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December 21st, 2022 × #productivity#javascript#career

Potluck × Twitter Thoughts × Business Models × Senior Developer

Potluck Q&A show covering website improvements, managing notifications, JavaScript testing, routers, freelancing tips, smart home automation and more.

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Topic 0 00:00

Transcript

Announcer

You're listening to Syntax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Strap yourself in and get ready. Here is Scott Talensky and Wes Boss.

Wes Bos

Welcome to Syndax, the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Rid. We've got a potluck for you today. This is where you submit the questions, and we will answer them. Please keep the questions coming on in. Ready. You can go to Syndax. Fm. In the top right hand corner, there's a button that says ask a potluck question.

Wes Bos

Type it in there, and we'll try to answer it on the show.

Topic 1 00:31

Potluck Q&A questions

Wes Bos

We've got some really good questions for you today about JavaScript, CSS, tooling, caching, routing, all this All kinds of good stuff. With me as always, mister Scott Talinski. How are you doing today, Scott? Hey. Yo. Hey. Yo. Hey. Yo. Hey. Yo. I'm doing good.

Scott Tolinski

I don't know. Not too much to report.

Scott Tolinski

If you learn just like feel a little bit of relief rid have our whole Black Friday stuff over with. That's always kind of a stressful time of the year for us. And, you know, the fact that I I launched a a new redesign for the site, and I am still alive here. I have survived launching a redesign of the site. It's not something I do very often. So, Yeah. For me, feeling very good to be on the other side of that. Now I can just focus on all the things in life rid That need focusing on now that I have, that big thing out of my face. What about you? How you feeling?

Wes Bos

Yeah, I'm feeling good. Feeling good. Just, ready. Working away, recording my TypeScript course, so not too much. It's just pretty much that.

Wes Bos

We are sponsored by 3 awesome companies today: Linode, Cloud Computing, Developers Trust, Sentry, Air Exception, Performance Tracking, and FreshBooks Cloud accounting. We'll talk about all of them partway through the episode.

Wes Bos

Let's get on into the first question we have here from Nick. Hi. Why is there no contact rid a section on your site. How can I provide feedback about your podcast? Like, there is no search on the site, or you don't provide episode numbers for the Podcast apps, or it would be great to specify the platform of the app you are sick picking. There is no such thing as things in Android. I think We usually say that. I know you're not as cool as iPhone users, but we still exist.

Topic 2 01:50

Website feedback and improvements

Wes Bos

Yeah. Why don't we have a contact? We do kind of have a contact thing, rid but I have contact on my own website, and we get a lot a lot of people asking to come on the podcast rid That are not any way related, to PR companies. Coding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just it's a lot of it is just like This person wrote a book about whatever, and he was the like like LinkedIn type people, you know? Ready.

Topic 3 02:48

LevelUp Tutorials redesign rationale

Wes Bos

They see that we're on the charts and they just want to spam us. But we do have somewe do welcome your feedback on the site because there's there's probably a list of ready. Forty things that we wanna change about the website and and the the player and and search and, like, transcripts is one that I certainly wanna do. I'm really about that. I have the code sort of half written on there.

Wes Bos

So certainly would love to hear any of your feedback. The number actually, we should probably start doing that, the numbers in the podcast app.

Wes Bos

Rid So putting the number in front of the show, is probably a good ideas because if we say, hey. Go out back to episode 499, You wanna just could do a quick search on

Scott Tolinski

whatever. So, yeah, we should do that. The only way to do that right now is on the website. I I put this in here because I do feel like we are contemplating a, you know, a large amount of different improvements here and there to the website. So That's definitely on our brains in terms of this. Contact us. A Svelte site. Svelte site. Yeah.

Wes Bos

I I want to do it in Svelte. I think rid It would be really cool to redo the world in my heart to hear you say that. Man, I'm no. I I've said it a few times, but, like, rid. I'll say it for the record. I am all in on Svelte.

Scott Tolinski

I think it is the best. It's so much fun. So, yeah, we're we're working on this stuff. Rid know about a contact us form because, like you mentioned, we we get enough contact I get enough contact already through various means, and I think what it would it would just end up as, like, a re Unanswered inbox unless we have somebody, like, working on filtering that for us.

Scott Tolinski

We we too we busy. That's, something that happens here. If you go to westboss.comforward/contact,

Wes Bos

I have what I feel like is a very good contact page, which is a list of all of the common things. And then at the very end, I give you a list of, 2 ways to contact me.

Wes Bos

One of them goes through my assistant. And then finally, I show I tell you how to, get in touch touch with me. So I feel like that's a pretty good Approach.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Alright. Next question is from Mike Adams. He says, thank you for the show. I'm a back end .net developer Listening to stay informed of the front end world. Thank you for representing.

Scott Tolinski

I almost never code it, but I read it very often. So, Scott, One thing that amazes me about LevelUp is how many times you have rewritten it.

Scott Tolinski

I have not list I have not listened to all of the podcast episodes, but I think you have rebuilt it maybe about 42 times. Honestly, I'm jealous.

Scott Tolinski

Obviously, you are the boss, and you decide what's important, and you make that happen. Are there others involved in the decision making process? Rid. And, the answer is yes. There are others involved in the decision making process, and I can tell you that they are frequently not happy with my decisions to do things like that. So, rid. I'm jealous because of my company struggles over and over to stay the course to rebuild Our legacy systems.

Topic 4 05:18

Rewriting systems and APIs

Scott Tolinski

We start, but then something else comes up. I understand the company has to make the right decisions To keep on bringing in money and to be profitable so I can be paid and support my family, I'm grateful for that. I'm jealous That you are able to rewrite level up 420 times. Can you talk about how you made this decision to do a rewrite? Can you speak to why the business needs this? Finally, can you talk more about the approaches you use to migrate to the new system? Specifically, I'm wondering If you used the strangler fig pattern or the all at once approach, ready. Thanks for the show. I look forward to level ups 4,000 rewrite.

Scott Tolinski

Strangler Fig. I'm gonna have to Google No. I I don't I don't think I used that unless I did by accident because I don't know what that is. Strangler I hope I'm saying that correctly. The strangler fig pattern rid Was introduced by Martin Fowler as a way to manage risk when modernizing or rewriting large monolithic systems. The pattern rid. Is an analogy for the type of plant that begins life as a vine growing alongside an old growing alongside an older established tree. So I think I probably have done this a little bit by accident.

Topic 5 06:57

Transitioning LevelUp to new tech stacks

Scott Tolinski

That's kind of what I do. I I basically, I start my rewrites or redesigns or anything like that For the most part, in terms of, like, moving part of the system, moving new parts of the system, having small little bits, Small little new vines while maintaining the trunk and then eventually migrate the trunk itself. That said, I do wanna clear up some things because I do think it is a little, I I think from listening to me, you can hear the fact that I'm I rewrite things a lot. But in essence, LevelUp Tutorials has existed as a website For just about 11 years now, it's a it's just, over ten and a half years, soon to be 11 years.

Scott Tolinski

So over those course of 11 years, I've only done for essential rewrites of the code base. That is it was originally built on Drupal, and the Drupal site rid. Was essentially an importer off of YouTube. I had a YouTube videos, and it imported those videos off of YouTube to just try to give me some SEO juice.

