On today's episode of My JS Story, Charles Max Wood welcomes Mikeal Rogers. Mikeal is the creator of NodeConf and request, community organizer at Node.js Foundation, and a co-host of RFC podcast. Tune in to My JS Story Mikeal Rogers to learn more about how he started in programming and what he is currently up to.

JSJ 267 Node 8 with Mikeal Rogers, Arunesh Chandra, and Anna Henningsen

On today’s episode of JavaScript Jabber we have panelists Joe Eames, AJ O’Neil, Amiee Knight and Charles Max Wood and we are talking about Node 8. To help us we have special guests Mikeal Rodgers, Arunesh Chandra, and Anna Henningsen. It’s going to be a great show. Tune in.

[1:56] Is Node 8 just an update or is there more?

• More than just an update
• Two main points:
• Improved Prana support
• Native API
• Native APIs are helpful for Native Add-ons. For both the consumer and the developer side.
• Prior to update these Node Native modules ran in C++ and bound to specific to Node 8 APIs.
• Causes these modules to be updated or reconciled every time these modules are rereleased.
• Creates burden for module maintainers.
• Creates friction in upgrading Node versions in production departments.
• If you have a deployment depending on a certain Native module, some of the modules may not get updated in time when updating your Node versions. Keeping people from updating Node.
• Creates compatibility issues with Node users not using Node 8
• Experimental support for a Native layer in Node 8 to eliminate these issues as much as possible.
• Important milestone for the module ecosystem.
• You can write extensions for Node in C++ and it decouples V8 so you can use something else on the front.
• Modules takes dependency on V8 API specific to a particular version. So if V8 changes your module will be extracted from that.
• As a side benefit, you can have another VM to take advantage of that.
• Major version upgrades mean updating Native modules and usually some of those modules haven’t updated to the newest version of Node and be complicated.
• Deep dependency wise, about 30% depends on a Native module somewhere
• In the future, with the Native API, you’ll be able to update Node without breaking modules.

[5:51] What kind of work went into this?

• Most of the work was in C++
• First thing that was done was, they looked at the top dependent Native modules in the ecosystem.
• Looked for what kind of V8 exposure they had and cataloged it
• Looked at how these APIs and what their purposes were
• Looked for a way to extract them so that they are part of Node Core
• Created neutral APIs, now part of the Node core.
• All C APIs
• Also has a C++ wrapper to improves usability of the API.

[7:17] What’s an example of what you can do with these APIs?

• Native modules allows for tighter integration and better module performance
• Specific APIs that you can use in V8 that isn’t available through JavaScript
• If you have a C++ variable code and you want to expose a variable into JavaScript, that is V8 API note a Node 8 API
• Having it bound directly to the VM was something they wanted for a long time
• Google controls V8 and they bind to V8
• Created a better relationship with Google starting in IOJS
• Also worked with Microsoft with their Node Shocker work.
• Same with SpiderMonkey
• SpiderNode is in the works

[9:23] Have you guys done any testing for performance?

• Some. There is a performance working group.
• There is a need to stay on top of V8
• V8 team has focused on new language features
• Many features have been added over the years
• Many didn’t come in optimized
• The performance profile has changed with these features
• If you’re using new language features, you will see a performance boost
• In core, still tracking down code that was specific to the old optimizer and rewriting i to work the new optimizer
• Turbo C compiler hasn’t landed yet, but is to come.
• Will have a completely different performance profile
• In most real world applications it will be faster
• Waiting on the release to take a version of V8 to make it easier to upgrade features in the future

[11:28] Are the new features picked up from V8 or implemented in Node?

• It’s all in V8
• Better longterm support
• Promises are made better in Node as a platform
• Added new method called util.promisify()
• Implementation comes from V8
• Allows for more optimization for promises in Node core
• Promise support for the one-deprecated domains module.

[13:02] Is there anything more than NMP 5?

• First off, delete your NMP cache.
• It’s in your home directory usually with a .npm extension

[14:09] What are the new features in V8?

• Unlimited heap sizes, previously had a 4gb limit. No fixed limit.

[14:09] Will you see things like chakra come out tuned for servers?

• Profiles of a server for application process are getting smaller
• Getting cut into containers and VMs and micro services
• Vms that have cold boot time and run quickly in a strained environment is looking more like what we will see in the future
• Yes, especially if you’re using cloud functions
• V8 is optimized for phones, but Chakra is even more so
• Looking for opportunities for VMs can be solely optimized for a device target
• Node take advantage of that VM
• VM neutrality is an interesting concept
• VM Vendors trying to optimize it based on workloads of a server
• Opens opportunities for Node
• Node Chakra has been proved to iOS. You can cut off jitting off which was a requirement to be able to be in the Apple App Store
• Node is not just for servers anymore
• Node doesn’t take a long time configuring it
• When a developer runs code on an IoT or a mobile app they don’t control the VM that is bundled, they run it on top of Node and it just works.
• VM neutrality gives a new vector, so you can swam a whole different VM

[18:44] When running different engines like iOS vs Android, does the profile change?

• What it comes down to is if it’s eventive programming
• The browser is an eventive environment, is very efficient waiting for things to happen before it does something
• The way that we program servers and nodes are the same as well
• the basics are the same generally
• environmental differences exist but the programming model is usually the same
• What does impact it is memory and processor and hardware and things like that
• That is where tuning the VM comes into play

[20:29] What is the new Async Hooks API used for?

• Node has been lacking for automated inspection of Async Hook
• No way for Node to tell you when scheduling and beginning of an Async operation. Hook helps with that
• it’s a way for developers to write debugging features
• Node tells the application that it’s working with Asynchronous way.
• The embedded inspector has been embedded since Node 6
• Now has a JavaScript API to use it
• You can use things like Chrome debugger inside the running node process
• Old debugging protocol has been removed
• VM.run is still there but in the process of being deprecated

[22:34] How like is the experimental Node API will change?

• Marked as experimental because it’s the first time in the open
• Hopefully out of experimental soon
• Soon can port API to the existing LTS
• Looking for more people to participate with the new API and give feedback
• Fix any concerns before it goes to LTS
• Some other experimental things are in the works like ASync Hooks and how it interacts with promises
• Renaming some features
• Another new feature - serializer and deserializer that comes with V8
• experimental but will most likely stay

[25:31] what is your standard for going to LTS?

• Major releases every 6 months
• Next Oct Node 9 will come out and then Node 8 will be LTS
• Documentation, updates, additions etc will be ready then
• Plan to do it for 2.5 years
• Every even releases come out to LTS as the odd release comes out
• Helps keeps a current line while having something new in the release line
• Node 6 is the current LTS version

[27:26] What are you taking out or deprecating in Node 8?

• Use the word deprecate sparingly
• If many people use features, it’s hard to get rid of
• Security issue with Buffer, constructor argument was ambiguous
• Had added APIs that were more explicit over time and pushed those
• Now it will be deprecated

[28:43] 21% - 33% Performance increase with some Node updates

• Someone online updated their React app to Node 8 and found an 21% - 33% increase
• Benchmarking group tests to make sure things are getting faster
• V8 is always getting faster as well
• Code changes fast and so there is a chance performance slows down so they have people to check
• Benchmark test are all automated by a team

[30:47] Is it safe to just switch to Node 8?

• For front-end, yes
• clear your NPM cache
• Back use cases will usually wait until LTS

[31:28] Where any of the features hard to implement?

• The API work took about a year
• It was a collaboration which made it interesting
• IBM, Intel, Google were involved
• The collaboration took a while
• Also Async hooks took at least a year.
• Async hooks used to be called async wraps and has been in the work for almost 3 years
• many of the changes were the accumulation of small chances

[33:07] It’s the little things

• Letting people get small changes in accumulate into a big difference
• the product gets much better that way

[33:57] What versions of Node are you actively updating?

• Current releases of Node 8 for a half of year
• Node 6 is LTS
• Additional year of maintenance of previous LTSs.
• Schedule is at http://github.com/node8js/lts in a chart
• Support for Node 4 with only critical updates, Node 6 minor updates, and Node 8
• Node 7 doesn’t get much support unless it’s vital security supports.
• If you’re running 0.10 or 0.12 stop. Those do not get security fixes anymore

[35:42] Where do you see things going from here?

• Mostly still working out Async hooks
• Maybe add some web worker or worker support for Node JS
• ES module support
• Working to make promises better
• Working on the performance profile and internal systems

[20:29] What is the adoption like of Node 8?

• Node team gets better at getting people to adopt quickly
• but about 5% - 6% will not upgrade
• community doubles each year at 8 million users right now
• Here is a graph on Twitter posted by NPM
• Limiting breaks and softly deprecating things makes it’s easier to upgrade

[40:11] How can people contribute and get involved?

