Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

It’s another Potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about freelancing, climbing the corporate ladder, Throttling vs debounce, how to build skills with your free time, 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. 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. Vonage - Sponsor Vonage is a Cloud Communications platform that allows developers to integrate voice, video and messaging into their applications using their communication APIs. Whether you’re wanting to build video calls into your app, create a Facebook bot, or build applications on top of programmable phone numbers, you’ll have all the tools you need. Use promo code SYNTAX10 for €10 of free credit when signing up at vonage.dev/syntax. Show Notes 02:11 - I’ve read that when you start out freelancing, you should look to your area first to gauge the market for both rates, and type of work that is in demand. If you wanted to work remotely as a freelancer, however, is that really applicable advice? Is it viable to work 100% remote and not be tied to “local rates”? How can I leverage my years of professional experience when starting to freelance? A lot of material online speaks to those who are learning web development for the first time. But what does someone do if they’ve been working at big companies, who can’t share their work directly? What can I do to help prospective clients appreciate those years of experience? 06:02 - In your opinion, what is the accepted norm for the size of a component? It could be anything from a single element to a full page of content, but what is the norm for component size or content? Love the show, keep up the good work. 09:42 - I’m a bit confused about throttling and debounce. What is the difference between them? I have been finding different examples which are not at all helpful. 12:58 - My question is about climbing the company hierarchy. I’ve had a hard time getting my first job after graduation. I have dealt with the unemployment office, useless recruiters, trying to look important for companies, and I wonder if a get a low wage job at a company and then apply for their IT department after some time if there is a open position. Is it bad practice or good strategy taking this shortcut? Would they know what I’m trying to accomplish? 18:25 - I’m getting started building websites and find the initial design to be a challenge. I always end up diving into the coding and then spending hours getting lost tweaking CSS. The mediocrity of the final design is a masked technical challenge, and I emerge at the other end of the effort with something I’m still not happy with. I suspect there is some kind of mock up stage I’m forgoing, and I bet there are some tools to make it easier. I imagine that some kind of application that really focused me on the design and made it easy to tweak and tinker quickly would be ideal. Thoughts? What do you use? 23:34 - The company I work for works with a SOAP API. Currently I am developing a application in React but I am wondering whether it’s better to use the SOAP API or let them create a Rest API. Some people on the internet say that JS and SOAP combinations are not done. Is there some advice you can give me about this? 28:28 - Why are radio buttons called radio buttons? 30:49 - I am midway through a post-baccalaureate in computer science. I recently quit my job to focus on my second degree. Now I’m looking to spend my “extra time” on an area of focus that can hit as many of the following criteria as possible: Could make me money now Help me to hit the ground running when I graduate Get me a job easily Make me all kinds of cash Thoughts? 35:56 - What is your opinion on a Rust GraphQL server for web backend? Do you think it is better than Node.js? (not part of a question, just a comment: I found you yesterday and dude I have to say, you are legendary… I am 13 right now and also started web development when I was 12. I have been looking for a good web-development related podcast for about four months now. Looks like I found the one I needed ;) ) 39:57 - How would you go about introducing React into an existing big website with lots of legacy code and a template-based CMS behind? I can’t do a full rewrite but I would love to start turning little bits & pieces into a single-page-experience (e.g. checkout) to slowly modernize the site. The frontend is already TypeScript & SCSS but it’s an old self-made framework and the content coming from the CMS is mostly put into data-attributes or right into the HTML. I don’t really have an API for most of the content. How would React hook into the existing DOM in different places, loading data from the templates and potentially writing it back into the templates as well? 45:31 - What’s the best way to be able to host personal projects (frontend + backend) for free on the web? I would like something where I can SSH into to install for example Node.js and a database. I already bought a domain, but I don’t want to pay for some premium plan for now since I’m short on money and it’s for personal projects anyway. Links https://type-scale.com https://www.leveluptutorials.com/tutorials/modern-css-design-systems https://www.npmjs.com/package/soap Vercel Glitch Codepen Code Sandbox PM2 ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Wyze Sprinkler Controller Wes: Retevis Shameless Plugs Scott: 1: Become a Level Up Tutorials Author 2: Github Actions with Brian Douglas - 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