Scott Tolinski

So that not necessarily the same site or system. Right? The the same essential code base that I'm using ready. Day was started from my meteor based website.

Scott Tolinski

And then the meteor based website, I had 2 different websites. I had a store, And I had a subscription streaming service.

Scott Tolinski

And it actually just started as a store and a streaming service, and eventually I wrote the subscription service, And then I eventually migrated them together. Why? I should have just done them together in the 1st place. Then, you know, Meteor, the writing was kind of on the wall that I had rid migrate off of Meteor, so I wrote it in React and GraphQL.

Topic 6 08:17

Evolving subscription model

Scott Tolinski

The reason why I did that, it was a fairly easy migration at the time, rid. Because, you know, I had actually in my Meteor code base, my UI layer was already written in React. So I guess the first or the 1st iteration should be seen as, like, React plus Meteor.

Scott Tolinski

So I was just essentially changing the data transport layer. Right? I'm moving things from node functions rid over WebSockets to a GraphQL API. And now this last transition wasn't just felt kit. Honestly, my site Being the fact that it was a a UI written as a UI and a GraphQL API, I I I really wanted a more unified system to get access to SSR and all that stuff. So my choices were moving to Next. Js, which would require Barely substantial rewrite or biting the bullet, having a more substantial rewrite, and just saying, hey. You know, I wanna, like, stay in a system that'll stay on for a long time. So in in reality, over 11 years, 3 rewrites doesn't feel like as much as what it may seem like now. Some of the things you may hear me talking about is I moved our our JavaScript to TypeScript, which was a thing. Right? That's a that's considered a rewrite. Re I've done 4 major CSS redesigns, one of which was the Drupal site. So 3 major redesigns of the CSS from the site. So, Yeah. I I can't necessarily agree that I'm constantly rewriting it, but it is part of my personality, and it's probably part of my ADHD ness, and I Do not recommend it to you. So I promise to y'all, I will not be doing another major redesign or rewrite or anything.

Scott Tolinski

And every single time I made a choice like this, it was for a fairly important reason.

Topic 7 10:16

Intentional tech decisions over time

Scott Tolinski

Now this latest redesign was because every other version of the site that I've designed, I've designed myself, and I haven't necessarily designed it From the perspective of somebody who's coming at this with a lot of data or understanding of, systems and funnels in a way that could, like, lead people to, You know, subscribe or or want to check out or or just want to use the site more. So what we did is we brought in, for the first time ever, a third party designer, my My friend in, Travis Nielsen, who's been a guest on the show before, actually, he he works at Google. He works on YouTube Music. Rid. He he's worked on a whole lot of great stuff, very talented to designer. And one of the cool things that we sat down with the Travis was like, here's here's the issues that we're facing, and He took a look at the site layout as a whole as a way to how can we facilitate what we want user behavior to be instead of, like, oh, just make it look ready. Pretty with purple, which is kind of what I was doing before.

Scott Tolinski

He took it away, an approach. It's like an actual designer taking a look at this thing. Rid. So, I mean, we could probably do a whole podcast episode on talking about this redesign and what it means to be. But, you know, Every single time it's been done, it's been done with intention.

Scott Tolinski

And there have been major issues or reasons why we need to redo it. And I promise y'all you won't be hearing me say this Again, next year or the year after. I'm I'm I'm done with redesigns. Let me tell you that. Yeah. My my course platform has never been, like, a full redo.

Wes Bos

It's been more just adding features, refactoring, and I don't know. Right now, we're doing, like, a slow move to TypeScript, which is basically Yeah. Have all the tooling, everything, some base types that are being generated from the database in place.

Topic 8 11:45

Incremental TypeScript adoption

Wes Bos

And then anytime you touch something, it gets refactored into TypeScript, and it's kinda it's kinda nice. It's it's a nice way to to go about it, not doing a huge one, but as we need it. Rid and then I think at a certain point, we'll turn off the allow JS flag and then be able to to go all in and have to do a a couple of days worth of work to make sure everything is nice and tight.

Wes Bos

With my personal side, definitely have done that more over the years, which is Alright. Time to blow it up. Let's, time to blow it up. Yeah. Let's do a brand new one.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. You know, it's a TypeScript rid thing I could definitely recommend that that type of way if you're not, like, committed to, like, having a a solid month of hell. Like, when we did that, it's, like, whatever rid The file or component you're touching, just make sure when you leave it that it's TypeScript and that it has tightened 0 TypeScript errors. And then that was, like, a a nice, like, slow way to do it. Now granted, there's some bigger situations where you go down some rabbit holes of rid. Types and having to, like, make some bigger type situations. But Yeah. You know, it's not all the time. Yeah. We did that. That was the same thing with, Like callbacks. I had a sync JS callbacks. The entire

Wes Bos

the entire platform was written with that because a sync await was just not a thing when when it was written.

Wes Bos

And then it says, okay. Now we're moving to promises in a single way. Every single time that you touch something, it gets refactored out. Rid and at a at a certain point, we said, okay. Like, let's let's drop this entire dependency.

Wes Bos

And I I went through and and refactored, I don't know, 6 or 7 more that I just hadn't At a certain point, there's just code that is just working, and it just works forever. So you have to explicitly go in. But I think we should probably do, like, a rid. A show on

Scott Tolinski

moving to TypeScript, like, moving bigger code bases over to TypeScript rather than just, like, from scratch because it's Certainly a bit of a different beast. It's a different beast. Totally. Alright. Next question here is also from Mike, say Mike. Mike rid. Says loving your episodes. Thanks for helping this back end developer see more of the front end world. To that end, in your Dino supper rid club episode, you talked about Wes's site having a score.

Scott Tolinski

You all breezed right over what you were talking about. So could you pass rid The dish back around for seconds. How did you get this score? Is 100 the best? What is the goal of rid. What is the goal or minimum, and how often do you monitor it? As a side note, last year, my my son has just recently learned about essentially, like, Things being out of a 100.

Scott Tolinski

So, like, he'll look at our iPad, and they're like, it's at it's at 99. That's almost 100. And my kids go check yeah. Woah. That's 101. Percentage. Yeah. Our kids have learned percentages from the iPad battery. It's from the iPad. Totally. Yeah. Ready. So, Wes, what was the score? And,

Wes Bos

this is, so, yeah, sometimes I forget, like, we shouldn't just assume people know everything. So this is a tool called PageSpeed Insights. And basically, you put in a URL, and it will scrub your website. It will load your website. It'll analyze all the, Things like how long does it take to paint the 1st frame to it and, how many CSS rid. Files are you loading and are your images compressed or not? All these types of things. And then out the other end, it comes out with a score, which is our performance And accessibility, best practices and SEO score, that it will give you at the other end. And Ryan rid Just dogged me and said I had like a 52 or something like that. And I ran it right after he said that, and I had like an 87 or something like that.

Wes Bos

Ready. So it's it's a good way to, some people are just like religious about the score, and Just like crazy over it. And anything less than a 100 is is more. And usually those types of people have like an h one tag that says, hello, my name is Whatever, I'm a developer and links to their GitHub.

Wes Bos

But it's it's a really good tool for figuring out like it doesn't just tell you the score, it tells you why the score Or is maybe not ideal.

