920: How to Build MCP Servers

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about time block planning — what it is and how it can help you increase your productivity! 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 01:50 - What is time block planning 03:12 - How TBP has helped Scott stay focused 04:46 - How it helps family life 05:57 - How to plan your week 11:00 - How to deal with setbacks Links Cal Newport Todoist Deep Work Deep Questions 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

14 Sep 202016min

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk about tales from web dev past — clearfix, floats, flash, cufon, guestbooks, hit counters, 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. 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 04:28 - Float-based layouts Clearfix ☠️ Killed by Flexbox, and then Grid 09:29 - Loading Screens: Two websites - one flash and one HTML Splash screen 11:22 - Hit counters 12:28 - Guestbooks 13:28 - Flash 3rd party player Media dragged its feet FOREVER ☠️ Killed by Steve Jobs 18:46 - Fonts The Golden Layout Cufon / sIFR / Images of text Typekit ☠️ Killed by font-face 24:15 - Folder-based version control ☠️ Killed by Git 26:22 - FTP ☠️ Killed by Git, then many other things 28:40 - CSS Zen Garden CSS Zen Garden ☠️ Killed by CSS being better 32:02 - TextMate Coda Notepad++ Adobe GoLive FrontPage Macromedia / Dreamweaver ☠️ Killed by Sublime Text, then VSCode 33:58 - Sliding doors A technique for rounded corners on buttons ☠️ Killed by CSS 35:29 - PNG Fix ☠️ Killed by the death of IE6 37:53 - 9-Panel layouts ☠️ Killed by CSS 39:20 - CSS 3 Please CSS 3 Please Paul Irish ☠️ Killed by modern CSS Links Silverlight Chris Coyier ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Fancierstudio 600 LED Light Panel Kit Wes: Allen Key Drill Bit Set Shameless Plugs Scott: React 3D and Advanced Animating React with Framer Motion - Sign up for the year and save 25%! Wes: Master Gatsby Course - 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

9 Sep 202049min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about home offices, backyard offices, costs, and pros and cons! 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 03:40 - Structure options: Existing sheds Build your own likely not allowed Drop-in offices Rubbermaid shed 07:18 - Electrical 07:58 - Insulation 09:01 - Heating 11:30 - Cooling 16:01 - Interior 16:42 - WiFi 17:12 - Costs ~ $4k Electrical - $2k Flooring - $600 Paneling- $900 AC - $1000 Fan - $100 Links https://twitter.com/bradwestfall/status/1284299864210210817 https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/brad-frost-web-headquarters/ Technology Connections - Space Heater Nonsense Technology Connections - Personal “air conditioners” aren’t what they seem Technology Connections - Cassette adapters are remarkably simple Caldigit Ubiquity Outdoor Access Point 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

7 Sep 202020min

It’s another potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about the recent Mozilla layoffs, Safari, finding time to learn coding, Google Analytics alternatives, malicious Github users, 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 01:15 - What are your guy’s thoughts on Mozzila’s layoffs and how it will affect developers? 08:42 - Right now I am a math teacher. I am married with 2 kids (3 and 1) so finding time to code is difficult. My current situation includes waking up at 4:30 am everyday just to get in some time before the kids wake up. Do either of you have any tips about finding a balance between raising kids, getting stuff done around the house, having a full time job and trying to teach yourself web development to transition into a different career? 13:23 - If you had to use a drag-n-drop framework using React, which one would you choose? 15:49 - E2E vs Visual Regression Testing? At which web-app development cycle to implement each? Best tools open source vs purchase? 20:36 - I teach a Highschool course in web development. For a group of students who have a solid knowledge of HTML/CSS and a decent understanding of JavaScript, would Svelte be a good framework for entering into component-based development for the first time? 22:33 - What’s a good Google Analytics alternative in 2020? I have a site on Netlify that the $9/mo seems a bit steep for, for what the site is, and flipping the domain through Cloudflare just for the analytics seems crazy; but is it worth it? Alternatives would be awesome, as I’d love to get off the Google overlords. 29:22 - I have noticed about a dozen to 100 unique clones of my git repos after each push. It doesn’t matter if the repo is initialized, picture added or the readme updated. The repos are still cloned. The traffic section shows the views to my repo at 1 sometimes 2. Is this normal? Is this how interested employers keep tabs on you? Are there a lot of malicious git users? What is happening? 32:30 - With Apple switching to their own processors is it silly for anyone to buy a Mac for development before that releases? Do you guys have experience with Windows, and which would you still prefer today if you needed to buy? 40:28 - Have you ever been approached by or heard of GitAds.io? They’re trying to pay developers to put ads onto popular open source libraries on Github, and they approached me recently, and I wasn’t sure what to think about them. What do you think? 45:16 - I just listened to your TLD game. It made me wonder your opinions on personal site domain names? Should it always try to be yourname.dev? What about .me or other domains? 47:53 - What’s the best way to introduce new technology or processes to a team? Links Rust Firefox MDN Jen Simmons Safari React DnD React Beautiful DnD React Spring Framer Motion Cypress Percy.io Svelte Heap Fathom GitAds.io .TECH Syntax 179: Hasty Treat - The TLD Game Javascript30 Syntax 206: Hasty Treat - The New MacBook Pro for Web Development ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Turbo Boost Switcher for Mac OS X Wes: Roller Blade Wheels for your chair Shameless Plugs Scott: React 3D - Sign up for the year and save 25%! Wes: Master Gatsby 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