• NodeToDo.org shows how to make contribution
• Occasionally major conferences have information on how to contribute
• Test it out and help make it stronger

[42:08] If people install Node 8 and have issues what can they do?

• If it’s an NPM problem check with them
• clear cache!
• install newest version with: npm install -g npm@latest
• Report problems to either NPM or Node
• If you’re not sure where the problem is, check github.com/nodejs/help

Links

Node8 Node’s Twitter Node’s Medium Node Evangelism Group

Mikael on Twitter and GitHub Arunesh on Twitter Anna on Twitter

Picks

AJ

Overclocked Remix Super Mario RPG Window to The Stars

Amiee

Blogpost RisingStack on Node 8
2 Frugal Dudes

Charles

Homeland
House of Cards

Joe

Shimmer Lake

Mikael

Blake2b-wasm

Aremesh

Current Nightly News

MJS 029: Matt Creager

On this episode, we have another My JavaScript Story, our guest is Matt Creager. Matt works for Manifold. He's here with us today to tell us his story. Stay tuned!

[01:00] – Introduction to Matt Creager

Matt works for an interesting company called Manifold. They sponsored the show.

[01:35] – How did you get into programming?

Before Matt fell in love with programming, he was in love with technology. They bought his first computer. It was a Gateway 2000 and he got access to the internet around the same time. He spent all of his time on that computer because they were moving around so much. That became the way that he stayed in touch with people. He remembers taking it apart and formatting the hard drive accidentally.

His uncle has been in the IT industry since he was a kid too. Matt was always associating him with spending time with his computer programming, a role model, and stabilizer in his life. He was switching tapes. And then, his cousin decided that he was going to start scripting his character’s actions in a game that they were playing. And now, looking back, it was some combination of Lua and C++. He started taking his cousin’s scripts apart to automate his own character in the game. He was 13 or 14.

The first programming book that he bought was a result of not being able to figure out how to get his character what it wants to do. It was one of the C++ bibles. And then, he became active in the forums around the scripting language. He was sharing the scripts and he started to realize that he can harvest stuff in the game and sell it for real cash.

Matt never considered himself technical and never considered programming a career. He was just translating CPU and RAM for people who were shopping for computers. And then, he wanted people to measure theirs so he built tools that took the data they had in an office and turn them into reports. When the manager started using that, it became a nationwide program and suddenly, he was on the map. He was leading a team.

When Blackberry started a technical interview, he realized that he has the answers to these questions. Initially, he was just a Technical Issues Manager. He had a Data Science team and that team was responsible for identifying and prioritizing issues. They were using Node 0.4, very early version of Node. And then, he discovered Angular and dived head first to the Angular community.

[13:10] – BlackBerry got Matt to JavaScript

Matt looked at Node because he was trying to figure out how he could do real time analytics. He wanted these dashboards that data scientists are looking at. That was the stepping stone into JavaScript.

[15:30] – Hackathon

On the side, a couple of local companies started to run hackathons. Matt was going to hackathons all the time. Then, he ended up of hopping from BlackBerry to becoming a full time front-end developer at a start-up.

Matt was talking with one of the organizers at LA Hacks. She was telling him that the reason why people are going to these hackathons is because they want to win and they want to put that fact on their resumes. In his day, that was not hackathons were like. The prizes can act as a negative incentive. They really work hard for the prizes. Sometimes they actually end up becoming more creative as a result because they know they need to use this specific combination of API’s.

[18:45] – Contributions to JavaScript community

When Matt joined GoInstant, it was very early days of RTC. Web sockets are new at that point. You’re probably more familiar with Firebase. In the early days, GoInstant and Firebase are competing for the same developers. They’re working on the same problems. The tools that they are building were real time synchronization between the state you have on the client and the state you have on the server. A lot of those that they build, open-source tools, they went with GoInstant to Salesforce. But they inspired the libraries and a lot of it is probably on the same code base that you now see in libraries that pretty much does the same things with Firebase.

And then, most recently, Matt and the team built Torus. They realized that if they are going to be building smaller applications, going to start to use more cloud services, more services tailored towards developers, and going to manage a lot more credential, a lot of credentials that need to be secured and shared with the teammates, they needed to take those credentials and put them on applications wherever they are running, whether that’s a Docker container or Heroku. That’s his most recent open-source project.

[20:50] – What are you working on now?

Manifold is their latest project. They’re trying to build a market place for developer services. It’s been 3 months. They moved from Torus to building Manifold earlier this year. The official launch hasn’t happened yet. That’s hopefully to come earlier this year – September. If it’s something that you want to try out and experiment with, there is a coupon for My JS. Give it a try before they launch a $25 credit that they can use to provision a logging instance, monitoring, or database. You can use it with any type of services that you might need to build your app.

Picks

Matt Creager

• OpenCollective.com
• Scaphold GraphQL
• Elixir
• Manifold.co
• Twitter, Github: @matt_creager

Charles Max Wood

• AWS Lambda
• Zapier
• Heroku
• Udemy course for Ionic Framework

Panel:

Amiee Knight

Charles Max Wood

Joe Eames

Special Guests: 

Matthew Creager and Peter Cho

In this episode, JavaScript Jabbers speak with Matthew Ceager and Peter Cho. Matthew and Peter are part of the team at Manifold. Manifold is a marketplace for developer services. Matthew takes care of growth and relations, and Peter oversee products at Manifold.

The panel discusses with Peter and Matthew what Manifold does and the benefits of a Cloud Service. Matthew gives perspective on how developers can get their cloud product on the market compared to open source.  Further discussion goes into how this will help the developer to get their products or services turned into a business quicker and save time  Also learn about when it is the ideal time to move to cloud services vs. running a server yourself.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Different kinds of definition of Cloud Services
• Anything you would rely on as a third party service
• What is the cloud service ecosystem - Services that connect to an application
• Independent market place -  because it is difficult to turn a product into a business
• Where are people using cloud services or running their own server
• Spinning up a version of it is easier.
• Time verses doing it yourself?
• Experts running the services
• Focusing on your product instead of managing the server and such
• Where does the data live and who has access to that?
• Lock In’s?
• Tourist - Credentials management
• How do I get this setup? Command Line or register online
• And much more!

Links:

Manifold

https://github.com/mattcreager

@manifoldco

@etcpeter

@matt_creager

blog.manifold.com

Picks:

Amiee

• Ryan McDermott

Charles

• GitLab 
• AdminLTE

Joe

• What You Can’t Say

Matt

• Star Trek
• Puppeteer

Peter

• Player Unknown Battle Ground 
• Sourdough   by Robin Sloan

Panel:

Amiee Knight

Charles Max Wood

Special Guests: 

Kye Hohenberger

In this episode, JavaScript Jabbers speak with Kye Hohenberger. Kye is a developer and co-founder of Side Way. One of Kye’s most notable works and library is Emotion, a CSS and JS library.

Kye talks about what CSS and JS library is about in the context of the Emotion library system. Kye discusses why this is practical for the writing process, in comparison to other types of tools that do similar jobs. Kye explains the how this tool reduces the number of lines of code and is compact and clearer.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• What is a CSS and JS library?
• Controlling CSS with JS, what does this solve?
• Style bugs
• What kind of styling are you using vs. complex styles?
• Media query
• A more declarative style
• Using Sass
• Where do you see people using this?
• Class names and you can apply to anything
• How Emotion works!
• Style tags
• Object styles
• What are some of the problems you are solving
• React Emotion - dynamic styles
• How does this compare to other style components?
• Glamor Styles
• How do you test something like this?
• Just Glamor React with Emotion
• Can people use the Babel plugin
• Pure flag and function calls
• And much more!

Links:

• Emotion.sh
• Emotion-js/emotion
• emotion.now.sh
• @TKH44

Picks:

Amiee

• Article on Medium
• Antibiotics and Steroids
• RX Bars 

Charles

• Disney Emoji Blitz 
• How To Get A Job  -  JavaScriptJabber.com

Kye

• Styled System
• Face Paint
• Aussie Bites 

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Cory House

Joe Eames

Aimee Knight

Special Guests: Azat Mardan

In this episode, JavaScript Jabber panelist speak with Azat Mardan. Azat is a return guest, previously on JSJ Episode 230. Azat is an author of 14 books on Node JS, JavaScript, and React JS. Azat works at Capital One on the technology team. Azat is the founder and creator of Node University.

