from anywhere. Gatsby’s opinionated, React-based framework makes the hardest parts of building a performant website simpler. Visit gatsby.dev/syntax to get your first Gatsby site up in minutes and experience the speed. ⚡️ Lightstep Incident Response - Sponsor Streamline on-call, collaboration, incident management, and automation with a free 30-day trial of Lightstep Incident Response, built on ServiceNow. Usage-based pricing on active services promotes collaboration across your entire team to build a culture of service ownership. Listeners of Syntax will also receive a free Lightstep Incident Response T-shirt after firing an alert or incident. Pay for the services you use, not the number of people on your team with Lightstep Incident Response, built on ServiceNow. Streamline on-call, collaboration, incident management, and automation with a free 30-day trial. Fire an alert or incident today and receive a free Lightstep Incident Response t-shirt. Show Notes 00:15 Welcome 01:24 Guest introduction 03:15 Browser innovation and testing 05:01 What is a graph database? Neo4j Cypher Sanity Groq 08:11 Is there a specific type of data that works best in a graph database? 11:57 Sponsor: Lightstep Incident Response 13:14 What’s AuraDB vs Neo4js? 15:01 Whiteboard friendly data model 19:52 How are GraphQL and graph related? 23:08 Can you sync with MongoDB? 24:41 How do you pull data into a div on the web? 29:19 Why are you used for data science a lot? 30:43 Sponsor: Gatsby 31:51 Is visualization an important part of Neo4js? Neo4j Bloom 36:01 Do you have to think about indexing with graph databases? 39:43 Are there uses Neo4j isn’t as good for? 40:22 Do you have to cache queries? 41:26 Dessert questions Intellijet Idea Cobalt 2 Theme 50:36 Shameless Plug Neo4j Desktop Neo4j Cloud 54:45 ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Hue Lights 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 Jul 202257min

In this episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk about their coding styles - functional vs object oriented, interfaces vs types, tabs vs spaces, should comments exist? And a whole lot more. Freshbooks - Sponsor Get a 30 day free trial of Freshbooks at freshbooks.com/syntax Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your code, track errors and monitor performance with Sentry. Sentry’s Application Monitoring platform helps developers see performance issues, fix errors faster, and optimize their code health. Cut your time on error resolution from hours to minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners new to Sentry can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code TASTYTREAT during sign up. 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 00:07 Welcome 01:56 Functional vs object oriented 03:49 Interfaces vs types 05:38 Tabs vs spaces 07:02 Semicolons vs no semicolons 08:10 Let vs const 09:33 Do you explicitly type or allow TypeScript do it’s magic? 11:26 Naming variables Naming convention for programming 15:13 Methods of looping 18:03 if statement curlys 20:57 Naming files 24:46 Inline testing vs running test as a process 25:31 Sponsor: Freshbooks 26:37 CSS property:val; or property: val; 27:40 CSS nesting? 29:49 Alphabetizing CSS properties 31:11 Rems, Ems, PX, Etc… 33:37 How do you center something in CSS? 35:22 How do you make something 100% height? 36:52 Sponsor: Sentry 37:30 Should comments exist? Better Comments Wes’ custom parser for VS Code Todo Tree 42:31 Creating HTML 45:28 Components in app or in isolation? 47:41 Sponsor: Sanity 48:45 Single component per file vs multiple Storybook 50:22 Naming components 51:19 General stuff 53:55 ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Scott’s iPad case for kids Wes: Garbage can with custom bags. Shameless Plugs Scott: LevelUp Tutorials Wes: Wes Bos Tutorials 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 Jul 202258min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes try to stump each other with coding interview questions like what is a higher order component? What is functional programming? And more! Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your code, track errors and monitor performance with Sentry. Sentry’s Application Monitoring platform helps developers see performance issues, fix errors faster, and optimize their code health. Cut your time on error resolution from hours to minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners new to Sentry can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code TASTYTREAT during sign up. Lightstep Incident Response - Sponsor Streamline on-call, collaboration, incident management, and automation with a free 30-day trial of Lightstep Incident Response, built on ServiceNow. Usage-based pricing on active services promotes collaboration across your entire team to build a culture of service ownership. Listeners of Syntax will also receive a free Lightstep Incident Response T-shirt after firing an alert or incident. Pay for the services you use, not the number of people on your team with Lightstep Incident Response, built on ServiceNow. Streamline on-call, collaboration, incident management, and automation with a free 30-day trial. Fire an alert or incident today and receive a free Lightstep Incident Response t-shirt. Show Notes 00:26 Welcome 01:47 Sponsor: Lightstep Incident Response 03:00 Sponsor: Sentry 04:10 What is a higher order component? 05:34 What is functional programming? 09:00 What’s the purpose of cache busting and how do you achieve it? Wes’ course for Beginner JavaScript 10:37 What is short circuit evaluation? 13:19 What is a closure? 15:49 What is the reason for wrapping the contents of a JavaScript source file in a function that is then invoked? 17:30 Can you describe how CSS specificity works? 20:15 How does prototypal inheritance differ from classical inheritance? 23:56 What is the difference between a parameter and an argument? 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