12 Maj 202159min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about technical debt — what it is, why does it occur, and some techniques for reducing and avoiding it. 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. Show Notes 03:17 - What is technical debt Outdated or hard to update code If you groan when you have to work on it, it might be a sign of technical debt Brittle code, easily breakable Quirks and features 06:55 - Why does it occur Over time, any garden left un-pruned will become overgrown Many people, many code styles Using hot new frameworks / techniques This is why seasoned developers don’t jump on new things You allow users to do literally anything 13:18 - Techniques for avoiding it Deny your FOMO of new things Abstract Write good tests Don’t put off refactors Update dependencies frequently Good standards Etsy has thousands of devs 20:08 - Examples in the real world Airline websites open in new windows all the time Cellphone carrier flashes the screen 100x 22:15 - Unfixable technical debt Agency work sometimes Links Next React Router TailwindCSS Redux Etsy Dave Ramsey 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

10 Maj 202128min

It’s another Potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about blogging best practices, support IE11, Nest.js, mobile website testing, pirated course content, building .edu websites, transitioning to full-time freelance work, 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 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. 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 02:20 - I am adding a blog to my custom written personal website and I wanted to know if there is any best practices for storing blog posts? My hope is to write them in markdown, host them somewhere and then automatically feed them into my website so they are all formatted to the style of my website. 05:37 - Do you care if people share cool, unique tips from your courses publicly on social media? For example, I once shared out a trick from one of Wes’ courses for how to set your VS Code windows different colors to distinguish your server and client code windows (giving all credit to Wes’ course for the concept). But it felt a little weird that I was sharing out a portion of his paid content for free. Is that okay? Where’s the line? 18:18 - With official support of IE11 coming to an end on August 17, 2021, do you think developers should still try to support ir or focus only on new modern browsers? Also, will there be a new “lowest common denominator” that we should be aware of and support? 07:20 - Thanks for an awesome podcast! Have you looked into Nest.js (not to be confused with Next.js) for backend work? It is an open source TypeScript Node framework that is becoming pretty popular 22:48 - Do you think it’s worth learning WordPress for freelancing if you aren’t too confident in your JavaScript front-end design? Also, I don’t want to get stuck in only WordPress land just because of the money. 30:11 - Hi guys, I have been listening to you guys for a while and just recently launched my first website! Your podcast has been a huge help in terms of getting started. For the website I made, I tested the iPhone view on Chrome dev tools and everything looked fine. However, when viewing the website on an actual iPhone, the button is too small and the word “Menu” turns into “Men”. Any advice on how to more accurately test sites on mobile devices without pushing to a production branch? 36:52 - Do you guys ever see your premium courses pirated on sites like Udemy, Skillshare, any of the other video course platforms? Meaning somebody downloaded your videos and uploaded them as if they were the creator. Any tips to protect against this? 39:53 - Looking at uses.tech and thinking, I see a lot of class names with almost the same style, gKxjCc and hSiXhL. I really want to know the science behind generating those. Do you have a shared classes that some magic tool transfers them into ugly names and copies over? What is that tool? And is it worth it? 42:57 - Have you ever developed a .edu site? If so, what did you use to manage the enormous archives in addition to giving the site a simple page builder for departments to contribute with little or no interaction from the developer? No Joomla or Drupal please - been there. Thanks for the great help guys! 50:35 - Hi Wes & Scott, thank you so much for giving me my weekly motivation boost to try out new stuff. Currently, I am experimenting with Next.js and SSG and I would like to know how I can generate a page at build time but only show it to an authorized user. I know I could use SSR with getServerSideProps to check allowance, however, the page is completely static without any dynamic content and I don’t want to regenerate it with every request. Is there a way to achieve this? Keep up the great work. 54:59 - I love the show guys! I want to make the transition into full-time freelancing and wanted to know what you think about having a talk with my current employer to see if they’d be willing to take me from full-time to a contract/freelance basis. Bad idea? Thoughts? Advice? Links Fastify RedwoodJS Keystone.js 10up Vite Safari + Dev tools Browsersync localtunnel ngrok Xcode simulator Mike Birbiglia Brian Douglas YouTube Channel ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: 3 in 1 Multi USB Charging Cable Wes: Milk Frother Shameless Plugs Scott: 1: Become a Level Up Tutorials Author 2: Github Actions with Brian Douglas - 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

