917: AI Tools You Should Know

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk about TypeScript fundamentals — what it is, how you use it, why people love it so much, and more! 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. Cloudinary - Sponsor Cloudinary is the best way to manage images and videos in the cloud. Edit and transform for any use case, from performance to personalization, using Cloudinary’s APIs, SDKs, widgets, and integrations. Show Notes What is TypeScript? 03:12 - Types? What are types and why should you care? JS is a typed language, it’s just not strongly typed JS does not care about reassignment of a variable to a new type Does not care about your types, but they do exist 06:34 - The Fundamentals You write your JavaScript code, but each time you create a variable, function, parameter, you “type it” — which means you describe what that data will look like. Create a variable: Will it be a string? A number? A custom type of show? Create a function: What params does it take? What type are they? What does it return? Types allow your code to know if there are type errors that would present themselves to the user silently. These are small errors that can be compounded and go unnoticed. This can allow you to prevent shipping code that has these errors by checking your code. Some of the biggest benefits here come via errors in your text editor 13:30 - Explaining the types You can create your own types Strings Numbers We only have numbers in TS, no floats/ints We do have BigInt though, but not something most people will use Arrays Will be a list of another type Unions This type will be one of the possible options String of DRAFT PUBLISHED or ARCHIVED Intersections An intersection type combines multiple types into one Objects These are custom types where each property is its own type Any Explicit any Implicit any Language types These things are technically just Objects, but they have their own types Dates Timeouts DOM Elements / Nodes Void When a function returns nothing — usually used with side effects like click handlers Enum A set of named constants Used when you have a select amount of values — I like to think of these as the select lists of TS String unions are also used for this same thing 30:28 - Inference Automatic detection of types Typescript will try to infer your types based on their definition Not every type can be inferred, leading to implicit anys and the need for explicit types 33:25 - Getting types Most popular packages already have types — you install them like npm i @types/whatever If a package doesn’t have types, you have to create them yourself, which can be annoying MakeTypes Console log a JSON.stringify(obj), and pipe it in Node has types Vanilla JS has types, for the language and all of the DOM - HTMLInputElement React has types Typing Node modules that don’t have types Overall benefits 40:39 - Type hinting With TS and your editor (VSCode) you’ll get more information about your code as you type it — allowing you to know exactly what things expect This seems like a small deal but in practice leads to being much more efficient 42:50 - Refactoring Rename a function, type, or variable and it will be updated everywhere in the project! Moving a function to a new file is actually part of TypeScript Drag + Drop file, update imports 48:10 - Compiling TSC vs Babel / Esbuild Only TSC type checks Compiling TS with babel will not allow you to break the build on type errors, you’ll need to run TSC in coordination or in the CI/CD Links Snipcart GraphQL Snowpack ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: 1: LumiPets 2: LumiPets Bear Wes: Phomemo Label Printer Shameless Plugs Scott: ESM & Snowpack - Sign up for the year and save 25%! Wes: All Courses - Use the coupon code ‘Syntax’ for $10 off! 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

3 Feb 202158min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about the new Level Up Tutorials website — some of the new tech powering the site, behind-the-scenes decisions, previous iterations, and more! 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. 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. Show Notes 02:55 - Previous iterations Originally on Drupal 7 Full re-write to Meteor + Blaze Two sites — store.leveluptutorials.com and leveluptutorials.com Meteor + React Meteor + Apollo Combine store and site Move to TypeScript NOW 05:30 - Big choices No Babel up and down the stack UI Mostly unchanged — React + Styled Components + SCSS Moving more to SCSS, CSS vars Build and dev done via Snowpack 50ms hot reloadin’ Mega fast development workflow has been a huge plus Errors in the UI via Snowpack Wrote a custom GraphQL importer plugin API ESBuild Insane speeds Wrote a custom GraphQL importer plugin Mercurious / Fastify Codegen GraphQL code gen to create everything we need for a fully typed codebase Auto-generated React Hooks Hosting render.com for both CLI Custom avalanche CLI that removes the guesswork and makes bulk operations easy Caddy server for easy leveluptutorials.dev in local environments Testing Jest → API Cypress → UI Links Digital Ocean app platform https://beta.leveluptutorials.com/ 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 Feb 202125min

