
Hasty Treat - Picking the Stack for uses.tech - Gatsby, React, Context, Styled Components
In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about Wes’ new website, uses.tech — the stack he chose for building it, as well as what it does and how to use it! Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your errors, track them with Sentry. Sentry is open-source error tracking that helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real time. Cut your time on error resolution from five hours to five minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code “tastytreat”. Show Notes 2:23 - What is uses.tech? 5:33 - The stack 8:13 - Avatars 10:43 - Filtering 15:51 - Github actions 19:25 - Favicon 21:30 - Search 22:03 - Hosting Links uses.tech awesome-uses repo Gatsby React Gatsby Node API Clearbit API unavatar Now.sh webserv.nl country-emoji Andrew Luca joi Making setInterval Declarative with React Hooks Netlify Algolia 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 202024min

2020 Fitness
In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk about fitness — how to stay in shape as a developer, nutrition, goals, and more! DevLifts - Sponsor Refactor your body with DevLifts. They have a few different programs: 1) fit.Start (normally $19/month) has a few options (lean, bodyweight, and strong). Workouts are delivered via email each month, with access to a Slack community for questions and accountability. 2) Premium (normally $199/month) is a custom-tailored option, where you get your workouts and nutrition advice after answering a questionnaire. They also check in with you each week via Slack to see how it’s going and make changes if necessary. Get 50% off fit.Start plans with code SYNTAX and 50% off Premium with code TASTY. 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 4:42 - Past year reflections Scott Tried several different lifting Breaking didn’t happen as much, so my cardio took a hit I finally found a full body plan / bro split that has been very effective Weight belt has really helped my form Wes Overcommitted in 2019 Feeling great - physically Gained about 12 pounds past where I want to be - rough year! Noticeable loss in energy when I don’t hit the gym DevLifts since November Cardio / HIIT up 12:15 - What we’re doing now Scott 4 day split Chest/Triceps Back/biceps Shoulders Legs Abs every day Wes 3 days a week Set A - Chest and back Set B - Legs and chest Set C - Legs and back Cardio finisher (BLASTERS) At home helpers Kettle bells Foam roller 30:32 - Nutrition Scott Nothing too hardcore, salads for lunch - not religiously though Good dinners IF occasionally (e.g. not eating before 10 and not eating after dinner snacks) Desert items allowed Wes Macro Tracking - still want to enjoy things Low Carb High on veggies Brussel sprouts Green beans Salads Chickpeas Olives Still super into fermentation, crunchy + sour + fizzy + spicy No sweets either Beer is my downfall 41:04 - Supplements Scott Not doing anything right now other than high quality protein On meds for nerve damage Probiotic Fish Oil Psylluim husk Wes Megafood Men’s Once Daily Multivitamin - they are natural and organic, empty stomach Magnesium Fish Oil Lions Mane Ashwagandha Shilajit 53:49 - Year Looking Forward Scott New gym remodel going to help life Yoga once twice a week Breaking once a week Lifting every day Stretching every day VR Gaming (I burned 400 cals last night playing Super Hot) Goals to dead lift 350, weighted GHR, continue to progress at current rate Make cardio a thing Wes Lose a Few Pounds + Energy + consistency Kettle Bells in office Consistent Gym before life takes a dive Lock down macros Stretches Less beer HIIT Links HeavySet App Syntax 020: Fitness, Nutrition, and Losing Weight Syntax 084: Fitness for Developers Skinny Taste Recipes Daniel Tiger MegaFood Men’s One Daily Multivitamin Examine.com Caffeine App Superhot VR ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Fitness Blender Bob & Brad YouTube Channel Jeremy Ethier YouTube Channel Wes: TechBoss Torch Lighter Shameless Plugs Scott: Level Up Tutorials Pro - 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
15 Jan 20201h 5min