18 Jul 202225min

In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Kristi Perreault of Liberty Mutual about why they’re using serverless functions, what languages they write in, managing security and montoring, and Kristi’s journey into tech as a career. Hasura - Sponsor With Hasura, you can get a fully managed, production-ready GraphQL API as a service to help you build modern apps faster. You can get started for free in 30 seconds, or if you want to try out the Standard tier for zero cost, use the code “TryHasura” at this link: hasura.info. We’ve also got an amazing selection of GraphQL tutorials at hasura.io/learn. Stack Overflow Podcast - Sponsor For over a dozen years, the Stack Overflow Podcast has been exploring what it means to be a developer, and how the art and practice of software programming is changing our world. Hosted by Ben Popper, Cassidy Williams, and Ceora Ford, the Stack Overflow Podcast is your home for all things code. Listen to new episodes twice a week, wherever you get your podcasts. Lightstep Incident Response - Sponsor Streamline on-call, collaboration, incident management, and automation with a free 30-day trial of Lightstep Incident Response, built on ServiceNow. Usage-based pricing on active services promotes collaboration across your entire team to build a culture of service ownership. Listeners of Syntax will also receive a free Lightstep Incident Response T-shirt after firing an alert or incident. Pay for the services you use, not the number of people on your team with Lightstep Incident Response, built on ServiceNow. Streamline on-call, collaboration, incident management, and automation with a free 30-day trial. Fire an alert or incident today and receive a free Lightstep Incident Response t-shirt. Show Notes 00:33 Welcome 03:24 Guest introduction @kperreault95 Kristi Perreault on Dev.to Kristi Perreault AWS Hero Liberty Mutual 04:55 Developers at Mutual Liberty 07:05 What did you do before serverless functions? 08:36 Why are you using serverless functions? 12:39 What languages are you writing for serverless functions? 15:53 Sponsor: Hasura 17:22 Where does all the code live? 20:58 AWS CDK AWS CDK CDK Workshop 25:55 Sponsor: Lightstep Incident Response 27:07 How did you get into tech? 31:44 How do you organize all the functions? 33:51 How important is security? 35:23 What are IM roles? 36:16 How do you deal with spiking and monitoring? Datadog Splunk 41:20 Sponsor: Stackoverflow Podcast 42:02 Have you used Edge functions? 42:50 Supper Club Questions Off by None newsletter Ready Set Cloud ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Loki on Disney+ Shameless Plugs Real World Serverless Podcast Serverless Denver Group AWS Summits @ServerlessCO Kristi Perreault on Medium 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 Jul 202256min

In this potluck episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott answer your questions about peer dependencies, Vitest, NVM and PNPM, using sprites for images, common MongoDB operations, and more! Prismic - Sponsor Prismic is a Headless CMS that makes it easy to build website pages as a set of components. Break pages into sections of components using React, Vue, or whatever you like. Make corresponding Slices in Prismic. Start building pages dynamically in minutes. Get started at prismic.io/syntax. 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. 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.com/syntax. Show Notes 00:03 Welcome 01:53 Configuring home internet routers 04:42 Scott’s Home Assistant update Mushroom Theme 07:52 Could you explain to me peer-dependencies and how does it work? 13:24 Using Vitest do you still have to transpile code? 16:14 Can you talk about helpful and common MongoDB operations, beyond just CRUD. 18:49 How can I update the “updatedAt” field of the document on every save automatically? 20:40 What is aggregation, and when do you use it? 25:33 Sponsor: Prismic 27:27 How does NVM relate to PNPM? pnpm nvm 30:45 I’m looking to upskill from front-end JavaScript? 33:53 Is it possible to have a private NPM repo I can “npm install” from, or do I put my components up on NPM publicly? Creating a private npm package 37:51 Sponsor: LogRocket 39:14 Should a majority of lodash functions be considered deprecated? angus c just 42:36 Please do an episode on programming/learning with ADHD. 44:04 Should I still be putting images in sprites? 49:20 Does Mux have a simple mechanism for adding auth to each video or group of videos? Mux Create playback restriction 53:48 Sponsor: Sanity.io 55:02 Is there copyright issues with using public APIs? Moneypuck 59:38 ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Toto Bidet Wes: Sodastream Shameless Plugs Scott: LevelUp Tutorials Wes: Wes Bos Tutorials 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 Jul 20221h 6min