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes bring you the long-awaited Deno show — what it is, what it replaces, how you can use it, and more! Deque - Sponsor Deque’s free axe browser extension helps developers instantly catch 50% of accessibility bugs while they code. It’s lightweight, easy-to-use, and has zero false positives. Get started for free at deque.com/axe. 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. Mux - Sponsor Mux Video is an API-first platform that makes it easy for any developer to build beautiful video. Powered by data and designed by video experts, your video will work perfectly on every device, every time. Mux Video handles storage, encoding, and delivery so you can focus on building your product. Live streaming is just as easy and Mux will scale with you as you grow, whether you’re serving a few dozen streams or a few million. Visit mux.com/syntax. Show Notes 02:13 - What is it? A secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript Built by Ryan Dhal — same guy who initially built Node.js API is JS or TS out of the box 04:55 - Does it replace / what is it in relation to? Node It’s a replacement for Node.js Express Web Server Frameworks like Express will run on Deno, but Express itself won’t currently run because they are build on Node APIs https://github.com/oakserver/oak Serverless Deno can be used for anything, so it can be used for serverless functions, or a traditional web server Serverless, Deno and TypeScript with Brian Leroux React / Vue / Svelte These things are just JavaScript, so they should/will work in Deno. Deno will replace your tooling. More involved things like Next.js that require Node APIs won’t work until. https://alephjs.org/ SSR It comes with all browser APIs out of the box! Fetch Window + Add Event listener Webpack / Parcel / Snowpack Deno is a bundler Prettier Deno is a formatter TSC Deno is a TypeScript compiler and runtime ESLint Deno is a linter Jest Deno is a Test Runner NPM Deno is a package manager - it pulls in packages from URLs 14:51 - Modules ES modules from the start Modules are loaded from URLs Why? No package registry to worry about This is how the browser works Import from URL You can also specify it in the json file https://github.com/oakserver/oak/blob/main/deps.ts https://deno.land/ Fetch is built in! It’s a browser API, but who cares?! Browser APIs window.add event Listener Deno is event based, like the browser 20:10 - A nice standard library https://github.com/denoland/deno/tree/master/std 22:14 - WASM Deno can run WASM with the same APIs that the browsers can Node is doing this too (experimental) 25:06 - Multi-threading with Web Workers 26:13 - Speed It’s fast! They took everything they learned from Node - good and bad Built in Rust From what we understand: V8 is written in C++ Node is written in C, C++ and JavaScript How it talks to V8 - Rust sits in-between the JS runtime, and the C++ V8 runtime and communicates between the two. https://github.com/denoland/deno/blob/master/core/examples/hello_world.rs 29:44 - Security Sandboxed —allow-read —allow-net -allow-write https://deno.land/manual@v1.6.3/getting_started/permissions#permissions-list You can specify which dirs it can access 33:39 - Run from anywhere https://www.npmjs.com/package/npx Deno run https://cool.com/whatever.ts 37:43 - Async out of the box Everything is based on async + await / promises right away. No callback APIs, no promise wrapping. Top level await 38:53 - Node Compatibility Node APIs are being filled This means if a browser package ships an ES module of a package, we can just import it 42:21 - What we’ve built A bunch of sample scripts Lots of simple demos Very intuitive Fetched and downloaded every single Syntax mp3 https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1326345600141582336 46:54 - Hosting Literally any linux server (Linode, Digital Ocean, etc.) https://begin.com/ https://fly.io/ 48:29 - Final thoughts Scott: Now is a great time to learn, but don’t put any crucial work into that space unless you are ready to write everything. Libraries are still being written and evolved. Docs are still sparse. Many things didn’t work on first try. I had to read lots of source. Wes: If You know JS or TS, you are already 90% there. The package ecosystem isn’t there yet Battle-tested ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia Wes: Orthopaedic Pillow Shameless Plugs Scott: Deno 101 For Web Developers - Sign up for the year and save 25%! Wes: All Courses - Use the coupon code ‘Syntax’ for $10 off! 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 Jan 202159min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about AVIF — what it is and how you might use it! 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. 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. Show Notes 03:10 - What is AVIF? AVIF is derived from the keyframes of an AV1 video Royalty free (big deal) What about WebP? Basically half the file size of a WebP for free, which was already about half the size of a jpeg It’s a lossy format — ie it inherently will degrade the image https://jakearchibald.com/2020/avif-has-landed/ No animation 10:53 - How to implement Cloudinary is in beta, but you can try it Gatsby supports it https://squoosh.app/ Imagemin https://github.com/nucliweb/imagemin-avif https://avif.io/ https://github.com/dreampiggy/AVIFQuickLook https://github.com/vercel/next.js/pull/20765 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 Jan 202120min