Wes Bos

And ideally, what you can do to fix that type of thing. And it's up to you as the developer to be like, rid. Okay. I can fix that or yeah. And that's I need that stuff. You know, I can't just take everything out,

Scott Tolinski

to make it a 100. Yeah. This is something that's, again, important, but, you know, what matters more is, you know, using the site using the site at Slower speeds or 3 g network or whatever.

Scott Tolinski

Actually, feeling like what it it feels like. Because at the end of the day, ready. What truly matters more than a number score is what the experience feels like to use for those users who rid. Maybe getting, you know, less performance experience or whatever more so than, hey. I got a I got a 99 on this website, whatever. So rid. Yep. Have you run your, your new your new site through it? I'm not the the mobile scores aren't great, and the desktop scores are fine. Rid. I got I got a 20 on mobile.

Wes Bos

Oh, yeah. Mobile

Scott Tolinski

Desktop, 82. Oh, what a difference. Holy. The, desktop, I know. But I for desktop, I get I mean, for both, I get good SEO and good accessibility scores for both, But performance, less so good.

Scott Tolinski

I'm getting 76 on desktop and a whopping 23 on mobile. I'm getting dinged for my hero video that I have, and the hero video probably is causing some of that. Also, it looks like I have rid. Properly sized images. 2 of my images are coming in at way bigger than they need to be. So Oh, that's easy fix. Easy fix. And you know what? For those of you out there, it might be like, how do you how do you launch a new redesign and not have it be perfect down here? Hey. Part of the rule is you get it working, then you you know you. Rid. Yeah. Whatever, and then you get it as fast as possible. Like, for me, like, do it getting it up. Do it do it good. Do it fast. Yeah. For me, it's like getting it up, rid. Then making sure all the edge cases have been found and whatever.

Scott Tolinski

And then, you know, next month, I'm going to hammer on some perf rid Stuff, and and they'll dial this down. But it's good enough right now. You're loading the,

Wes Bos

syntax RSS feed.

Wes Bos

In on the home page. Yes. 7.5 megs. The feed is? Yeah. You we have API. You should use API. So, yeah, obviously, like, I stuff to do. I have not I've not really run the site through the page speed insights. I'm going to be be upfront about that because, yeah, you got you. Sometimes you just got to get a launch, man, like this. At the end of the day. Like, you don't have an extra you literally didn't have an extra 2 days to to do all this type of stuff. Right. You need to get it up because you had Black Friday to get it going for. Yeah. And now I will I will be number 1 getting rid of that RSS feed. This this will make a good video of like, here here is Something that I didn't pay any attention to, and now I'm gonna do it. And here's how I can get it up to whatever at the end of the day. Actually, I did that. Rid What am I saying? Actually. Yeah. When did because I I have a YouTube video years ago I did that. Basically, it's like, I my page speed is awful. It. Let's go through all of

Scott Tolinski

the suggestions that it has and see how high it can actually get it. Yeah. Some of these are super easy fixes, too, considering I'm using Cloudinary. It's just going to be like attack on the URL. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Easy.

Wes Bos

Alright. Next 1 we have here is from, concerned citizen.

Topic 9 19:36

Improving site performance

Wes Bos

Where will we all go when Twitter implodes under its new management. I love going on Twitter Twitter to interact with the web dev community, and keep up to date with the latest tech trends. But with everything That is changing. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a mass exodus or if it all shuts down with Rocketman at the helm. So I put this one in here because I, rid there's there's a little bit to talk about in terms of, like, of what's going on. I, obviously, probably both of us, rid Love Twitter. I think it is an amazing, super valued community.

Wes Bos

I have gained so much in my career from it, and it is very weird. Like, I've been on Twitter for probably since 2007, however many years that is, probably 15 years or something like that.

Topic 10 20:10

Value of Twitter community

Wes Bos

And, it's very weird to see it now in a place that has become very, political. People think that your use of rid Twitter is endorsing something or not, whereas, like, I'm just standing here being like, I just wanna learn some CSS.

Wes Bos

You know? So that's that's a bit unfortunate. That said, I don't think Twitter is going anywhere. It's not gonna go anywhere. Like, it rid I I don't I certainly, there's lots of weird stuff going on at Twitter, and certainly it seems like there's lots of, rid. I think very silly decisions being made. But the guy Elon Musk, I know people don't like him, but he like he's not an rid. Absolute idiot that this thing is going to burn to the ground and there's gonna be nothing left. Even if it does, somebody the carcass of this website rid Will be worth a very a lot of money, and and so maybe somebody else could pick that up. I don't even think it is gonna go that far, from it because of how valuable that type is. Certainly, I have lots of qualms. TweetDeck is not. There's lots of spam on there, but I don't think it's going anywhere.

Wes Bos

Rid. But a lot of people are saying, like, yeah, Mastodon is is the place to go.

Wes Bos

And the developer in me thinks, yes, distributed, rid Self hosted.

Wes Bos

You could send poll requests to it. It's just idealistic in my head. Absolutely everything.

Wes Bos

But the rid. Type of person in me that understands social media, I I don't think that that's it's gonna be it. Yeah. What do you think?

Scott Tolinski

I mean, this is the same thing as, like, I just If it when I use Mastodon, I just think this can't be the thing that takes out Twitter. It doesn't feel good enough to me. And, You know, whatever that is is probably going to be a web based platform. Right? You see some of these ones pop up that their mobile iOS, Android app only, whatever. I don't think that's gonna work. I think you need something that can be used on the web, something that is as versatile as Twitter.

Scott Tolinski

Do you know what, Wes? I could've never seen Myspace disappearing right before Myspace left us. So, you know, to me, I don't I don't wanna say that Twitter's not going anywhere because it certainly does suck.

Scott Tolinski

It sucks more now than it it did rid. Prior to, the Musk ownership, the the paying for Twitter thing, I think, is just, you know what? Like, paying for the check mark, I think that was Terrible idea, and I think we saw Hilarious. Yeah. Why that was a terrible idea very quickly.

Scott Tolinski

I will personally not pay for Twitter. I, You know, I would I would much rather not have a check mark next to my name than pay for a check mark next to my name. That is I would I would pay to not have a check mark next to my name before I paid for a check mark next to my name. What would you pay for on Twitter?

Wes Bos

Because that's a that's something I I I bought Twitter Blue the 1st day it came out. I said, here I am. I'm a power user. I'll pay all day long for Twitter.

Topic 11 23:24

Thoughts on Twitter Blue subscription

Wes Bos

And, like, the editing a tweet, Helpful.

Wes Bos

Every literally everything else, not not helpful to me. And, like, I'm a I'm a power user. I use it like I said. What what would I do? I would pay for TweetDeck to not suck that. Okay. So that's exactly what I would pay for. I would pay for tools that allowed me

Scott Tolinski

to categorize, manage my My message is better to, save and and bookmark tweets better in a way that's, like, organized and able to be found. Search your DMs. Search my DMs. Rid. If if I could have, like you said, tweet deck, that was great.

Scott Tolinski

I would pay for it. That's something I would pay for. And I think a lot of, like, social media brands would pay for that type of thing too. But the whole $8 a month for nothing and a blue check mark to me is, like, I cannot bring myself to be to live in a world where I would I would pay them to do that.

Scott Tolinski

I yeah. I I agree with you though that I I I think a lot of people look at the dumb choices that Elon Musk has been making, and they say, oh, this guy's a dummy.