Azat is on the show to talk about changes in React and licensing. Some of the topics cover Facebook,  licensing with React, using the wrong version of React, patent wars, and much more in-depth information on current events in React.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Facebook - Licensing with React
• Using the Wrong version of React in some companies
• BSD licensing
• Patent wars
• Facebook developing React
• Difference in Preact and Inferno
• Rewriting applications
• What did Capital One do about the changes?
• React 16
• Pure React
• Was the BSD patents - Med and Sm Companies
• Patents explained
• React Developers at Facebook
• Fiber - New Core Architecture
• And much more!

Links:

• http://azat.co
• https://node.university
• https://devchat.tv/js-jabber/230-jsj-node-at-capital-one-with-azat-mardan

Picks:

Cory

• Axel Rauschmayer post
• Prettier

Charles

• Indiegogo for Dev Chat
• forum.devchat.tv

Aimee

• Dev Tees
• Hacker News - Question on Stack Exchange and Estimates 

Joe

• Heroku 
• El Camino Christmas

Azat

• PMP 
• Azat - Short Lecture

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Aimee Knight

Cory House

AJ O'Neal

Joe Eames

Aaron Frost

Special Guests: Dave Geddes

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists talk with Dave Geddes about CSS Grids. Dave quit his job about a year ago and has been living the entrepreneur and programmer life since then. Now, he builds mastery games to help people learn CSS. Dave discusses the differences between Flexbox and CSS Grid and how the games that he creates can help people learn CSS Grid in a fun and interactive way.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• CSS Mastery games
• FlexboxZombies.com
• GridCritters.com
• Uses spaced repetition and delayed recall to learn
• CSS Grid
• Flexbox
• CSS Grid as the cake and Flexbox as the frosting
• Edge spec
• What Flexbox can do
• Sub-Grids
• Geddski.com
• Nesting Grids
• Old Grid vs New Grid layout
• Why would you move from Flexbox to CSS Grid?
• CSS Grid tools
• GridByExample.com
• Education and Gamification
• Pick a UI that interests you
• For a discount on Grid Critters: enter JS Jabber for 20% off
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Linode
• FlexboxZombies.com
• GridCritters.com
• Geddski.com
• GridByExample.com
• FreshBooks
• @Geddski

Picks:

Charles

• R Pods Earphones

Aimee

• NEU Cleanse
• “At Age 6, Girls Are Less Likely to Identify Females As ‘Really, Really Smart’”

Cory

• Cory Tweet

AJ

• How to Start a Startup
• Made in America by Sam Walton

Joe

• The Dungeoneers by John David Anderson
• NG Conf

Aaron

• Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff

Dave

• They Are Billions

Panel: 

Charles Max Wood

Aimee Knight

Corey House

AJ O'Neal

Special Guests: Ben Coe, Aaron Abramov, and Issac Schleuter

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists talk with Ben Coe, Aaron Abramov, and Issac Schleuter about test coverage and testing tools. They talk about the different tools and libraries that they have contributed to the coding community, such as NYC, conf, and Jest. They also discuss what test coverage is actually about and when using test coverage tools is necessary.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• What have you contributed to the testing tools community?
• npm
• NYC tool and instanbul project
• conf
• Jest
• These libraries were developed to be easy and have “batteries included”
• False positives with test coverage
• Encourage testing practices that don’t practice in a superficial way
• Test coverage is about making sure you test every state a public API can get into
• Think through the test you’re writing first
• Barriers against testing
• Don’t spike the code too quickly
• Provides guardrails for newer developers to contribute to open source projects
• Use tests to understand the system
• How to spend your time better
• When you need tests
• Value is very short term
• TDD
• And much, much more!

Links:

• @BenjaminCoe
• @AaronAbramov_
• Issac’s GitHub

Picks:

Charles

• React Roundup
• Views on Vue
• Adventures in Angular
• React Dev Summit 2018

Aimee

• Galentine’s Day
• Dnote CLI

AJ

• The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

Corey

• We are hive project guidelines
• Tip: You can install node as a dependency on your project

Ben

• Hack Illinois 2018
• C8

Aaron

• Reason

Issac

• The Tap 100
• Krypton App
• Friendly Fire Podcasts

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• Aimee Knight
• Joe Eames
• AJ O'Neal
• Special Guests: Orta Therox

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists talk about the tool Danger with Orta Therox. Danger allows you to create cultural rules about your pole request workflow. They discuss what Danger is, how it works, and how it can help you to catch errors and speed up code review. Danger lets you erase discussions so that you can focus on the things that you should really be focusing on, like the code. They also compare Danger to other ways of doing test converge.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• What is DangerJS?
• Think of it as being on the PR level
• Provides an eval context
• Used on larger projects
• React, React Native, Apollo, and RxJS
• Experimenting with moving Danger onto a server
• Danger can run as a linting step
• Pre-commit hooks
• Prettier
• How do you use Danger on your own machine?
• Danger Ruby vs Danger JS
• NPM install
• How is using Danger better that other ways of test coverage?
• What kinds of rules can you write for this system?
• Can use with Ruby or JavaScript
• React Storybooks
• Retrospectives
• And much, much more!

Links:

• React Dev Summit
• JS Dev Summit
• Danger JS
• React
• React Native
• Apollo
• RxJS
• Prettier
• Danger Ruby
• Ruby
• JavaScript
• Orta’s GitHub
• Artsy Blog

Picks:

Charles

• Hogwarts Battle Board Game
• Sushi Go Party! Game
• NYC tips

Aimee

• Max Stoiber Blog
• The Ultimate Guide to Kicking Ass on Take-home Coding Challenges

Joe

• SaltCON
• Stuffed Fables Board Game

AJ

• UniFi AC Lite
• Fullmetal Alchemist

Orta

• The Wire
• Worm Web Serial

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• Aimee Knight
• AJ ONeal

Special Guests: Dotan Nahum

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists discuss Hygen with Dotan Nahum. Dotan has worked within open source community, where he created Hygen. They talk about what Hygen is, how it came to be, and code generators in general. He was inspired by the Rails generator to create his own generator and took his inspiration from 12 years prior to creating Hygen. They also touch on how to share generators in separate packages and much more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Dotan intro
• What is Hygen?
• Code generators
• Rails in 2006
• Ruby on Rails 15-minute blog video
• PHP and Python
• Carried Rails wow moment with him into creating Hygen
• Wanted Rails generators everywhere
• Can you also modify files?
• Took the good things from Rails generator
• The fact that front-end apps have architecture is new
• Redux
• The solution of generating code
• A component is a ray of files and assets
• JavaScript gives you great freedom
• A standardized way of doing components
• GraphQL
• Everything lives in the “day job” project
• How the Hygen template is formatted
• Can have a shell action
• Is there a way to share generators in a separate package?
• Go
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Hygen
• Rails
• Ruby on Rails 15-minute blog video
• Python
• Redux
• JavaScript
• GraphQL
• Go
• @jondot
• Dotan’s GitHub
• Dotan’s Medium

Picks:

Charles

• Fluent Conf
• Hot Jar
• DevChat.tv
• Ethereum

Aimee

• Deep-copying in JavaScript

AJ

• Let’s Encrypt
• Nintendo Switch
• Breath of the Wild

Dotan

• asdf
• Brew Cask

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• AJ ONeal
• Aimee Knight
• Joe Eames

Special Guests: Jordan Eldredge

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panelists discuss Winamp2-js with Jordan Eldredge. Jordan is the creator of Winamp2-js and was inspired to create this media player from the old Winamp media player that he used back in the day. They talk about the importance of limitations, the value of having fun side projects, and pushing the boundaries. They also touch on skin parsing, making Webamp an electron app, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• What is Winamp2-js?
• The history and future of Winamp
• WACUP
• Winamp was the first big mp3 player that you could style
• Webamp’s features and the technical challenges associated with them
• Why JavaScript?
• Creative solutions
• Limitations of browser and creating something that previously existed
• The importance of limitations
• Hadn’t done very much JavaScript prior to this project
• Originally created with jQuery
• Led him into a career in JavaScript
• Pushing the boundaries
• Skin parsing
• “Bitrot” and making Winamp skins accessible again
• The value of side projects, even stupid ones
• Architecture docs
• What made you choose React and Redux?
• Spotiamp (Soptify’s canceled Winamp client)
• Making Webamp an Electron app
• Winamp visualizers being ported to the web
• The domain name webamp.org
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Winamp2-js
• Webamp
• JavaScript
• jQuery
• Architecture docs
• React
• Redux
• jordaneldredge.com
• Jordan’s GitHub
• @captbaritone

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• FreshBooks
• Loot Crate

Picks:

Charles

• JAM XT Speaker
• Trello

AJ

• Samson GoMic
• Greenlock for Web Servers
• Greenlock for Node.js

Aimee

• KA Engineering Principles

Joe

• 2ality.com
• What if JavaScript wins? Medium post

Jordan

• JavaScript Garden
• Rust
• @winampskins

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Kye Hohenberger

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Kye Hohenberger. Kye is a senior front-end engineer at Gremlin, where they do chaos as a service and break your stuff on purpose so that you can fix it and it hopefully won’t happen again. He also created the Emotion library, which is a CSS-in-JS library. He first got into programming because his Grandpa was always working on computers and Kye was curious about how they worked. They talk about how he got into JavaScript, what he's built in JavaScript that he’s proud of, what he’s working on now, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• JavaScript Jabber Episode 286
• Kye intro
• Works at Gremlin as a front-end engineer
• How did you first get into programming?
• Always had a burning curiosity for computers
• Worked on HTML first
• Worked with flash in High School
• Tried to major in Computer Science and dropped out of it
• Job in IT
• Wordpress maintenance
• Hooked on wanting to learn more
• Python with Django
• What was it that caught your attention?
• How did you get into JavaScript?
• Job at cPanel
• What led you to build something like Emotion?
• Didn’t like having to use the Sass compiler
• What problem were you trying to solve?
• Have you worked on anything else in JavaScript that you’re proud of?
• What are you working on now?
• APIs from Java to Node
• Wrote Qordoba apps for 2 years
• What made you switch from Angular to React?
• Learning WebPack
• And much, much more!

Links:

• JavaScript Jabber Episode 286
• Emotion
• Wordpress
• Python
• Django
• JavaScript
• cPanel
• Sass
• Node
• Angular
• React
• WebPack
• @tkh44
• Kye’s GitHub
• Kye’s Medium

Sponsors:

• Loot Crate
• FreshBooks

Picks

Charles

• Home Depot Tool Rentals
• Framework Summit
• Podcast Movement

Kye

• The Console Log
• Brian Holt on Frontend Masters
• Emotion Team

Panel:

• Aimee Knight
• Joe Eames
• AJ ONeal

Special Guests: Jeremy Fairbank

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panel talks to Jeremy Fairbank about his talk Practical Functional Programming. Jeremy is a remote software developer and consultant for Test Double. They talk about what Test Double is and what they do there and the 6 things he touched on in his talk, such as hard to follow code, function composition, and mutable vs immutable data. They also touch on the theory of unit testing, if functional programming is the solution, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Jeremy intro
• Works for Test Double
• What he means by “remote”
• What is Test Double?
• They believe software is broken and they are there to fix it
• His talk - Practical Functional Programming
• The 6 things he talked about in his talk
• Practical aspects that any software engineer is going to deal with
• Purity and the side effects of programming in general
• Hard to follow code
• Imperative VS declarative code
• Code breaking unexpectedly
• Mutable data VS immutable data
• The idea of too much code
• Combining multiple functions together to make more complex functions
• Function composition
• Elm, Elixir, and F#
• Pipe operator
• Scary to refactor code
• Static types
• The idea of null
• The theory of unit testing
• Is functional programming the solution?
• His approach from the talk
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Test Double
• His talk - Practical Functional Programming
• Elm
• Elixir
• F#
• @elpapapollo
• jeremyfairbank.com
• Jeremy’s GitHub
• Jeremy’s YouTube

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Digital Ocean

Picks:

Aimee

• American Dollar
• Force with lease

AJ

• Superfight

Joe

• The 2018 Web Developer Roadmap by Brandon Morelli
• Svelte

Jeremy

• Programming Elm
• The Secrets of Consulting by Gerald M. Weinberg
• Connect.Tech

Panel: 

• Joe Eames
• Aimee Knight
• AJ O'Neal
• Joe Eames

Special Guests: Christine Legge

In this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panel talks to Christine Legge about functional programming with Ramda. Christine is a front-end software engineer and just recently got a new job in New York working at Google. Ramda is a utility library in JavaScript that focuses on making it easier to write JavaScript code in a functional way. They talk about functional programming and what it is, using Ramda in Redux, and referential transparency. They also touch on why she first got into Ramda, compare Ramda to Lodash and Underscore, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Chirstine intro 
• Works as a front-end software engineer
• What is Ramda? 
• JavaScript
• Utility library like Lodash and Underscore
• Lodash and Underscore VS Ramda
• Functional programming
• Ramda and Functional programming as a mindset
• Ramda at ZenHub
• Ramda with Redux and React
• What is referential transparency?
• Why would you use Ramda VS Lodash or Underscore?
• Why she first got into Ramda
• Didn’t always want to be a programmer
• Background in Math
• Learning functional programming as a new programmer
• Erlang
• DrRacket and Java
• Ramda makes it easy to compose functions
• Creating clean and reusable code
• How do you start using Ramda?
• And much, much more! 

Links:

• Ramda
• Lodash
• Underscore
• ZenHub
• Redux
• React
• Erlang
• DrRacket
• @leggechr
• Chirstine’s GitHub

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Digital Ocean

Picks:

Charles

• Home Depot Tool Rental
• Podcast Movement
• CES
• VRBO

Aimee

• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Jeremy Fairbank Talk – Practical Functional Programming

AJ

• Goat’s Milk

Joe

• Topgolf
• Framework Summit

Christine

• Dan Mangan
• Reply All Podcast

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Christiané Heiligers

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Dr. Christiané Heiligers who is new to the industry. Her background is in physics where she has her Ph.D. in the field. Listen to today’s episode to hear her background, experience with the different programs/languages, and much more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

Beginning – Advertisement: Code Badges!

1:07 – Christiané: Hello!

1:17 – Chuck: I like hearing people’s stories from our community. Tell us where you come from and who you are?

1:33 – Christiané: I am from South Africa, and have been in the US for 2 years now. My formal training is in physics. I have been a researcher with lab coats and test tubes. Through immigration, which took 2 years. I couldn’t be still, and started learning code on my own. I enjoyed the art. I had to use Python, and then I was hooked. I enjoyed the functional programming and other things. I had some experience with Ruby on Rails. I enjoy development because its problem solving, methodically approach, and uses your creative side, too. My preference is a Mac, need the Internet and decided to go to camps and take courses.

I snagged a job a week before I graduated!

4:36 – Chuck: your journey, thus far. You said that you couldn’t be idle – so why code?

4:53 – Guest: The UK is cold you don’t want to do anything outside! From South American I couldn’t stand the cold. I kept busy indoors – hint the code. You can’t get bored – frontend or backend.

5:28 – Chuck: Can you give us background on the Grace Hopper Academy.

5:40 – Guest: Sure! It’s based in NY City.

6:26 – Chuck: Did you move somewhere or was it remote?

6:30 – Guest: I had to live somewhere e

6:51 – Chuck: Where did you

6:55 – Guest: NY City. There were 16 of us in the course.

7:14 – Chuck: Why did you feel like you had to go to coding school?

7:25 – Guest: I am impatient with myself. The home-life you ask yourself: “Am I doing the right thing? Am I going in the right direction?” I wanted to go and pick up some skills.

7:56 – Chuck: You go through Grace Hopper – is this how you got into JavaScript?

8:11 – Guest: I didn’t know a line of JavaScript.

I did my application code line in Ruby.

My husband has been in software development my whole life.

9:16 – Chuck: What have you done with JavaScript since learning it?

9:24 – Guest: Some card playing games for my nieces in South Africa.

10:50 – Guest: Stack Overflow is wonderful.

11:05 – Chuck.

11:11 – Guest: I wasn’t actively contributing, but I did...

11:30 – Chuck: What is it like being a prof

11:37 – Guest: It’s addictive. When I am writing code in the frontend / backend side. It’s always learning.

12:11 – Chuck: What’s next for you?

12:18 – Guest: I would love to continue this journey. Maybe into the DevOps, but my passion happens with React. The Hapi Framework.

13:10 – Guest: The community is wonderful to work with – everyone is very helpful.

13:22 – Chuck: People are usually talking about Express and not Hapi.js.

13:35 – Guest: I have some contact names you can call.

13:43 – Guest: I am working on a few small projects right now. Some Angular sites that need assistance. Helping out where I can. It’s a small team that I am working with. There is only a few of us.

14:31 – Chuck: Usually people stick with one. What’s your experience using the different frameworks?

14:40 – Guest: It’s an eye-opener! React vs. Angular.

15:07 – Chuck: How can people find you?

15:14 – Guest: LinkedIn, Twitter, Tallwave, etc.

15:37 – Chuck: Picks!

15:40 – Advertisement!