It’s another potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about VS Code, JavaScript, $100k-per-year dev jobs, sponsored blog posts, how to use dev tools, how to keep your skills up to date, 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. 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. Linode - Sponsor Whether you’re working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure, you deserve simple, affordable, and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to take your project to the next level. Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode’s Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier. Get started on Linode today with a $100 in free credit for listeners of Syntax. You can find all the details at linode.com/syntax. Linode has 11 global data centers and provides 24/7/365 human support with no tiers or hand-offs regardless of your plan size. In addition to shared and dedicated compute instances, you can use your $100 in credit on S3-compatible object storage, Managed Kubernetes, and more. Visit linode.com/syntax and click on the “Create Free Account” button to get started. Show Notes 02:01 - Not so much a question as me saying thanks! I started web dev as a bartender/college dropout in 2017 when Syntax was pretty new. I rarely miss an episode, and this year I’m starting my first >$100k JS job! Your show has always been fun, kept my attention in the realm of web dev, and helped guide my interest — I think it has been extremely valuable to my career so far, and I look forward to more. 04:10 - How do I know when to pull in a package rather than write similar functionality myself? And is there a rule for when enough is enough, in terms of having too many packages? What I’m most concerned about is bundle size. It doesn’t seem to take a lot of packages before Webpack notifies you about large bundle sizes, so what would be best practice? 11:27 - What is your opinion of doing a sponsored post or guest post on your own site? And if you’re in favor, what sorts of terms, payment, etc. would you outline or charge for it? 18:20 - Do you have/know of any resources for those that want to learn more about selling digital products through e-commerce? The sources I’ve found (Scott’s e-commerce/Gatsby courses & Next.js commerce demo page) focus more on creating stores that sell physical products. Are there any gotchas when selling digital vs physical? 22:10 - Do you have any tips for keeping your skills up to date while taking a break from work? I’m a frontend dev currently six months into my year-long maternity leave and I feel like my brain has turned to soup. I listen to podcasts and read blog posts but it never feels like enough. Time and energy are very limited for me to work on personal projects! 25:11 - I remember you guys saying something about making your own UI component libraries. Do you use some CSS libraries like Tailwind or even Bootstrap or others for this, or do you write your Sass/CSS from scratch? 30:52 - Would be interested to hear some of the common ways you use dev tools (chrome dev tools, react dev tools, redux, etc.). I feel like there is a lot of information in there that I am not utilizing properly to help figure out problems during development. Would be cool to hear an overview of how you use the different tabs, some of the most commons things to look for, etc. 35:20 - I am graduating from a bootcamp next month and I feel severe insecurities/imposter syndrome. For whatever reason, I freeze up when it comes to coming up with code or writing things myself, mainly in JS. When in class, watching tutorials, following along, or viewing other people's code, I can tell you exactly what is going on, why it is being done, and I can change and add things and explain them. But when it comes to starting from a blank slate, I freeze, as if everything I know about programming has gone out the window. Do you have any advice as to how to get past this hurdle? I feel like at this point I shouldn’t be feeling like this, but maybe this is normal? 40:36 - Do you think developers have a responsibility to help reduce CO2 emissions caused by the web? A BBC news article stated that “HD video streaming on a phone generates about eight times more in emissions than standard definition (SD)” and noted that on a small screen, the viewer might not even notice the difference. Should the developer limit the resolution available to mobile devices, or should they let the end user choose? 47:53 - I was hoping that you guys could give me, and other listeners, advice on “knowing when you’ve bitten off more than you can chew”? Often I’ll be working on a project for fun, or possibly building out my portfolio, and I’ll continue to get excited about features that I’d like to add to my current app or what have you. At first glance, the ideas or features seemed reasonable enough to tackle, but hours later, I’ll find myself stuck, realizing that I’m in over my head, as I’ve tried to take on something that I’m not yet experienced enough to work with, or I’m lacking the man-power to complete it in a timely manner. At the same time, I want to challenge myself so that I can grow, but sometimes I feel that I’m not using my time wisely. So my question to you is, where is the line between challenging ourselves to take on new and difficult tasks and scaling back our current work to make it more approachable and less overwhelming? 55:01 - What is the right use-case for a database, and what is the right use-case for a headless CMS? Is a headless CMS just a database + a user-friendly way of entering data into that database? Is there a secure way of querying Sanity directly from the frontend if I have data that I want to be only available to logged-in users? Links Syntax Listener Questions Bundle Phobia Shopify Snipcart Styled Components BEM Mux ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Double Sided Mounting Tape Wes: Secret Aardvark Habanero Hot Sauce Shameless Plugs Scott: All Courses - Sign up for the year and save 25%! Wes: All Courses - Use the coupon code ‘Syntax’ for $10 off! 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 Jan 20211h 4min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about CSS typography, and how to quickly get up and running with type systems. 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. 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. Show Notes 05:00 - How do you define type at the start of a new project? 15:03 - How do media queries and screen sizes affect your system? 16:58 - Why are systems in type important? 20:21 - How do you design a type system? Scott’s type system: /* Font Sizes */ --baseFontSize: 1rem; --baseNavSize: 0.64rem; --smallFontSize: 0.8rem; --smallestFontSize: 0.512rem; --xtra-big-ass-heading: 3.052rem; --xtra-heading: 2.441rem; --heading-1: 1.953rem; --heading-2: 1.563rem; --heading-3: 1.25rem; --heading-4: var(--baseFontSize); --heading-5: var(--smallFontSize); --heading-6: 0.64rem; --heading-7: var(--smallestFontSize); Links https://type-scale.com/ 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 Jan 202126min