Scott Tolinski

And I think, realistically, I don't think he is. I think he's a lot of things that are not good, but I don't think he is dumb. And I don't think he's I don't you know, whether or not the choices he's making are are rational or whatever, I do think he's probably got a little bit more going on behind the rings then.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. What people would like to give him credit for. And he's playing a little bit of chess that we don't He's probably understand everything. Yeah. And he's rid. He's gonna wield this thing like it's a political tool and whatever, and I you know, it's I don't know, man. I I could see it going either way. I honestly, I don't hold rid Any attachment to Twitter beyond the fact that it has been a great place to find new information and to meet great people, rid. If that will never leave. That community if that community square changes and it's all of a sudden, you know, flip flop or whatever, I'm not going to

Topic 12 25:29

Future of social media communities

Wes Bos

care. Yeah. Where where that Exactly. Tone. Yeah.

Wes Bos

The smart people sharing cool things will happen somewhere, and where that happens doesn't matter. We will go there. We'll go somewhere else. And, quite honestly, there's there's a lot of kids on TikTok right now that are not On like, I can tell by doing I'm I'm, like, 50 videos in on TikTok right now. I can tell that there's a lot of people on there that don't set foot on on Twitter, anymore. So, like, the next Twitter is not going to be a crappier version of Twitter. The next Twitter is going to be some other rid form that surfaces surfaces interesting content to interesting people, and, ideally, without having to, Like, build an audience. You know? Like, that that was one thing about Twitter is that people spend the last 10 years trying to gain a following on Twitter to rid. Be anyone significant. And, ideally, it would be like Google. It's good information. Just surfaces to the top. Yeah.

Scott Tolinski

Okay. Rid. What about if you were going to be building the next Twitter and you wanted to go ahead and just throw something up on a virtual private server somewhere? Where would you do that? I would host it on Linode rid. Linode.com

Wes Bos

is where I would host my own.

Topic 13 26:41

Mastodon as a Twitter alternative

Wes Bos

Actually, there you go. If you do wanna do Mastodon, You could just use the $100 in free credit that Linode is offering you, and you can literally host your own instance of Mastodon. That rid is something I've been thinking about is that, like, that is kinda cool that you can host your own instance of this thing. Rid So if you wanted to host it or more likely you, the web developer, wanna host your Node. Js application or your PHP app or rid Or something like that. Linode is the perfect spot for that. You're gonna wanna check it out. Linode.comforward/ syntax. A $100 of free credit When you sign up with that link, thank you, Linode, for sponsoring.

Scott Tolinski

Sick. Alright. Next question is from Jared.

Scott Tolinski

Jared says, how did each of you arrive at your business model? Rid. Subscription versus one time payments for courses. What are the pros and cons of each approach? Okay, Jared. So I, I came across my business model, basically, because it it evolved out of the idea of having a YouTube subscription.

Scott Tolinski

You know, my core strength is producing a lot of content fairly quickly. Right? I, for a long time, was putting out, like, 250 videos on YouTube a year, Which is where I really learned how to make tutorial videos. Right? So for me, I I took the idea of saying, like, alright. Well, well, I have these YouTube videos, and I'm not going to stop that. So what's a way that I could, take some of that pressure off of YouTube ads, which were decreasing all the time, and monetize it in a way. So I had what's essentially like a pre Patreon version of a Patreon where you could subscribe to my website, which was just my YouTube content, but You could get it without ads, and you could save the videos. And, it was just like a nicer interface, and it was organized and things like that rather than, Having to pay for exclusive content. Well, it turns out that when you give a lot of content away for free online, nobody wants to pay for it even without ads or any of that stuff. So I I kind of evolved that into alright. Now I'm going to have a course out that's only for subscribers, and and that drove our subscription numbers up from, re we're we're very small to much higher. So for me, it's an evolution of where I ended up. And if we're talking pros and cons, the the pros rid. That it's a little bit more predictable.

Scott Tolinski

You know, I can see when I have subscription accounts renewing. I know who renews when and what the total numbers are, And I know what to expect month over month in terms of there isn't going to be any shocking, decrease in subscribers granted, You know, there there could be a mass exodus or something like that. But for the most parts, I don't have to really go rid As hard in terms of, like, you know, really planning out, are this this course release has to sustain me for x amount of months. I'm more or less getting that month over month, or reoccurring revenue. Cons are is that I have to really rid. Focus on putting content out constantly or have someone available to be putting out constant, content. Because if If you're having content that's behind a subscription with the idea that there's new stuff all the time, you better you better have new stuff all the time, and it better be good. So, rid. Yeah, that's the pros and cons for me. Yeah. So I do the opposite, which is release single courses

Wes Bos

on their own on their own domain name, whenever I have a a course release. And At the at the time I started, everybody was doing like, Rails Casts was the big one.

Wes Bos

And then everywhere there's Lara Casts is another big one, and then there was Peep Code. And It seemed like there was a 100 people trying to start the same, like $5 a month for unlimited,

Scott Tolinski

whatever, you know? Mhmm. I actually based mine off of of,

Wes Bos

Railcast. That's what I based mine initially. So same idea. I was like I was like, I'm not going to be able to compete with that, And to be able to churn out this content every single month.

Wes Bos

And I'd rather be doing These large single purchase courses that I can spend like my beginner JavaScript .com course, it took me over a year to build it. Rid. And I was like, I want to have the course for learning JavaScript. Like, it's there's obviously lots more ways to learn JavaScript, but, like, I want to have people be like, how How do we learn JavaScript? Here is a course to learn JavaScript. Like, that's it. This is the entire course to that you can use to learn it. You don't have to string together a whole bunch of different resources together. So, it kind of just like started as a single product. And I thought I'm going to keep doing that rather than move. And a lot of people told me like, no, you should be Switching to the other way or like, why are you putting on it own every course on its own domain name? But now here we are 10 years later.

Wes Bos

There are lots of people. Even even Egghead has started doing what I'm doing for a lot of people because they say, well, Why would I do a course for you when I can just do what Wes is doing and release it out on my own? Which is not true. There's a lot more than just recording rid course to to sell something. But, yeah, that's that's kind of my thought behind the the single course sale

Topic 14 31:30

Benefits of standalone course model

Scott Tolinski

process. And I've I've been really, really enjoying it. Rid. Yeah. I should also point out that I, at one point, did attempt to transition into, single course releases before I made the plan to do, like a, like a premium content hidden behind the paywall thing. And Yeah. I failed so hard at it because I chose the worst possible topic. And I I I think I could have had success if I would react native.

Scott Tolinski

I spent, like you said, a long time.

Scott Tolinski

I recorded this Ultimate React Native course. It was super long. It was super in-depth, and it was super good.

Scott Tolinski

And not only did it not sell well, but the content became, like, invalidated very quickly because we have native moves really quick. Also, React Native is so finicky that I was getting a ton of customer support, emails Because, you know, people are hitting very just typical normal things in a React Native context. Oh, all of a sudden, we're getting errors here or there or whatever.

Topic 15 32:53

Challenges of standalone course model

Scott Tolinski

And these are the types of things that if you work in React Native, you know, you just stop and restart it, whatever. But, like, when you're trying to learn it and all of a sudden, you're hitting some weird errors or you got some Weird platform things. The next thing you know, something changes the API substantially.