Links:

• React
• Angular
• Grace Hopper Academy
• Christiané’s Instagram
• Christiané’s Facebook

Sponsors:

• Code Badge
• Cache Fly
• Get A Coder Job

Picks:

Charles

• Podcasts that Chuck listens to:
  • Code Newbie
  • Our podcasts through DevChat
• Food – Kedo Diet – 2 Keto Dudes

Christiané Heiligers

• Hapi Framework
• Hapi Slack Channel – Hapi.js

Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Christine Legge

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Christine Legge who is a computer software engineer who works for Google in New York. Previous employment includes Axiom Zen, and Vizzion, Inc. She and Chuck talk about her background, past and current projects, and her future goals.

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

1:07 – Hello!

1:10 – Chuck: You were on Episode 328 in the past. Tell us about yourself!

1:24 – Christine: I started working with Google about 2 weeks ago. In the past I worked in Vancouver, Canada.

2:05 – Chuck: Let’s start with how you got into programming?

2:14 – Christine: When I was in HS I wasn’t interested at all into computers. I wanted to do applied math in Toronto Canada for college. For engineering you have to take an introduction to programming in the 1^st year. I had a 4-hour computer science course in the morning and I dreaded it. I dropped out 3 months later b/c I didn’t like the program. Surprisingly, enough, I did like the computer science course. I went back to Vancouver and I said to my parents that I wanted an office job. I went to the YMCA center and wanted to be hired. The man there asked if I had any interest in data entering, and I started working for him. I worked 4 hours a week with him where he taught me C+. I decided to go back to school for it.

5:37 – Chuck: What did you like about it?

5:43 – Christine: I liked the problem solving part of it. I like how you can break things down. The technology doesn’t interest me that much, but I like the problem-solving aspect. The guy wasn’t that up-to-date with the newest technologies either.

6:53 – Chuck: You have a 4-year degree in computer science.

7:05 – Yes that and statistics, too.

7:13 – Chuck: I was going to say “nerd.”

How do you go from desktop applications to web apps?

7:25 – Christine: I worked with a company part-time and fulltime depending on the year/season.

I didn’t know what web development was but I thought that THAT was computer science. I thought that if I knew how to do web development then I was going to be good to go. This company asked: What do you want to do? And I answered that I wanted to do web development b/c I thought that’s what I was lacking. I basically got thrown into it. I didn’t understand anything at all. It took me to write one line of CSS and it took 4 hours.

10:35 – Why did JavaScript attract you more so than C# or other languages that you’ve used?

10:43 – It’s simpler and you don’t need a lot of setup; from top to bottom. I am working in typescript, I like it even more, but I like how Java is more free to do what you want. I like functional programming in JavaScript. I like the big community for Java, and there are tons of applications for it. I really like how flexible the language is. You can do functional and oriented or you can combine the two. You aren’t constrained.

12:00 – Chuck: You get in, you work through JavaScript, were you only doing backend?

12:14 – Christine: Yep, backend.

13:00 –Chuck: I know you talked at the conference, and what are you most proud of?

13:14 – Christine: To be honest, no. My mentor (Pablo) at the last company – he wrote a book about D3. He started learning and writing the book. To me that I had thought that all these people are experts from the get go. I realized that everyone has to start somewhere to eventually become an expert. I do want to make an impact even outside of my job. I don’t have anything new that I’ve been working on. It’s a goal for me within the next couple of months.

15:30 – Chuck: I understand that.

15:36 – Christine: I haven’t found that balance, yet. When I gave that talk during Developer Week I was moving and stressed out. “I am NEVER doing this again!” It was over and it was very rewarding. People gave good feedback, and I would like to do that again.

16:56 – Chuck: People have different experience with that kind of stuff. People are interested in different things. So you’ve been working on moving and all that stuff right? What would you like to dive back into?

17:32 – Christine: Yes we are using Angular 2 and typescript and a Reactive Library. Angular is interesting to me. I would like to dive into the dependency injection in Angular. I really like typescript.

19:24 – Chuck: Have you looked at resources?

19:39 – Christine: I read the documentation so far. Like for React I just read the documentation but I haven’t found a central source just, yet. Not a single source. The docs are okay to get started but I haven’t found that they were enough.

20:50 – Chuck: This is about your story. I worked through the Tour of Heroes, and that helped me with Angular. It’s in the Angular Documentation.

21:23 – Christine: When you are starting at a new job I want to make sure I’m settled-in. And now I want to start thinking at a high-level of how these things work. I think the cool thing working here is that you can talk to the people who are working on Angular and get some insight that way.

22:27 – Chuck: People are usually very approachable.

22:34 – Christine: Yes, I agree. To be apart of the communities people want you to use their stuff.

22:48 – Chuck: Do you have another talk in mind when you are ready to give your next talk?

22:59 – Christine: Not sure. I have one thing on my list right now and that’s it.

23:42 – Chuck: I haven’t looked at RJX documentation but I think it’s pretty easy to pick-up. Ben who is the main developer RJX joined the team last year.

24:04 – Christine: It’s a lot of promises. When I figure it out that’s how something would work if it were a promise then I can usually get there.

24:25 – Chuck: Yeah.

24:38 – Christine: I kind of want to make connections in the office rather than me trying to do myself. I don’t want to waste time. Working on those connections would be good.

25:20 – Chuck: Let’s do some picks!

25:30 – Advertisement – Fresh Books! 30-Day Trial!

Links:

• React
• Angular
• Vue.js
• JavaScript
• Ember
• Elm
• jQuery
• Christine Legge’s LinkedIn
• Christine Legge’s Twitter
• Christine Legge’s GitHub

Sponsors:

• Cache Fly
• Get A Coder Job
• Fresh Books

Picks:

Charles

• My Calendar Software – BusyCal and Google Calendar
• Google Calendar just started appointment slots

Christine

• Podcast: The Pitch
• Podcast: How I Built This

Panel:

• Aimee Knight
• AJ O’Neal
• Aaron Frost
• Christopher Ferdinandi

Special Guests: Christopher Buecheler

In this episode, the panel talks with Christopher Buecheler who is an author, blogger, web developer, and founder of CloseBrace. The panel and Christopher talk about stepping outside of your comfort zone. With a technological world that is ever changing, it is important to always be learning within your field. Check out today’s episode to learn more!

Show Topics:

0:00 – Advertisement: KENDO UI

1:08 – Aimee: Our guest is Christopher Buecheler – tell us about yourself and what you do.

1:22 – Guest: I run a site and help mid-career developers. I put out a weekly newsletter, too.

2:01 – Aimee: It says that you are a fan of “getting comfortable being uncomfortable”?

2:15 – Guest: I am a self-taught developer, so that means I am scrambling to learn new things all the time. You are often faced with learning new things. When I learned React I was dumped into it. The pain and the difficulty are necessary in order to improve. If you aren’t having that experience then you aren’t learning as much as you could be.

3:26 – Aimee: I borrow lessons that I learned from ice-skating to programming.

3:49 – Guest: I started running a few years ago for better health. It was exhausting and miserable at the start and wondered why I was doing it. Now I run 5 times a week, and there is always a level of being uncomfortable, but now it’s apart of the run. It’s an interesting comparison to coding. It’s this idea of pushing through.

5:01 – Aimee: If you are comfortable you probably aren’t growing that much. In our industry you always have to be learning because things change so much!

5:25 – Guest: Yes, exactly. If you are not careful you can miss opportunities.

6:33 – Panel: You have some ideas about frameworks and libraries – one thing that I am always anxious about is being able to make sense of “what are some new trends that I should pay attention to?” I remember interviewing with someone saying: this mobile thing is just a fad. I remember thinking that she is going to miss this opportunity. I am worried that I am going to be THAT guy. How do you figure out what sort of things you should / shouldn’t pay attention to?

7:47 – Guest: It is a super exhausting thing to keep up with – I agree. For me, a lot of what I pay attention to is the technology that has the backing of a multi-million dollar company then that shows that technology isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. The other thing I would look at is how ACTIVE is the community around it?

9:15 – Panel: Is there a strategic way to approach this? There is so many different directions that you can grow and push yourself within your career? Do you have any kinds of thoughts/tips on how you want your career to evolve?

10:00 – Guest: I am trying to always communicate better to my newsletter audience. Also, a good approach, too, is what are people hiring for? 

11:06 – Aimee: Again, I would say: focus on learning.

11:30 – Panel: And I agree with Aimee – “learn it and learn it well!”

12:01 – Panel: I want to ask Chris – what is CloseBrace?

12:17 – Guest: I founded it in November 2016, and started work on it back in 2013.