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes are coming at you live from Reactathon with audience-favorite segments including All I Want for Christmas in React, JS or Nay-s (or Both), Overrated / Underrated, Hot Take Tweets, Listener Questions, and more! 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. Magic Bell - Sponsor MagicBell, the embeddable notification inbox - magicbell.io. Use the coupon code SYNTAX to get a 20% discount if you sign up in the next two weeks. 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 04:17 - All I Want for Christmas in React is: Suspense for data fetching On mount animations Unmount for me Single file components preventDefault shortcut Input to state mapping 09:45 - JS or Nay-s (or Both) Shout out to Pigeonhole Graphene - 1) Carbon atoms organized in a hexagonal lattice, or 2) An opinionated Python library for building GraphQL Libraries in Python? Floodlight - 1) A super simple syntax highlighter for XHTML documents, or 2) a large light used to illuminate dark outdoor spaces? Toy Machine - 1) An early 2000s skate brand, or 2) A Vue-based GUI for creating state machines? Joplin - 1) A free, open-source note taking and to-do application based on markdown, or 2) A city in the northwestern corner of Missouri? Noco - 1) A JavaScript library that connects to No Code tools including bubble.io, or 2) A smart car battery maintainer & charger? Innr - 1) A smart lightbulb, or 2) A CSS in JS library for selecting parent selectors? Cabkoma Strand - 1) A thermoplastic carbon fiber composite rod used in modern buildings, or 2) A Redux-like state management library for Svelte? Sputnik V - 1) Code name for the upcoming WordPress release with built-in headless CMS mode, or 2) A non-replicating viral vector COVID-19 vaccine? 18:44 - Overrated / Underrated Deno ESM import from URL (no npm) Remix.run Xstate 27:49 - Hot Take Tweets https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1336367385683636225 34:34 - Listener Questions Q: If you recently started doing web dev work, which career path would you choose - startup, FANG, or freelance? Q: TypeScript all the things? Q: What do you do to keep up with the latest and greatest changes in tech - front-end libraries, new languages, etc.? Q: Can you share some exclusive BBQ tips? Q: What do you expect of Blitz.js in the next few years? Q: What’s the first node module you install in a brand new React project besides React itself? Q: Thoughts on using languages other than JS and TS with React like Kotlin? Q: Do you have an approach for optimizing hi-res images that are stored in your back-end, like S3 for your Gatsby website? Links Watch the live recording of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xJpxj6T1BQ Formik Mux Syntax Ep 206: State Machines, CSS and Animations with David K Piano Check My Hair - Wes Bos Houdini.How Rust Cloudinary LockPickingLawyer YouTube Channel ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: VS Code color conversion extensions Wes: Acrylic lock picking kit Shameless Plugs Scott: All Courses - Sign up for the year and save 25%! Wes: All Courses - Use the coupon code ‘Syntax’ for $10 off! 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 Jan 202149min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about nothing — null, undefined, void, false, 0, ‘’, NaN, [], {}, never — all sorts of values that could mean the things that do not exist. 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. 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 03:35 - Undefined Implicitly nothing A variable declared, but not set is undefined 04:25 - Null Explicitly nothing 04:41 - Null vs Undefined Null has a value of nothing Undefined does not have a value You can set variables to either If you want to set a score variable to nothing, set it to null If you want to un-set a value, set it to undefined == will check if a value is either null or undefined 05:35 - Void In Javascript You can pop void in front of calling a function and it will return undefined (even if that function returns a value) I’ve seen it on links that go nowhere (don’t do this — use a button) To prevent an arrow function from leaking onSubmit="javascript:void()" is a quick-n-easy prevent default on forms In Typescript Void is when you don’t care about what is returned from a function, or if nothing is returned A click handler that goes off and does stuff (side effect) can return void 09:15 - Never (in Typescript) Some functions will never return: Functions that throw errors Functions that have infinite loops Also, unreachable variables have a type of never if(true == false) { let var = 'this will never be true'; } 11:05 - Falsy values 0, -0, 0n false ‘’ (empty string) Empty array Is a value Its .length can be falsy Empty object Is a value Its object.keys(object) length can be falsy (0) 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

11 Jan 202115min