Scott Tolinski

It just about ruined me for about a whole year. I was So upset about it. It's the only way I could describe it.

Wes Bos

Yeah.

Wes Bos

That's a good question. Next one we have here from Westcott Balinski.

Wes Bos

Did I tell you the color I painted my office is called Westcott Navy? No. No. Ain't that amazing? Their fault. It's got Westcott Navy. Everyone I I never forget it. People like, what's it called? West Scott Navy? It's West Scott Navy.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. Oh, man. That's so cool. I could not tell you what mine is, and it's Mount Westcott Navy.

Wes Bos

Actually, I wonder what the hex code is. Wes I have a read. Website, bm.westboss.com,

Scott Tolinski

has every single Benjamin Moore color. Did you name that BM on purpose? Was that intentional?

Wes Bos

Okay. It gets a little laugh every now and then. Anyway, it's a game.

Wes Bos

I wanna get into rid. Freelancing or have my own very small web dev company, to not to try to work for the man for the rest of my life. Oh, good for you, Westcott Belinsky.

Wes Bos

Rid but I have some concerns. Is it a good idea if I already have a career dev job? I'm also worried if I enjoy rid. I'm also worried if I'd enjoy the work if it's a stack I don't prefer, as much as that is needed. Rid I enjoy JavaScript and TypeScript stack full stack much more than anything else. It is just a reality that I would need to face, rid Or is it possible to pick and choose projects especially when just starting out? Also, I'm trying to reason in my head why a client would hire more rid of talent here in America where I'm from and not cheaper, but still very talented accessible devs elsewhere.

Wes Bos

Rid Is losing gigs to cheaper rates a real concern? Alright. There's there's a lot to unpack here.

Wes Bos

Should you go out on yourself, out on your own? Rid. For a lot of people, they try it and they hate it because it's you gotta run a business as well as do the coding thing. For a lot of other people, they've really enjoyed it. I did it for probably rid 6 or 7 years of of my web development life where I I did freelance, and I worked for all kinds of different companies, and I very much enjoyed that.

Wes Bos

The stack was always different. I was always jumping into random different stacks that were premade and and whatnot, and, I feel like I have a very good appreciation for different approaches because of that. Often, you talk to people that are like, rid Oh, nothing but the latest x, y, and z, and everything else is garbage, and I would never I've never do that. Like, that is not Possible in the real world. You have to work within the confines of whatever the stack is. You can't rewrite everything from scratch every 5 seconds.

Wes Bos

So you have to be okay with with that. And that's something I see in senior developers a lot more than I see in junior developers is just Being like, okay. Well, these are these are the tools and the choices that are made. How do we how do we go from here? How do we work well within these constraints, or rid Are some of it possible to to to choose? The thing about the America versus elsewhere, certainly a concern, but, you are running a a business here, and it's a lot about who you are and if people like you, to to hire you. Right? It's not just about, like, how much do you cost? I'm gonna hear go here and and chip away at this widget for the next 10 hours.

Wes Bos

There's a lot more to that. Right? That's that's the reason people pay lots of money for web development when you could likely find a very talented person for, A third of the cost. So, you really have to work on that aspect, which is your personality, how you communicate with people, how you're able to Understand business problems and and show how you could solve that and turn that into code.

Scott Tolinski

Networking.

Wes Bos

Yeah. Networking, all of that good stuff, shaking hands, kissing babies.

Wes Bos

Yep. So if you are if you rid want to write code by yourself without being bothered, it's probably not for you. But if you literally think you can help rid. Businesses and other other entities with their whatever problems they have because you can write code, then I would say so. Rid. Yeah. Yeah. I agree,

Scott Tolinski

on all of that. And and I tried it too. It wasn't for me. I did some freelance on the side. I never tried to do it as my full time gig, But the communication stuff was too much for me, really, like, having to be my own manager of all of those things and do the tech. And I was doing the designs and just doing, like, everything to me. I preferred just getting, a project dumped on my plate and say, hey. Get it done by this date. Rid I I greatly preferred that. So, you know, it is different definitely different personalities that are involved there in terms of, like, what works and what doesn't. You know, also, like, too, like you mentioned, picking the right tech for that. I had such the biggest problem with that in design when I was, rid I'm doing freelance work. I would get, like, really fixated on, like, a design or a design style that I wanted to follow, and then I'd get a client and be like, oh, perfect Time to do this design style, and it would be, like, not enough contemplation in reflection on is this rid. Perfect for this client. Right? Picking the right thing. Oh, I I just have always wanted to try the style of that design. Now it's a good time to do it. Right? And the same goes for tech. Right? Re Where where you will have to make a choice in terms of, like, what is the tech that, works well for you and what doesn't. Now granted there's probably ways you can you know, whether using, like, Ghost instead of WordPress for blogs and things like that, you can tailor things to be a specific way. Rid. But it there is some responsibility there to make the smart choice.

Topic 16 38:52

Transitioning to freelancing

Scott Tolinski

You know what else? There's some responsibility to make the smart choice in solving your bugs too.

Scott Tolinski

And with one of our sponsors, Century, you can have this tool that sits in your stack that reports bugs to you. It's like a little hall monitor that says, hey. There's bugs ready. I found some bugs, and these bugs are affecting, you know, a 100 users. And you should probably look at this because, rid. If you notice, this number is pretty high of how many people this is affecting.

Scott Tolinski

And you could see that nice and easily on century.i0.century.i0 is a really great rid tool for having software that works well because you can understand exactly what's happening.

Scott Tolinski

You can find what errors are existing.

Scott Tolinski

If there are things you need to take a look at right now or if there are things that are maybe a one off situation, you can also find out if there's a regression introduced. Maybe, rid. You have a new thing.

Scott Tolinski

I see 1 in mine right now. It's affected 1 person that says invalid time value.

Scott Tolinski

I kinda feel like Maybe a date's coming in as null or something, and I gotta figure that one out. So, it's only affecting 1 person, but just came in today. So I'm gonna hop on that thing. And, I hit I I take a look at my Sentry just about 247.

Scott Tolinski

It's one of those tools that I really, really need in my life. So if you want a tool like this to Save your bacon anytime you have any sort of code that people are using. Head on over to century@century.io.

Scott Tolinski

Use the coupon code tasty treat, rid All lowercase and all one word, and you will get 2 months for free.

Scott Tolinski

So thank you so much to Century for sponsoring.

Wes Bos

Alright. Next question from Hugh Montso. I've been developing for 20 years, and I still don't feel senior.

Wes Bos

Does anyone else feel that way? I'm great at my job, and I can get things done, but I don't feel senior.

Wes Bos

That's that's a that's a good question. This is half of a coding question and half of a therapy session.

Wes Bos

I I find it funny. I don't know if I would consider myself senior or not, but I've been coding for 16, 17 years now, and I feel like I can get most rid Stuff done. I feel like one of the things that makes me feel senior is that I'm able to Be okay with not understanding something.

Topic 17 41:08

Traits of senior developers

Wes Bos

Be okay with I don't I literally have never tried that library before. But, rid being in a spot where I say, I know I can probably figure it out if if I haven't. Like, I know enough of JavaScript and encoding in general that I probably can figure out x, y, or z, and I think that that's probably where most senior people are is that being able to rid to do that. What what do you think, Scott? Yeah. It it is a lot of what defines a senior dev comes, like, per organization

Scott Tolinski

In terms of, like, what what do they consider a senior dev? But it's also in your brain, like, what does a senior dev do? So, yeah, I guess you kinda gotta get past that. Rid. You know, I became a senior dev when my boss left his role, and they promoted me into his position.