14:20 – Panel: It was filled with a bunch of buzz worthy words/title.

14:32 – Guest continues his thoughts/comments on CloseBrace.

16:54 – Panel: How is the growth going?

17:00 – Guest: It is growing very well. I put out a massive, massive tutorial course – I wouldn’t necessarily advice that people do this b/c it can be overwhelming. However, growth this year I have focused on marketing. I haven’t shared numbers or anything but it’s increased 500%, and I am happy about it.

18:05 – Panel: Are you keeping in-house?

18:13 – Guest: I think it would be cool to expand, but now it is in-house. I don’t want to borrow Egg Head’s setup. I would love to cover MORE topics, though.

19:05 – Panel: You are only one person.

19:08 – Guest: If I can get the site creating more revenue than I can hire someone to do video editing, etc.

19:35 – Panel: I think you are overthinking it.

19:45 – Guest.

19:47 – Advertisement – Sentry.io

20:47 – Guest.

21:30 – Aimee: There are SO many resources out there right now. Where do you think you fit into this landscape?

21:44 – The landscape is cluttered, but I feel that I am different b/c of my thoroughness. I don’t always explain line by line, but I do say how and why things work. I think also is my VOICE. Not my radio voice, but the tone and the approach you take with it.

23:25 – Panel: I was trying to copy folks in the beginning of my career. And at some point I realized that I needed to find my own style. It always came down to the reasons WHY I am different rather than the similarities. Like, Chris, you have these quick hits on CloseBrace, but some people might feel like they don’t have the time to get through ALL of your content, because it’s a lot. For me, that’s what I love about your content.

24:46 – Christopher: Yeah, it was intentional.

25:36 – Panel: Good for you.

25:49 – Guest: I am super device agnostic: Android, Mac, PC, etc. I have a lot of people from India that are more Microsoft-base.

26:28 – Aimee: I think Egghead is pretty good about this...do you cover testing at all with these things that you are doing? It’s good to do a “Hello World” but most of these sites don’t get into MORE complex pieces. I think that’s where you can get into trouble. It’s nice to have some boiler point testing, too.

27:18 – Guest answers Aimee’s question.

28:43 – Aimee: We work with a consultancy and I asked them to write tests for the things that we work with. That’s the value of the testing. It’s the code that comes out.

29:10 – Panel: Can you explain this to me. Why do I need to write tests? It’s always working (my code) so why do I have to write a test?

29:39 – Guest: When working with AWS I was writing...

31:01 – Aimee: My biggest thing is that I have seen enough that the people don’t value testing are in a very bad place, and the people that value testing are in a good place. It even comes back to the customers, because the code gets so hard that you end up repeatedly releasing bugs. Customers will stop paying their bills if this happens too often for them.

33:00 – Panel: Aimee / Chris do you have a preferred tool? I have done testing before, but not as much as I should be doing.

33:25 – Aimee: I like JEST and PUPPETEER.

33:58 – Guest: I like JEST, too.

34:20 – Aimee: Let’s go to PICKS!

34:35 – Advertisement – eBook: Get a coder job!

Links:

• JavaScript
• jQuery
• React
• Elixir
• Elm
• Vue
• JEST
• Puppeteer
• Podflix
• Autojump
• Brutalist Web Design
• YouTube: Mac Miller
• Balloon Fiesta
• DocZ
• CloseBrace
• Christopher Buecheler’s Website
• Christopher Buecheler’s LinkedIn
• Christopher Buecheler’s GitHub
• Go Learn Things – Chris Ferdinandi

Sponsors:

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Cache Fly
• Get a Coder Job

Picks:

Aimee

• Podflix

Chris F.

• AutoJump 
• Brutalist Web Design
• Mac Miller Tiny Desk Concert

AJ

• Canada Dry with Lemonade

Aaron

• ABQ Ballon Festival
• Joe Eames DND Recording Channel

Christopher

• Docz
• South Reach Trilogy
• Jeff Vandermeer

Sponsors

• Triplebyte
• Sentry use the code “devchat” for $100 credit
• Clubhouse
• CacheFly

Panel

• Aaron Frost
• AJ O’Neal
• Chris Ferdinandi
• Joe Eames
• Aimee Knight
• Charles Max Wood

Joined by special guests: Hillel Wayne and Richard Feldman

Episode Summary

In this episode of JavaScript Jabber, Hillel Wayne kicks off the podcast by giving a short background about his work, explains the concepts of formal methods and the popular npm package - event-stream, in brief. The panelists then dive into the recent event-stream attack and discuss it at length, focusing on different package managers and their vulnerabilities, as well as the security issues associated with them. They debate on whether paying open source developers for their work, thereby leading to an increase in contribution, would eventually help in improving security or not. They finally talk about what can be done to fix certain dependencies and susceptibilities to prevent further attacks and if there are any solutions that can make things both convenient and secure for users.

Links

• STAMP model in accident investigation
• Hillel’s Twitter
• Hillel’s website
• Richard’s Twitter
• Stamping on Event-Stream

Picks

Joe Eames:

• Stuffed Fables

Aimee Knight:

• SRE book - Google
• Lululemon leggings
• DVSR - Band

Aaron Frost:

• JSConf US

Chris Ferdinandi:

• Paws New England
• Vanilla JS Guides

Charles Max Wood:

• Sony Noise Cancelling Headphones
• KSL Classifieds
• Upwork

Richard Feldman:

• Elm in Action
• Sentinels of the Multiverse

Hillel Wayne:

• Elm in the Spring
• Practical TLA+
• Nina Chicago - Knitting
• Tomb Trader

Sponsors

• Triplebyte offers a $1000 signing bonus
• Sentry use the code “devchat” for $100 credit
• Linode offers $20 credit
• CacheFly

Panel

• AJ O’Neal
• Chris Ferdinandi
• Aimee Knight
• Charles Max Wood

Joined by special guest: Mikeal Rogers

Episode Summary

This episode of JavaScript Jabber starts with Mikeal Rogers introducing himself and his work in brief. Charles clarifies that he wants to focus this show on some beginner content such as node.js basics, so Mikeal gives some historical background on the concept, elaborates on its modern usage and features and explains what “streams” are, for listeners who are starting to get into JavaScript. The panelists then discuss how languages like Go and Python compare to node.js in terms of growth and individual learning curves. Mikeal answers questions about alternate CLIs, package management, Pika, import maps and their effect on node.js, and on learning JavaScript in general. Chris, Charles and AJ also chip in with their experiences in teaching modern JS to new learners and its difficulty level in comparison to other frameworks. They wrap up the episode with picks.

Links

• Mikeal on Twitter
• Mikeal on GitHub

Follow JavaScript Jabber on Devchat.tv, Facebook and Twitter.

Picks

Chris Ferdinandi:

• Mozilla Firefox
• Artifact Conference

Aimee Knight:

• A Magician Explains Why We See What’s Not There
• Programming: doing it more vs doing it better

Mikeal Rogers:

• The Future of the Web – CascadiaJS 2018
• Brave Browser

Charles Max Wood:

• Podwrench

Sponsors

• Triplebyte offers a $1000 signing bonus

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for $100 credit

• CacheFly

Panel

• Charles Max Wood
• Joe Eames
• Christopher Buecheler
• Aimee Knight
• AJ O’Neal

Joined by special guest: Dan Shappir

Episode Summary

In this episode of JavaScript Jabber, special guest Dan Shappir, Performance Tech Lead at Wix, kicks off the discussion by defining server-side rendering (SSR) along with giving its historical background, and touches on the differences between server rendering and server-side rendering. He helps listeners understand in detail how SSR is beneficial for the web and takes questions from the panel about how it affects web performance in cases where first-time users and returning users are involved, and how does SSR fare against technologies such as pre-rendering. He then elaborates on the pitfalls and challenges of SSR including managing and declaring variables, memory leaks, performance issues, handling SEO, and more, along with ways to mitigate them. In the end, Dan sheds some light on when should developers use SSR and how should they start working with it.

Links

• Dan’s Twitter
• Dan’s GitHub
• SSR
• WeakMap

Follow JavaScript Jabber on Devchat.tv, Facebook and Twitter.

Picks

Christopher Buecheler:

• Tip - Take some time off once in a while

Aimee Knight:

• Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects

AJ O’Neal:

• Fatherhood!

Joe Eames:

• Tiny Towns

• The Goldbergs

Charles Max Wood:

• EverywhereJS

• Christopher Buecheler’s books

• Get a Coder Job - Publishing soon!