Hasty Treat - A Month On Firefox
In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about a month of using Firefox — what they liked, what they didn’t, and whether or not they’ll keep using it. 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 3:42 - Dev tools are really good 19:16 - Browsing experience 22:40 - Setup and switchover tips 26:45 - What we didn’t like 29:57 - Will we stay? Links Firefox Errors in Firefox Debugging messages in Firefox Harald Kirschner GraphQL 1Password WhatsApp Videostream for Chromecast 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 202032min

Pika Pkg
In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes talk with Fred Schott about Pika Pkg, a new kind of package registry for the modern web. 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. 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 3:24 - What is Pika? 9:40 - What about peer dependencies? 12:53 - What does migration look like? 17:30 - Are these tools making things easier? 21:25 - What is the Pika Registry? 34:48 - What is the Pika editor? 41:13 - Is it open source? 47:30 - What about security? Links Fred Schott @FredKSchott Pika @pikapkg Snowpack Pika Builders Babel Typescript Webpack CSZ Parcel Deno VSCode Entropic Homebrew Plex Synology NAS Luke Jackson Toolsday Podcast ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Fred: Idle Supermarket Scott: Theragun Wes: Emby Shameless Plugs Fred: Pika Scott: Level Up Tutorials Pro - 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
8 Jan 202056min

Hasty Treat - Modules in Node
In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about modules in Node — what are they, how they’re different from browser modules, 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”. Show Notes 3:06 - How were they done before? 5:11 - How do they work? 7:07 - How to use Modules in Node 9:57 - Gotchas 13:18 - What should you use? Links Node Node Modules Babel ESM Meteor Keystone MJS Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets
6 Jan 202018min

Potluck - Fonts × Frameworks × Teas × Coding Subscriptions × Client Work × More!
It’s another potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about fonts, frameworks vs custom, drinking tea, learning to code, client work, and more! Kyle Prinsloo Freelancing - Sponsor Kyle Prinsloo teaches you everything you need to know about freelancing, including how to quit your job, earn a side-income and start taking control of your life. Check it out at studywebdevelopment.com/freelancing. Use the coupon “SYNTAX” and get 25%. 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 2:01 - Q: When you run audits like lighthouse on a website, do you run the audit on each page? Or have you found an app or hack to run the audit over the entire site / multiple pages? 5:30 - Q: What makes a font “good”? I stumbled upon haleyfiege.fun/fonts, where she says her first font was not “good,” but it looks perfectly usable to me. When you are picking fonts for web apps, how do you judge them? Is it entirely subjective? 9:14 - Q: As a solo founder, speed is essential. What’s faster, building your own components, using a theme, or using a framework? 12:05 - Q: I’ve never been a tea drinker, but lately I’ve been wanting to start drinking a hot tea in the afternoon (instead of coffee). I know Scott is the Tea Guru, so what would your suggestions be for starting out? 15:30 - Q: Is it worth bundling JavaScript for websites that aren’t using a framework (i.e. WordPress / CMS websites)? The company I work for uses a large enterprise CMS and our JavaScript is just a minified mash of several different JS files, most of which are several hundred lines of spaghetti code. It would be nice to break up all these files in some sort of modular way, plus have the added benefit of using Babel so we can write modern JS. However, the output of the bundled JS file seems massive. Won’t that hurt performance and page load? 21:17 - Q: I know both of you put out a ton of content, both together and individually. I’m just curious to hear if you listen to any other podcasts out there in the land, or any other types of content that you consume to hone your skillz to pay the billz. Thanks! 25:14 - Q: What are your thoughts on Blazor? Is it a good move to be an early adopter of a framework like this, or should you focus on the ones that are already in a fully released state like React, Vue etc.? 28:51 - Q: I would like to ask Scott how you make subscriptions in a website? Also, how you give users a lifetime locked yearly subscription? 39:53 - Q: I feel like other developers’ code is always shorter, better structured, and easier to read than mine. Any tips (or resources) on writing clean, ‘good’ javascript code (or any other functional programming language)? 44:02 - Q: Both of you have CMS backgrounds, Scott with Drupal and Wes with WordPress. When you moved to freelancing, did you build for clients using a CMS? Or did you create custom admin interfaces for clients to manage their own site? You’ve mentioned some headless WordPress in the past, but was that the norm? 47:02 - Q: Hey Scott + Wes, you’re obviously very successful with your course creation careers, but do you miss client work? If people for some reason ever stopped buying your courses, would you go back to client work? Links Lighthouse Syntax203: Hasty Treat - What Are Github Actions? Lighthouse Batch NPM Package Lighthouse Action GitHub Action Next.js haleyfiege.fun/fonts Radnika Next Sipsby Babel Shop Talk Show CodePen Radio Heist Podcast Mixergy The Dream React Podcast Indie Hackers Akimbo Command Line Heroes Blazor Braintree Syntax055: Hasty Treat - User Role Systems Clean Code concepts adapted for JavaScript codecademy Javascript30 CakePHP Drupal WordPress ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Aerial America Wes: Streamer for Chromecast Shameless Plugs Scott: Level Up Tutorials Pro - 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
1 Jan 202057min