2 Sep 202059min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes wrap up season one of the podcast and talk about what’s coming. 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 01:32 - Plans for the Fall 06:59 - Fav Hasty Scott Ep 161: Hasty Treat - VSCode Extensions & Themes Ep 165: Hasty Treat - VSCode Treats Part 2 Ep 167: Hasty Treat - VSCode Love Part 3 Ep 277: Hasty Treat - 5 Things That Make Your Site Slow Wes Ep 211: Hasty Treat - Modules in Node 08:55 - Fav Tasty Scott Ep 236: Mental Health and Dev ft Dr. Courtney Tolinski - Depression, Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome, Focus, Motivation, Burnout Ep 250: Scott Teaches Wes Svelte and Sapper Wes Ep 224: Serverless / Cloud Functions - Part 1 Ep 256: WebRTC and Peer-to-Peer Video Calling with Ian Ramzy 10:22 - Top Episodes of 2020 10: Ep 214: 2020 Fitness 09: Ep 228: More on Severless - Databases × Files × Secrets × Auth × More! 08: Ep 220: The Synology Show - Backups and Home Server 07: Ep 222: Are Web Dev GUIs Going to Replace Us? 06: Ep 210: Potluck - Fonts × Frameworks × Teas × Coding Subscriptions × Client Work × More! 05: Ep 212: Pika Pkg 04: Ep 224: Serverless / Cloud Functions Part 1 03: Ep 218: Potluck - Dev Culture Fit × Slack Communities × Vanilla JS × Backpacks × Raspberry Pi × More! 02: Ep 226: Potluck - Next vs Gatsby × Headless CMS × Vue.js × Is Ruby on Rails still good? × More! 01: Ep 216: Tech to Watch in 2020 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

31 Aug 202016min

It’s another potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about MDX, portfolio projects for junior devs, code commenting, CSS property order, 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. Netlify - Sponsor Netlify is the best way to deploy and host a front-end website. All the features developers need right out of the box: Global CDN, Continuous Deployment, one click HTTPS and more. Hit up netlify.com/syntax for more info. Show Notes 02:18 - I’m curious to know what you guys think of MDX. I’d love to learn more about pros and cons, if you guys had a chance to use it. 08:49 - Where would you put business logic in Vue.js middle- or large-scale applications? I try to put business logic in store but it makes hard to maintain such store, even with splitting to actions/getters/mutations files. I ended up using vanilla JavaScript files, where each file is a class singleton. I was wondering: is it a good solution or do you have better alternatives in mind? 12:07 - I commonly find myself engineering complex programs and left flabbergasted on how to express these ideas to other people when the need arises that I need to explain them and remember why I did them a certain way. How can I get better at conceptualizing intricate design patterns or functions as well as have better memory recall for these abstractions? 18:02 - Can I get recommendations for a junior dev portfolio? What five projects you would recommend to build that will significantly help in getting a job as a front-end web dev and why? 21:13 - I am now working on building a minesweeper game with React. You know how on a computer you right click to flag and disable a cell? I am thinking of doing a press and hold on a mobile device instead. I am not sure how to do either (the right click logic or the press and hold). How can you listen for these events in React? Can you help with some guidance or resources? :) 30:00 - What are your thoughts on SailsJS as a Rails-equivalent framework in Javascript? They recently released version 1.0 and I’m wondering if I should start using it in projects or if I should wait to see if it pans out. 34:35 - How do you go about creating reusable React components (reusable from project to project)? Do you create packages and publish them to NPM? Or do you have another method for storing code for components that you will likely need to use again? 38:33 - Thoughts on shadow dom / custom elements? Would you use them in your own projects? 40:49 - How do you organize CSS properties within a rule and why? Random, alphabetical, logical groupings, etc. 46:04 - Have u ever used the 2nd parameter of JSON.stringify for anything useful? 48:00 - Getting my first dev job at an actual software company a year ago opened my eyes to the vast difference between educational repos and the absolute jungle that can be enterprise code bases. I’ve also learned the importance of writing code that will be readable later - ensuring any hacky workaround is replaced with a pattern seen elsewhere in the code base, etc. My question is - are there resources on these sorts of topics for folks trying to break into the industry? A lot of tech topics revolve around how to get your code to run, which feels to me like only half the battle. Where can juniors find resources on robustness? Links https://github.com/jxnblk/mdx-deck https://mdsvex.com/ Spectacle MDsveX Vue.js Redux VueX Better Comments Kap Redwood.js Blitz.js GraphQL https://github.com/ryanmcdermott/clean-code-javascript ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Easy Snippet Wes: WOW Pool Noodles 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