Dan Shappir:

• Quora

• Corvid by Wix

• You Gotta Love Frontend Conferences

Sponsors

• Triplebyte $1000 signing bonus

• Sentry use code “devchat” for 2 months free

• Linode

Panel

• Charles Max Wood

• Aimee Knight

• Chris Ferdinandi

• AJ O’Neal

• Joe Eames

Episode Summary

Today the panel discusses what is necessary to get a website up and how complicated or simple it needs to be. They mention different tools they like for static sites and ways to manage their builds and websites. They talk about why some people choose to host their websites and at what point the heavier tools become a concern. They discuss whan it is necessary to use those heavy tools. 

They caution listeners to beware of premature optimization, because sometimes businesses will take advantage of newer developers and make them think they need all these shiny bells and whistles, when there is a cheaper way to do it. It is important to keep the tools you work with simple and to learn them so that if you encounter a problem, you have some context and scope. The option of serverless website hosting is also discussed, as well as important things to know about servers.

The panel discusses what drives up the price of a website and if it is worth it to switch to a cheaper alternative. They discuss the pros and cons of learning the platform yourself versus hiring a developer. The importance of recording the things that you do on your website is mentioned. Several of the panelists choose to do this by blogging so that if you search for a problem you can find ones you’ve solved in the past.

Links

• Heroku

• Github Pages

• Netlify

• Eleventy

• DigitalOcean

• Lightsale

• Ubuntu

• Git clone

• Node static server

• Systemd script

• NGinx

• Cloud66

• Thinkster

• Gatsby

• Docker

• Gentoo

• How to schedule posts with a static website

• How to set up automatic deployment with Git with a vps

• Automating the deployment of your static site with Github and Hugo

Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Charles Max Wood:

• Microsoft build

Aimee Knight:

• Systems Thinking is as Important as Ever for New Coders

Chris Ferdinandi:

• Adrian Holivadi framework video

• Server Pilot

AJ O’Neal:

• Jeff Atwood tweet

• More on Stackflow Architecture

• Minio

Joe Eames:

• Miniature painting

Episode Summary

Rachel Roumeliotis and Roger Magoulas from O'Reilly Media join Charles Max Wood at OSCON to talk about the process of content development for OSCON. Rachel is the Vice President of Content Strategy at O'Reilly and Roger is Vice President of Radar at O'Reilly.

Rachel and Roger talk about the history of OSCON Conference as well as the key technologies they wanted to cover this year such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Cloud-Native applications.

They then talk about the future of OSCON and the highlights they wat to cover next year such as security.

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan

• Adventures in DevOps

• Adventures in Blockchain

• CacheFly

Host: Charles Max Wood

Joined by Special Guests: Rachel Roumeliotis and Roger Magoulas

Links

• Rachel's LinkedIn

• Roger's LinkedIn

• Open Source & Software Development| O'Reilly OSCON

• O'Reilly Radar

• O'Reilly Media - Technology and Business Training

   

Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent is a self taught web developer from west France. He has worked for BBC, The Guardian, and The Financial Times in the UK. He has also worked in the US for SalesForce and currently works for Shopify on their Polaris design system. Shopify has multiple design systems, and Polaris is open source. Today the panel is talking about design systems and developer tooling around design systems. 

To begin, Kaelig explains what a design system is. A design system is all of the cultural practices around design and shipping a product. It includes things like the words, colors, spacing grid system, and typography, plus guidance on how to achieve that in code. The panelists discuss what has made design systems so popular. Design systems have been around for a while, but became popular due to the shift to components, which has been accelerated by the popularity of React. The term design system is also misused by a lot of people, for it is much more than having a Sketch file. 

Next, they talk about whether design systems fall under the jurisdiction of a frontend developer or web designers. Kaelig has found that a successful design system involves a little bit of everyone and shouldn’t be isolated to one team. They talk about what the developer workflow looks like in a design system. It begins with thinking of a few common rules, a language, and putting it into code. As you scale, design systems can become quite large and it’s impossible for one person to know everything. You either give into the chaos, or you start a devops practice where people start to think about how we build, release, and the path from designer’s brain to production.

The panelists then talk about how to introduce a design system into a company where there are cultural conflicts. Kaelig shares his experience working with SalesForce and introducing a design system there. They discuss what aspects of a design system that would make people want to use it over what the team is currently doing. Usually teams are thankful for the design system. It’s important to build a system that’s complete, flexible, and extensible so that you can adapt it to your team. A good design system incorporates ‘subatomic’ parts like the grid system, color palette, and typography, referred to as design tokens. Design systems enable people to take just the bits of the design system that are interesting to them and build the components that are missing more easily. 

The conversation turns to the installation and upgrade process of a design system. Upgrading is left up to the customer to do on their own time in most cases, unless it’s one of the big customers. They talk about the role of components in upgrading a design system. Kaelig talks about the possibility of Shopify transitioning to web components. Kaelig shares some of his favorite tools for making a design system and how to get started making one. A lot of design teams start by taking a ton of screen shots and looking at all the inconsistencies.Giving them that visibility is a good thing because it helps get everyone get on the same page. The panelists talk about the role of upper management in developing components and how to prioritize feature development. Kaelig talks about what drives the decision to take a feature out. The two main reasons a feature would be removed is because the company wants to change the way things are done and there’s a different need that has arisen. The show concludes by discussing the possibility of a design system getting bloated over time. Kaelig says that Design systems takes some of the burden off your team, help prevent things from getting bloated, allow you to ship less code.

Panelists

• Chris Ferdinandi

• Aimee Knight

• Steve Emmerich

With special guest: Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent

Sponsors

• Sustain Our Software

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan

• Adventures in Blockchain

Links

• Shopify Polaris

• Bootstrap

• React

• Sketch.ui

• Figma.ui 

• CSS

• StoryBook

• ESLint

• Jest

• Ensign

• Webpacker

Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Steve Emmerich:

• CedarWorks play beds 

• Azure’s container instances

Aimee Knight:

• Awesome Actions for Github

Chris Ferdinandi:

• Free Meek docuseries

• Simplicity: Part 2 by Bastian Allgeier

Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent:

• Dependabot

• Ink by Vadim Demedez

• Follow Kaelig on Twitter @kaelig

Guest Paige Niedringhaus has been a developer full time for 3 years, and today she is here to talk about Node 12. One of the things she is most excited about is the ES6 support that is now available, so things that used to require React, Angular, or Vue can now be done in Node. The require function will not have to be used in Node 12. AJ is worried about some of these changes and expresses his concerns. Paige assures him that in the beginning you won’t have to switch things to imports. You may have to change file extensions/types so Node can pick up what it’s supposed to be using. They are also trying to make it compatible with CommonJS.

Node 12 also boasts an improved startup time. The panel discusses what specifically this means. They talk about the code cache and how Node caches the built in libraries that it comes prepackaged with. The V8 engine is also getting many performance enhancements. 

Paige talks about the shift from promises to async. In Node 12, async functions will actually be faster than promises. They discuss some of the difficulties they’ve had in the past with Async08, and especially callbacks. 

Another feature of Node 12 is better security. The transcripted security layer (TLS), which is how Node handles encrypted strains of communication, is upgrading to 1.3. The protocol is simpler to implement, quicker to negotiate sessions between the applications, provides increased end user privacy, and reduces request time. Overall, this means less latency for everybody. 1.3 also gets rid of the edge cases that caused TLS to be way far slower than it needed to be. 

The conversation turns to properly configuring default heap limits to prevent an ‘out of memory’ error. Configuring heap limits is something necessary when constructing an incredibly large object or array of objects. Node 12 also offers formatted diagnostic summaries, which can include information on total memory, used memory, memory limits, and environment lags. It can report on uncaught exceptions and fatal errors. Overall, Node 12 is trying to help with the debugging process. They talk about the different parsers available and how issues with key pairing in Node have been solved. 

Paige talks about using worker threads in Node 12. Worker threads are really beneficial for CPU intensive JavaScript operations. Worker threads are there for those things that eat up all of your memory, they can alleviate the load and keep your program running efficiently while doing their own operations on the sideline, and returning to the main thread once they’ve finished their job. None of the panelists have really used worker threads, so they discuss why that is and how they might use Worker Threads in Node 12. 