Hasty Treat - Wes Teaches Scott about Keystone.js
In this Hasty Treat, Wes teaches Scott about Keystone.js — best practices, things to avoid, why you should check it out, 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. Show Notes 3:10 - What is Keystone? 7:38 - How do you handle mutations? 14:26 - What’s the hosting situation like? 19:34 - Shortcomings 21:40 - Plugins Links KeystoneJS Prisma Hasura Next.js GraphQL Stripe API WordPress ThinkMail Drupal Redux Now MongoDB MongoDB Compass pm2 TypeScript Apollo Helpers GraphCool 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
30 Dec 201927min

2019 YEAR END Definitely Not a Clip Show
In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes do a 2019 year in review — the most popular Syntax episodes, what they learned, some personal updates, plans for next year, 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. 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 1:40 - Plans for 2020 Syntax Live March 2019 Plans for 2020 Twitter has done really well for @syntaxfm Community feels great 9:20 - Top 10 Syntax episodes of 2019 Syntax162: The Fundamentals - JS Syntax120: Gatsby vs Next Syntax158: The Fundamentals - HTML + CSS Syntax126: Bootcamps vs School vs Self-Learning Syntax138: What’s New in Web Development Syntax130: The VueJS Show (Scott teaches Wes) Syntax146: CSS the Cool Parts Syntax174: How to Build an API Syntax154: SVGs with Sara Soueidan Syntax106: A Look Forward to 2019 25:17 - Personal stuff Scott Brooklyn Tolinksi 2019 was really tough for me Level Up courses for 12 months Huge changes to my production values and office Huge changes to LUT codebase (React hooks, Typescript, Next.js, Mongoose) Wes New Baby in June / 3 months Paternity Leave Bought a cottage Hardest course to make was Beginner JS — it was a slog, hard to stay motivated at times, with 80 hours of recording alone Course Platform re-write (Next.js) 39:17 - Stuff we learned Scott Better speaker Lots of TypeScript Better debugging Hooks Svelte General improvement in JS writing and programming skills Wes Really good at Vanilla.js DOM API React Hooks Suspense Audio Visualization Shape Detection API - Faces, Barcodes, Text Headless CMS: Prismic, Sanity, WordPress GraphQL, Keystone.js, Hasura Very good understanding of the nitty gritty of JS (closures, objects, this, new keyword, classes, etc.) Links Reactathon freeCodeCamp Podcast CSS Houdini Syntax109: Hasty Treat - CSS Grid Level 2 aka Subgrid Syntax092: React Hooks Dev Mugs TypeScript Svelte Prismic Sanity WPGraphQL Keystone.js Hasura ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: The Dream Podcast Wes: Synology DiskStation DS918+ Shameless Plugs Scott: React & TypeScript For Everyone - 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
25 Dec 201957min