Scott Tolinski

So at that point, it's suddenly like, oh, you are the senior dev. What does that mean? Well, it means I gotta do all the things that he used to do, But that is a very different senior dev position than what may exist very much probably elsewhere. Right? I mean, it's it It really comes down to, like, what in your mind is a senior dev supposed to do, and why don't you why don't you feel that way? Because, You know, chances are you could be doing all of the things that a senior dev does somewhere else, and maybe it's just updating that your your brain Updating that software in your brain to say, you know what? I am I am the senior dev.

Scott Tolinski

Developing for for 20 years and you still don't feel senior, I mean, you're probably just working on code problems. And a lot Times, what happens is is senior devs end up getting more managerial sides of things, and you end up getting rid more responsibility in that way. Maybe that's why you don't feel it.

Scott Tolinski

But at the end of the day, I think for you, if you want to feel more like a senior dev, rid. Just for confidence reasons or otherwise, what would be helpful for you would be to identify what Characteristics you think a senior dev has that you're lacking and just gain those characteristics or start doing that stuff.

Scott Tolinski

As a as a 20 year developer, you probably Have quite a bit of seniority where you are, where you can just start declaring things as such.

Scott Tolinski

And you are the senior dev. You you have A wealth of knowledge. Right? So just just, again, think about what it is that makes a senior dev in your mind and figure out how you can get those things.

Topic 18 43:30

Gaining confidence as a senior dev

Scott Tolinski

Read. Next question here is from Kyle.

Scott Tolinski

How do you manage notifications between various apps that are installed on your devices? Rid. I have Imessage and email and other apps, multiple devices, and I feel like it's an uphill battle to manage this stuff.

Scott Tolinski

I'd love if you had any frameworks, 3rd party tools or mental models on how you handle notifications sincerely and easily distracted developer who has to eventually snap out of a flow state. Alright. Here's here's my rule for notifications. I have them all turned off just about all the time.

Scott Tolinski

You know, I I'd leave my Imessage rid. On after 9 to 5. So 9 to 5, I have my, like, work notification set up. Now I know Nick was upset that we were just talking about Ios stuff. And I understand Nick. I was an Android user for a very long time. But in iOS, you have these focus, states now where you can say do not disturb is more than just do not disturb. You can have rid work or sleep or whatever. You can have all these new different focus states, and they sync across devices.

Scott Tolinski

If if you're out there, I use these things like rid Crazy. I have them scheduled. They turn on and turn off different times. So for me, like, during my workday, my Imessage notifications are turned off unless I explicitly turn them on. That's not to say that I want them off all the time. Sometimes I do need them on if I'm expecting a call from my wife or something.

Topic 19 44:38

Notification management strategies

Scott Tolinski

You know, I'll turn them off. But for the most part, my default is almost always turn off all notifications.

Scott Tolinski

I absolutely never Want to get a notification from a social media app? Never.

Scott Tolinski

I do I do I do not want you notifying me for any reason. And email's sure, but even then, I I can check my email on my own schedule. I can determine when to do that. I'm a big boy.

Scott Tolinski

So for me, I I I re Always venture into turning off all notifications except for calendar notifications.

Scott Tolinski

I would like a button that makes calendar notifications larger, so that I do not miss appointments.

Wes Bos

I have a policy or process where notifications rid are just handy. And if I miss a notification, it's not a big deal. Like, I don't have to process them. Same thing with tweets. Rid I I dive into the Twitter stream when I see it, and I don't worry about the stuff that I miss. And same thing with my downloads folder is my, anything in my downloads folder, I should be able to delete my downloads folder at any time, and there should be nothing important in my downloads folder. And if if If it is important, you gotta you can move it out and process it somewhere. So, that's good.

Wes Bos

I also don't have notifications on for literally Any social media applications.

Wes Bos

I don't get a lot of Imessage notifications. Just pretty much just my wife, a couple other people here and there, some family and friends.

Wes Bos

I have my do not disturb set to turn on when I am recording, just automatically. I hit a I hit a key on my keyboard. It starts recording and turns do not disturb on, and I find that rid To be very helpful so that they don't accidentally go, oh, what was that? What was that? Right? That that's about it. It's just stop caring so much.

Wes Bos

I guess, like, there's you have To, I guess, have, like, Slack.

Wes Bos

If you work on a team, you have to have those types of things on, but, rid Fight back. Fight back for your time. Fight back for your being able to, not be distracted because then you are going to produce

Scott Tolinski

Really good stuff at the end of the day. And schedule that time. Schedule work time for yourself if, you know, if your company It's like calendar based, and people are looking for open time in your calendar or whatever. Go on do not disturb or go on, like, unscheduled work time and and shut that stuff off where you absolutely can with the ability to have maybe overrides if somebody needs to override somehow or Or ping you directly or whatever. You can tell your coworkers to say, hey. I'm gonna be on do not disturb, but send me a ping rid or like a at if you really need me. Otherwise, I'm going to be like heads down in my work and just turn off all other notifications.

Topic 20 47:06

Scheduling focused work time

Scott Tolinski

Well, you you talked about your files and stuff last. Here's an app that I like and I used for a little bit, but I haven't I didn't buy it, and I I'm actually regretting that now. I think I'll I'll buy it, And it's called Hazel. Have you ever heard of this app? I think so. Yeah.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. This is basically an a small app for Mac that rid Sits there, and you set up rules.

Scott Tolinski

Like, is this a photo in my in my downloads folder? Automatically move it to This folder within my photos folder, is this a this on my desktop automatically do x, y, and z? Delete this every few minute. Like, clean up my file system. So So it's a really cool app. I like that idea of automating those types of systems.

Topic 21 48:27

Hazel for automated file management

Wes Bos

Have you I wonder if you can do this in the, shortcuts app now. I wonder if you can. Yeah. You probably you know what I need? And this just makes me so mad all the time is freaking iPhone has a HEIC, and whenever you airdrop a photo from your phone to your desktop, it is the rid Hike. And I get why it is, and I I'm not gonna turn that off. People are like, oh, just turn it back to JPEG. No. I like I like all the features of it. But except for the fact that I can't use that photo, I I can't just drop that into a

Scott Tolinski

into anywhere. Literally can't use it. The worst part for me was when I had an Apple Support call, and they're like, can you take a picture of this? I'm like, I took a picture, and I'm like, your chat does not support your own image format. What am I supposed to do? Like, I have to convert it now before giving it to you. It drives me nuts. Like, if if that's a format we're gonna use, like, let's update the world to to use that. Yeah. Rid Yeah. Anyway, so

Wes Bos

I I I made like a right click.

Wes Bos

You can right click convert to JPEG.

Wes Bos

I made like a a rid What is that? What's the Mac automated or something? Yeah. In action. Yeah.

Wes Bos

And it works great, but I I hate having to click it. Rid so wouldn't it be cool is if a HEIC file drops in my downloads folder, immediately convert it to rid. And a p and g. Do that. That that seems like it would be a a minor improvement in my life. Yeah. Right.