5 Maj 20211h 6min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about future tech — some things you may not have heard about yet, and why we’re excited about them! 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. 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 05:20 - Astro What it is: astro.build is a next gen “meta” framework that eases some of React’s pain but also is not just React. https://twitter.com/georges_gomes/status/1380801812656226304 Why we’re excited about it: Server Side JS frameworks, combine Svelte, React, Vue as needed in one component that is an SFC using markdown style meta data. Scoped CSS by default (a la Svelte). Sass out of the box. Collections import for .md files // pages/blog.astro --- import PostPreview from '../components/PostPreview.astro'; const blogPosts = import.meta.collections('./post/*.md'); --- Blog Posts {blogPosts.map((post) => ( )} 12:06 - ViteKit What it is: Framework-agnostic API routes Pages (frontend, optional hydration) Adapter for Node, static, Vercel, cf worker, etc. Inspired by SvelteKit. 15:58 - Svelte Kit What it is: https://kit.svelte.dev/docs https://svelte.dev/blog/sveltekit-beta New framework for building Svelte apps 19:07 - Remix.run What it is: Remix.run Fullstack React framework Why we’re excited about it: Made by Michael Jackson, Ryan Florence License-based React-based Caching-focused, uses “the platform” Centralized data loading, works without client JS if needed Better nested routing Links Sapper Vite Snowpack 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 Maj 202128min

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes continue their discussion of TypeScript Fundamentals with a deeper diver into more advanced use cases. Deque - Sponsor Deque’s axe DevTools makes accessibility testing easy and doesn’t require special expertise. Find and fix issues while you code. Get started with a free trial of axe DevTools Pro at deque.com/syntax. No credit card needed. 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. 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 Deep end stuff 03:30 - any vs unknown 06:20 - never https://twitter.com/Igorbdsq/status/1351681019196436482 09:14 - .d.ts Definition files Usually for existing libraries that don’t have types Can be generated or hand-written Also really handy for pure JS projects, you still get good autocomplete because of these 13:25 - Type generation Can be generated from GraphQL, or Schemas, or from JSON Output 17:20 - TypeScript generics (variables) Kind of like functions, they return something different based on what you pass it makeFood makeFood This function makes food and shares lots of the same functionality between making a pizza and sandwich If the only thing that differs is the type returned, we can use generics You often see this as a single char T It can be anything Promise is a generic querySelector uses generics 21:48 - Promises / Async + Await Functions now return a Promise type, but with a generic Promise Promise Promise, Request, Request stringified added headers 29:48 - Type assertion (type casting) Type assertion is when you want to tell TypeScript “Hey I know better than you”. Two ways: as keyword (most popular) someValue as HTMLParagraphElement Tagged before someValue 34:14 - TypeScript without TypeScript (JSDoc / TSDoc) Really nice! You can also add comments / descriptions https://github.com/developit/redaxios/blob/master/src/index.js 40:08 - Interfaces vs Types Interfaces have better perf https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1362418379919937545 https://blog.logrocket.com/types-vs-interfaces-in-typescript/ What do you default to? How we write TypeScript 44:27 - Interface or Types Scott - Types Wes - Interfaces 44:50 - any vs unknown Scott - any Wes - unknown / any 46:52 - Any (No Implicit or Implicit Allowed) Scott - No implicit any Wes - No implicit any 48:31 - Return types (Implicit or Explicit) Scott - Explicit always Wes - Not always 50:49 - Compile (TSC, Strip TS) Scott - Strip Wes - Both 52:38 - Type Assertion (as or ) Scott - as Wes - as 53:09 - Arrays (Dog[] or Array) Scott - Dog[] Wes - Dog[] 54:02 - Assert or Generic (if both work) querySelector(’.thing’) as HTMLVideoElement; or querySelector(’.thing’); Scott - querySelector(’.thing’); Wes - querySelector(’.thing’); Links Syntax 324: TypeScript Fundamentals Syntax 327: Hasty Treat - TypeScript Compilers and Build Tools Axios VS Code Syntax 310: Serverless, Deno and TypeScript with Brian Leroux Cloudinary Notion ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Powerowl 16 Battery Recharger Wes: Fairywill Pro P11 Shameless Plugs Scott: Level 2 Node Authentication - Sign up for the year and save 25%! Wes: Beginner Javascript - 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