26 Aug 202057min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes are back with another edition of Stump’d! where they try to stump each other with interview questions. 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 03:28 - What is the difference between HTML and React event handling? 05:55 - What are JavaScript data types? 07:00 - In which states can a Promise be? 07:48 - Discuss the differences between an HTML specification and a browser’s implementation thereof. 09:14 - What is a stateless component? 10:10 - What is a pure function? 10:51 - What is the output of the following code? const a = [1, 2, 3] const b = [1, 2, 3] const c = "1,2,3" console.log(a == c) console.log(a == b) 13:35 - What is memoization? 15:15 - How do you pass an argument to an event handler in React? 15:59 - What is HTML5 Web Storage? Explain localStorage and sessionStorage. Links 30 Seconds of Interviews 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

24 Aug 202019min

It’s another potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about React subscriptions, ES Modules in Node, how to cook a chicken thigh, being a good dad 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”. Stackbit - Sponsor Stackbit offers developers tools that enable things like inline content editing, live previewing of content changes, and collaboration features on your Jamstack site, without code changes. That’s why Stackbit is the best way to Jamstack. stackbit.com. Show Notes 02:11 - What are “subscriptions” in React, or in programming in general? The React docs mention that setting up a subscription is an example of a side effect, but what exactly is a subscription, and how do you set one up? 05:43 - Using the latest node esm imports, is it possible to use aliases? Using the old require() syntax I used the npm package module-alias (https://www.npmjs.com/package/module-alias), but I cannot seem to find a solution for node v14 imports. In a deeply nested file, I find the import ‘…/…/…/some/folder’ syntax to be awful compared to require(’@/some/folder’). 09:20 - I’ve been a full-time developer for over 10 years and my company has a fairly flat hierarchy. I want to take on more responsibility (and salary) but my company doesn’t have anything like a “lead developer” position. Any ideas for how to move up without switching companies? I know my boss would be receptive if I came to him with a pitch, but we work full stack so it feels like I’m already doing it all. 12:59 - In Wes’ website episode, he mentioned using Gatsby Parallels for images. Why not git LFS? 17:25 - For Wes: Any Big Green Egg tips for beginners? I just ordered a kamado style grill and I’d appreciate any tasty tips you’ve got. 22:45 - Inline code is considered harmful because of potential XSS attacks. Lighthouse recommends inlining critical CSS to improve page speed. What do you think about this tradeoff? 26:30 - What advice would both of you have for being a first-time father, and how can I best prepare? My wife is pregnant, and we are both very excited! I want to do the best I can at being a good father. Our baby is due in January. As both of you are fathers (multiple times), I would love to hear your thoughts. 32:58 - Are present web developers merely crud bastards for corporate culture? If not, What entrepreneurial opportunities are open with Javascript and hooking up React with backend Node/Laravel and reading the Google Map docs? Of course the list isn’t exhaustive but you get my point right? Note: I’m not interested in selling courses and creating frameworks. 37:08 - Do you have any use for ES6 Generators and yield? It seems that they are a mechanism for async-await “under the hood,” so using ‘async-await’ is probably sufficient. 39:10 - With a legacy project that has old build dependencies how do you decide when to retool and fix all the npm audit issues? 46:10 - In what instances do you prefer to use rem vs em vs pixels for font size? I usually think about it like so: if I’m okay with an element’s font size being sized based on the parent, then I’ll use em. If not, then I’ll use rem. I almost never use pixels anymore except sometimes on the html element. But even then, I usually use a percentage. In practice, I’ve found it a bit hard to gauge what to expect with ems because of nesting issues. So, I’ve mostly been leaning towards rem. Though I also understand that using rems can be less modular. How do you guys make the decision? 52:49 - Hello chaps. Thank you so much for the show, I’ve learned an awful lot through listening. I’ve been dabbling in development for some time now and have taken on a project for an Express site which aside from a few static pages will include a shop with a small number of items (

19 Aug 20201h 3min