Scott Tolinski

That's what it's all about. Right? Just enough minor improvements. I I actually did recently, West, I took your idea of those, like, small little tubs, Tupperware tubs, or whatever for night. I was doing that last night. And, man, my, storage area looks really nice, and I got all my cables organized. Oh, good. It's like since I'd since I'd sick picked that, I've had, like, 3 or 4 times where Caitlin comes in and says, I need a splitter. I need a cable to charge this thing. And I'm just like, well, rid. I could just roll back, open the door, and I have literally everything. It's so nice. I love it. I need my whole life to be that organized. I know. Honestly, I need a label maker now because I didn't have any masking tape. So I, like, put everything in its tubs, and then I, like, was like, Oh, wait a second. I had to open all these tubs to figure out what's what? Because I got, like, frosted tubs.

Topic 22 49:57

Dealing with HEIC image formats

Wes Bos

Oh, yeah. So rid Let's talk about label makers for just a second. Is Let's do that. You actually I I have 2 just, like, regular label makers. Like, you you put the rid Tape in and it prints it out.

Wes Bos

But now they have you know how I have that, like, label printer for, like, shipping labels, And it's Yes.

Wes Bos

So but they sell tiny little thermal, papers now. Yeah. But they're but it's not just paper, but, like, it It has, like, a glossy top, and they're just tiny little thing. And you can type in your phone because that's the thing I hate about label makers. Like, you have to use the keyboard there. I was like, I rather just type it in my text editor and send it to the label maker.

Topic 23 51:27

Label makers for organization

Scott Tolinski

So I'm been looking out getting one of those. It's called a rid. There there's, like, 800 of them on Amazon right now that I just since you said that I'm looking at them. There's, yeah, there's there's, like, a standard

Wes Bos

rid 1. And you can buy, like, fun stickers. Because also, like, our kids, we put, like we buy these labels that say boss kids, and we put them on all their water bottles and everything like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This would help with that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about that.

Wes Bos

I wanna get they're like $50.50

Scott Tolinski

or so? At twenty 23, 26, 20 set. What what's it called? One I'm looking at right now is

Wes Bos

Jaden's, j a d e n s, rid. Label maker. There's there's, like, a big one out there that is has, like, tons and tons of labels for it, and I was like, I want that one.

Wes Bos

Rid. Nimbot. Nimbot, n I I m b o t.

Scott Tolinski

And it's like a handheld thermal printer. It doesn't have the, like, oh, this looks very similar to the The other one I was looking at is, like, the exact same. I think it's yeah. Oh, that's fun. Yeah. I kinda want this. Maybe if I could just ask for this. Yeah.

Scott Tolinski

Re Here's here's a fun story, Wes. When I used to work at Target when I was 16, I worked at Target.

Scott Tolinski

And rid. They left the label maker unattended, next to the walkie talkies, and, it was like I don't know why I chose to do that. I I had, like, a bunch of, like, Target pranks, Like like like, non harmful pranks that I was doing while I worked at Target. Yeah. And one of which was, like, naming the walkie talkies.

Scott Tolinski

So, like, every single day, you know, there's, like, 40 walkie talkies. Everybody employees got 1. You just pick 1 out. You sign it out, whatever. And every single day, I was in the, The back part where you sign in, I would look at the label name, and I would just, like, write a name, like, any sort of name. Like, a name of Preferably, if somebody who did not work there, like, you know, Michael or something. Yeah. And then I would print it out, and then I would stick it on one of the walkie talkies. Rid. And I eventually named, like, half of the walkie talkies, and then they had to they couldn't catch me. That was actually the the one big thing. There's no cameras there. They if they had to send out a message, it was, like, whoever is naming the walkie talkies, can you please stop naming the walkie talkies? That did not stop me. I continued to do it. Oh my gosh. There was no way they could catch me. It was very funny.

Scott Tolinski

Another what is another I had another, funny thing. I was, submitting really bad poems to the Target newsletter, the employee newsletter under a pseudonym.

Scott Tolinski

Rid. Intentionally bad just to see if they would publish them, and they did every single time. And I feel like I was just wanted to know what other people reading those poems were thinking. Meanwhile, I was just, like, looking at it and just, like, being, like, oh, this is so funny. I can't believe they published this to the, like, what, 20 target employees reading this thing. Alright.

Wes Bos

Rid Just a little sidetracked there. Let's talk about FreshBooks, one of our sponsors today. They got a new offer for you, an exclusive offer. You get 90% off rid for 4 months. You can also try it for free with no credit card required at freshbooks.comforward/syntax.

Wes Bos

What are they? They're the ridiculously easy to use, simple rid and intuitive cloud invoicing, expensing, time tracking, project management, payments, reporting, accounting, rid. All of that good stuff. It's awesome. I've been running my own business on it for 11, 12.

Topic 24 54:29

Freshbooks cloud accounting

Wes Bos

I didn't even know since I started business as a baby.

Wes Bos

You're gonna wanna check it out, freshbooks.comforward/syntax.

Wes Bos

Thank you, FreshBooks, for sponsoring.

Scott Tolinski

What are some This is a question from an anonymous user. What are some people using it to test their node apps these days? 99% of the time, you're gonna see Jest, g rid gest.jestjs.i0.

Scott Tolinski

This is like the de facto node testing library of days there, you know, in the past, there's been many others.

Popular JS testing frameworks

Scott Tolinski

Vite test, v I t e s t dot dev, is kind of a up and coming Option here because it uses ESM. It's super duper fast. It uses NodeVit.

Scott Tolinski

It's very rid Good. And in my opinion, it's really easy to swap out, or at least it wasn't our code base. So you wanna talk about rewriting things? I just swapped

Wes Bos

rid From Jest to v test with, like, not even changing anything, so I got faster tests out of that. Yeah. We we tried to move to v test, But we still have a bunch of common JS and Vito. Yeah. Very much like it will not work. So if you have 1 single dependency that is common JS, it won't work, unfortunately. Expect a pain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Other ones, mocha, chai, tape, those are extremely popular rid Still, in the node world for for running tests, and they all they all pretty much just do the same thing. They they're just test runners. Right?

Scott Tolinski

Rid Yeah. You're just you're kinda just swapping performance out at the end of the day Yeah. More than anything else. Like, v test, like, you're like, oh, what's the

Wes Bos

rid Why would I use the test over? Literally nothing. It's faster. That's it.

Topic 26 56:28

Vitest for faster testing

Wes Bos

Yeah. It's it is faster. It uses the entire, rid Jest API. It's exactly the same. So you literally just take all of your Jest tests and plop them in over a v test.

Wes Bos

Alright. Next question from Clem asks rid From London, what are your thoughts on the TANSTACK router? I'm not sure if I should use it over React Router v six, with types from an e commerce store.

Wes Bos

Seems like it's inspired by a mix of interesting sources. TRPC, Remix, Shakhani, And next, yes, what's sh shakani? Is shit. An artificial narrowing turn or road on an auto. What's this?

Scott Tolinski

Rid Chicane. Chicane? Is that how you say it? Chicane?

Wes Bos

Probably not what I said.

Scott Tolinski

Chicane. Google just told me the pronunciation of Chicane. Simple, Safe router for React and TypeScript.