In addition, Node 12 is making Native module creation and support easier, as well as all the different binaries a node developer would want to support. Paige makes it a point to mention the new compiler and minimum platform standards. They are as follows:

• GCC minimum 6

• GLIVC minimum 2.17 on platforms other than Mac and Windows (Linux)

• Mac users need at least 8 and Mac OS 10.10

• If you’ve been running node 11 builds in Windows, you’re up to speed

• Linux binaries supported are Enterprise Linux 7, Debian 8, and Ubuntu 14.04

• If you have different requirements, go to the Node website

Panelists

• J.C. Hyatt

• Steve Edwards

• AJ O’Neal

With special guest: Paige Niedringhaus

Sponsors

• Tidelift

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan

• Sustain Our Software

Links

• Async

• CommonJS

• njs

• Promise

• Node

• Event Stream

• llhttp

• llparse

• LLVM

• Papa Parse

• Json.stringify 

• Json.parse

• Optimizing Web Performance TLS 1.3

• Overlocking SSL

• Generate Keypair

Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

J.C. Hyatt:

• AWS Amplify framework

• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Petersen

• React and Gatsby workshops

Steve Edwards:

• The Farside comic coming back?

AJ O’Neal:

• Field of Hopes and Strings

• Link’s Awakening

• Dune

Paige Niedringhaus:

• DeLonghi Magnifica XS Automatic Espresso Machine, Cappuccino Maker

• CONNECT.TECH Conference

Follow Paige on Twitter, Medium, and Github

Guests Chris heilmann and Zohair Ali are developers for Microsoft working on the Edge project. Today they are talking about Edge on Chromium and the future of developer tools. Edge will now be built in Chromium rather than being its own engine, aligning it more with what is being used on the open web right now. The Edge team wanted to seize the opportunity to bring something into the Chromium project based on the needs of real users and contribute to the open source web. Edge on Chromium won’t be limited to Windows 10 either, but will be available on Mac, Windows 7, and Windows 8. This project is still in beta with no set release date, so the Edge team is looking for people to test it out on Mac and tell them how it works. 

Chris and Zohair talk about the different parts of a web browser and what distinguishes Chrome from Chromium.  Chromium is not just a platform, it’s an entire browser that you can install. Google adds a bunch of Google services to Chromium, such as being able to sign into your Google account,  and that’s how you get Google Chrome. Similarly, the new Edge adds its own features on top of Chromium, so you can sign into your Microsoft account. By now the browser engines are so similar to each other that the users are looking for the user experience, interface, and services around it, so it made more sense for the Edge team to contribute to Chromium than to maintain their own engine and help it improve.

Chris and Zohair talk about some of the features in Edge on Chromium. One service they’re particularly excited about is the Collections feature, where you can drag images, text, etc into Collections and export it to Excel or Word. Collections was inspired by what users need, and they talk about some of the different use cases for it. The new Edge on Chromium will also have an IE mode for products that still require IE 11. If you define what services need IE 11, Edge will open an IE 11 tab within the browser so you will not have to jump between browsers. Unfortunately, this feature is only available on Windows. Edge on Chromium will also offer an integration with VS Code, called Elements for VS Code, which takes part of the developer tools from Edge and puts it inside VS Code. Since the tools are based on Chromium, it stays in the same context all the time so you don’t have to jump back and forth, and you can see the changes live in your browser. This feature is in beta right now and they are looking for people to test it. 

The Edge team talks about their process for creating tools. They are working on putting their tools into other languages so that they are accessible to more people. They talk about how they want to avoid creating Edge specific tools as much as possible because they want to make it better for everybody. One of their biggest struggles is everybody demands developer tools, but nobody wants to contribute, so they don’t have as much feedback and not as much outside contribution. That’s why they keep calling for people to try out the new Edge on Chromium and give them feedback. They want to make that change more transparent so that they build things that people want. They will have to make some of their own tools, but they make sure that they don’t have any third party dependencies. They mention that all Chrome extensions are compatible with Edge, so if it’s available in the Chrome webstore, you can add it to Edge, you just have to be sure to allow it. They talk about some of the testing tools available. The show concludes with a discussion of the fate of Chakra Node. 

Panelists

• AJ O’Neal

• Aimee Knight

• Dan Shapir

• Steve Edwards

With special guests: Chris Heilmann and Zohair Ali

Sponsors

• Tidelift

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan

• Views on Vue

Links

• Chromium

• Microsoft Edge Insider

• Microsoft Chakra Core

• Elements for VS Code

• MS Edge Driver

• Puppeteer 

Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter

Picks

Aimee Knight:

• Cypress testing library

Steve Edwards: 

• CSS Tricks Screencast episode 174: Using Local Overrides in Devtools

Dan Shapir:

• The Chronicles of Amber

AJ O’Neal:

• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

• Lover by Taylor Swift

Chris Heilmann:

• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

• TabNine

• doesthedogdie.com

Zohair Ali:

• Saga graphic novel series

Today the panel discusses the difference between Swagger and Open API with Josh Ponelat. Josh details the difference between the two. Swagger is a set of protocols around describing restful APIs. Swagger was taken over by a company called SmartBear, who donated the donated the specification to the Open Linux Foundation, and that became the Open API. Swagger is the tooling surrounding these specifications. Open API is a standardized way to describe a restful API in a YAML file. Once you’ve got a YAML file to describe your API, you can use tooling like Swagger to leverage that and take it to the next level. Using the Open API process is useful for situations where you already have an API in place, but want to codify and document it so that it’s controlled. Then going forward, you won’t introduce contradictions and it remains consistent because it’s documented in a YAML file. The process leaves room for enhancement in the future as well. 

Josh talks about some of the benefits of standardizing your API and some of the use cases besides tooling. A standardized API can help show developers how to use your API, SDKs, and service stubs by knowing your API is consistent in style. This makes it easier to find breaking changes and more. Josh talks more about Swagger, a finite set of tooling around Open API, most of which are open source. He talks about other tools that test APIs and do linting on YAML files. Some of the companies that use Open API include Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Josh talks about how Amazon implements Open API.

Josh talks about the book he’s writing, Designing APIs with Swagger and Open API. The book goes over describing APIs today, how to design APIs without writing code first, and how to get the most out of the system. The show concludes with Josh talking about the power of consistency and writing things down on paper. He discusses where implications that the standardization of APIs has on the text industry. 

Panelists

• Dan Shapir

• Charles Max Wood

Guest

• Josh Ponelat

**To receive your the 40% OFF coupon for Manning Publications (good for all our products in all formats) visit us at Facebook - click on "Send A Message"and type "YES"**

Sponsors

• Sentry | Use the code “devchat” for $100 credit

Links

• Swagger

• Open API

• Difference Between Swagger and Open API

• GraphQL

• Designing APIs with Swagger and Open API

Picks

Dan Shapir

• Saga of Pliocene Exile

Charles Max Wood

• DevChat.tv Merchandise 

• BusyCal

Josh Ponelat

• AsciiDoc

• FASD tool

This My JavaScript Story episode is a discussion with Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent. Kaelig works on the Polaris design system from Shopify. We walk through his journey into programming, HTML, and CSS. We wander through is career until he was building design systems at Shopify.

Host: Charles Max Wood

Joined By Special Guest: Kaelig Deloumeau-Pregent

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan

• CacheFly

___________________________________________________________________________________________

"The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today!

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Links

• JSJ 397: Design Systems with Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent

• Design Tokens Community Group

• JSJ 388: Functional Programming with Brian Lonsdorf

• Polaris

Picks

Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent:

• The Courage to Be Disliked

Charles Max Wood:

• The Name of The Wind

JavaScript Remote Conf 2020

May 14th to 15th - register now!

Paige Niedringhaus started her career as a Digital Marketer before making the move to becoming a software developer at the Home Depot. She current works with React and Node building internal apps for them. This episode discusses the ins and outs of making that transition in a semi-recent world and community.

Host: Charles Max Wood

Joined By Special Guest: Paige Niedringhaus

Sponsors

• G2i | Enjoy the luxuries of freelancing

• CacheFly

______________________________________

"The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood is now available on Amazon. Get Your Copy Today!

______________________________________

Links

• JSJ 398: Node 12 with Paige Niedringhaus

• Syntax.

• GitHub testing-library/react-testing-library

• Gatsby

• NextJS

• Interview Cake

• Medium - Paige Niedringhaus

• Follow Paige on Twitter: @pniedri

Picks

Paige Niedringhaus:

• Breville Milk Frother

• Stuff You Should Know

Charles Max Wood:

• Instant Pot

• Sphero BB-8

Sasson, Diane, 1946-

MacFadyen, David, 1964-

Stadler, Nurit

Deutscher, Penelope, 1966-

Sachdev, Perminder

Coward, Harold G

Underdown, Angela

Ellwanger, Steven J., 1971-

Crommelin, Claude August, 1840-1874

Catlin, George, 1796-1872

Chelpi-den Hamer, Magali

Young, Vershawn Ashanti

Chapman, Elwood N

Aliber, Robert Z

Reed, David (Carl David), 1957-

Cagle, Ronald B

Blumenthal, Noah, 1972-