28 Apr 20211h 9min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about Git Rebase — what it is and how and when to use it! 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 05:12 - Why and when to rebase? git rebase -i is interactive Rebase allows you to rewind your current branch, apply the changes of another branch to it, and then on top of that, apply your new commits. Common uses: Squash all commits into one or multiple commits Reword commits These lines can be re-ordered — they are executed from top to bottom. p, pick = use commit r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit f, fixup = like “squash”, but discard this commit’s log message x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell b, break = stop here (continue rebase later with ‘git rebase --continue’) d, drop = remove commit l, label = label current HEAD with a name t, reset = reset HEAD to a label m, merge [-C | -c ] [# ] Links Git Rebasing 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 Apr 202116min

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk about selling and shipping t-shirts, and how to do it all in TypeScript! 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. Deque - Sponsor Deque’s axe DevTools makes accessibility testing easy and doesn’t require special expertise. Find and fix issues while you code. Get started with a free trial of axe DevTools Pro at deque.com/syntax. No credit card needed. Show Notes 01:58 - T-Shirts 101 T-Shirts are cool I sold 100 right away to get the kinks out Then I did pre-order The stack TypeScript React Next.js 09:08 - Selling: Front-end Snipcart It’s a button When Someone buys, they scrape the site for the HTML If you only have a client-side rendered button, you use the JSON API instead Integrated into Gatsby pretty easily Wrote one custom hook to count inventory and disable when sold out I thought Snipcart would be enough, but I soon realized it wasn’t. I needed something to fulfill the shipment. 10:10 - Selling: Shipping Quotes Snipcart has integration for USPS, etc. You can also do custom shippers It’s a webhook They also take care of customs declaration 13:30 - Selling: Backend Next.js Dashboard Integrate with ChitChats, Stallion Express, and SnipCart. The tech Shipping Labels Packing slip 18:05 - Fulfilling Printing labels Designed with CSS + React Print CSS is wild Fan Fold labels were way better I switched to Stallion Express Cheaper Printing packing slips Batch scanning Scanning → Mark as shipped Started with webcam Bought scanner for cheap QR code was better because my tokens were long Data matrix is often better Sending notifications Hit the endpoint via Snipcart 28:48 - The physical part T-Shirts printed from local supplier U-Haul to get them here Bags printed in China (about 40 cents each) I wrote a bunch of code to organize by size This cut down on moving around (14 hours if you save 30 seconds per shirt) Some got stickers Multiples were the hardest 24 different types of shirts some wanted 4xl some wanted tall 36:30 - Common questions Why did you do this yourself? Fun project I learned a ton This is how you don’t burn out Why not print-on-demand? (DTG) Tonal Embroidery Quality Money Pay people in my community Control Bags, stickers, etc… stickermule Why not $companyThatHandlesIt I want to do stickers I want to do decks Why not Shopify Large orders still need major fulfillment strategies Code has to be written or money spent 44:16 - Other lessons learned Queues would be good here Sometimes you had to wait 3+ seconds for the confirmation of shipping No one reads, it was pre-order Don’t buy shipping right away — people email about incorrect addresses Over-order by a few each (out of 1550 orders, five got partial refunds and three got full refunds) Pre-order is great because you can offer many sizes Async JS to do things at most 50 at a time Links Wyze Plug ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Pixeleyes AutoMounter Wes: Baratza Encore Conical Burr Coffee Grinder Shameless Plugs Scott: Level 2 Node Authentication - 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

21 Apr 202156min

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about CSS container queries, what they are and how to use them. 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 07:22 - Why? Container queries are media queries for components (e.g. they are based on the element’s size, not the browser). This is in line with how we write components. It will change the way we write CSS. 08:49 - The Syntax Containers need to be defined as containers via containment context .container { contain: size layout; } New contain value: .inline-container { contain: inline-size; } This is the same as the logical properties. Assuming you read LTR, or RTL: size - width and height inline-size = width block-size = height /* @container { } */ @container (inline-size > 45em) { .media-object { grid-template: "img content" auto / auto 1fr; } } 18:49 - How to try them today Download and/or update Chrome Canary Go to chrome://flags Search and enable “CSS Container Queries” Restart the browser 19:27 - Demos Need Chrome Canary + Flag https://codepen.io/collection/XQrgJo https://codepen.io/una/pen/LYbvKpK?editors=1100 Links Miriam Suzanne Susy Miriam’s CSS Sandbox https://css.oddbird.net/rwd/query/explainer/ Canary @addyosmani The CSS Podcast @jon_neal 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

19 Apr 202124min