Wes Bos

Oh, that's cool. So I use in my personal course platform, I use, rid. React location, which is, I think, the router before the 10 stack router. We had him on the podcast. We should probably have him on again because it seems like he just rid He he just he doesn't doesn't flop. He just releases amazing stuff all the time.

Topic 27 57:19

Tanstack router overview

Wes Bos

But I use React location in mine, And it is fantastic. It's a really simple API, really nice to use.

Wes Bos

And then it seems like he's taken that and made it ready. Next step, which is, it's language agnostic, which you're starting to see that a lot, which is just like people are building rid Things that work in JavaScript.

Wes Bos

And then there are a Yeah. Thin layer of adapter for All the different frameworks. So there's an adapter for React for this. This is the Tansack router seems very, very early. All the docs are or half the docs are to do and and coming soon.

Wes Bos

But it has 1st class search params API. That's something that always bugs me is you have to pass the query param into the URL search parameter and then, like, parse it out yourself. That always annoys me. Like, do that for me, please. I know it's standard, but on.

Wes Bos

It has a this is really cool. A 100% inferred TypeScript API, meaning that and I honestly think that this is how a lot of TypeScript libraries are going to work in the future is you just use the you don't type anything, and rid. You have a 100% type safety because of all the inference, which means that, it will it knows what the types are without you having to explicitly type them.

Wes Bos

And then it it just says building caching, suspense like route transition, file splitting. I so I think this is a really neat, high level router that knows about things like code splitting, fetching data, caching, and whatnot.

Wes Bos

So Would I use it? It seems pretty early. I'm not sure that I would, bet the farm on it just yet. But knowing the track record of the stuff that, Tanner Lindsley puts out, I would probably say it's going to be very good. Yeah. I I'm with you. You know, I'm here for options here. I I do think it's probably

Scott Tolinski

is good and going to be good. I just don't have any room for it in my life. If I'm going to be writing a React site today, I'm picking a remix Ten out of 10 times.

Scott Tolinski

If I'm going to be writing a site that I don't know, well, maybe what front and front, I won't be picking Astro. I don't know. Astro remix to me are where it's at.

Topic 28 59:49

Preferred frameworks and routers

Scott Tolinski

But in all honesty, I'm probably picking SvelteKit no matter what, anyway. So It seems great. Has a router in in in, you know, power to those people out there who are gonna be using it. I just probably have no room for it. So he also rewrote React Query to be

Wes Bos

just TANstack Query, which is a, yeah, TypeScript safe, same same idea, ready. Works in in everything, and I think that's really cool because like if I was building a like a complicated Svelte rid site. Maybe I might try to use this because I have nothing but good things to say about React Query in my own application. If you're using SvelteKit, though, you should probably just use their rid Data. Use their button 1.

Topic 29 01:00:15

Tanstack Query overview

Wes Bos

It's good. It's good.

Wes Bos

Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So, yeah, well, we should have him back on. He's got all kinds of I'm just looking at it here. React read. Charts, virtual UI for scrolling large lists, a table. Yeah. He so he has this company called what's What's this company called? Nozzle. Nozzle dot io, and it's just this huge, like, data heavy thing, and he built this amazing table. I've seen it before, rid I guess he's open sourced that. Cool stuff. Cool stuff. Alright. Let's get into sick picks

Topic 30 01:01:12

Scott's label maker sick pick

Scott Tolinski

and the shameless plugs. I'm gonna sick Pick a label maker that night.

Scott Tolinski

Let's see here.

Scott Tolinski

I'm gonna sick pick something that was my Black Friday buy. Rid Do too much Black Friday shopping, but I got a smart controller for my heat pump And my my little AC unit that's in my office here.

Topic 31 01:01:20

Scott's thermostat automation

Scott Tolinski

And, man, everything that's existed in this space before was costing, like, $300. You had to, like, screw it into the unit itself. And so I got what's called the Sensibo Air Sensibo air.

Scott Tolinski

And it's essentially just like an IR blaster for a a thermostat rid That are are like a heater cooler, and it works with a shocking amount of these things. It works with so many different ones, rid. And I can set better schedules. I can control it from my phone. I can, you know, have it be influenced by my whole rid. Smart home automation stuff that I'm doing with Home Assistant, but it also works with any of the other ones, like Apple or whatever.

Scott Tolinski

And it's, rid. You know, they start at, like, $70, I think, for the for the cheapest one with, like, the least amount of features. But I was shocked at how easy this thing was to set up. I essentially just pointed rid. My remote edit, I clicked the button, and then it configured it.

Scott Tolinski

And it's been very, very good for me, and I'm hoping that it saves me on some heat costs rid. Being able to configure my, like, office temperature a little bit better in terms of, like, if I'm in it, it will set it to the rid. Seventy degrees if I'm in my office. And if I'm not in it, let's just, let this thing get real cold.

Wes Bos

That that is cool. I'd love rid. When things could be made smart without having to buy a new version of something, you know, like and it just just uses IR rid and hooks into it. And it's it's like it's re really just affordable compared to any other option that existed before. So it just popped up out of nowhere for me. Rid I'm going to sick pick something that you told me about. It's the re we crashed, TV series.

Wes Bos

Rid Yeah. It's a 8 episode.

Topic 32 01:03:22

Wes's WeCrashed show pick

Wes Bos

They're all an hour long, so it's hell of a series to watch.

Wes Bos

On It's not a documentary.

Wes Bos

It's literally just a TV show, but it goes through the story of WeWork.

Wes Bos

Rid and I was, like, kind of familiar with weed work here and there, but not I and I I I know that they had some IPO troubles, but, like, I was not up with the whole story of it, and I was fascinated. I don't watch TV very much at all. Maybe, Like, a 20 minute half hour show every night.

Wes Bos

But, man, I was watching 2, 3 hours of this thing a night, and I was just couldn't wait to get the kids in bed to rid. Keep watching it. It's very rare for me to find a TV series that I I actually like. So it's called We Crashed.

Wes Bos

Fan rid Freaking tastic. I just loved it so much. Yeah. I I loved

Scott Tolinski

we we talk about the manifesting thing. We talked about that one of the episodes here, rid. We do we do say that all the time. I'm manifesting a really good week this week, and it's it's,

Wes Bos

and the characters in that are great. The acting is great. Everything is great about it. Yeah. Rid I loved it so much because as I was watching, I would be able to just open the Wikipedia page of these people and just read about them. Like, these are real people of it. People are in this and, like, obviously, it's probably played out a little bit, but outrageous. That whole startup funding

Scott Tolinski

rid Thing is is just a crazy world. That guy just got a bunch more money too from somebody else.

Scott Tolinski

Really? Somebody they're like, people just cannot rid. Stop giving him money.

Wes Bos

But, like, and, like, he he ended up making it out. Like, it's just no. There's not spoilers because it's known, but he ended up making it out with a ton of money. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And and then somebody is just like, hey, how about we we give him

Scott Tolinski

more money?

Wes Bos

Rid This guy.

Scott Tolinski

Just crazy. It's just Wow. Yeah. It's just all personality.

Wes Bos

Oh my god. Yeah. Good one. Check it out. It's called We Crashed. Definitely. That's if you need to watch something over the holidays, I would say Alright. I'm going to shamelessly plug level up dot video. It's, rid

Topic 33 01:05:33

Scott's LevelUp plug

Scott Tolinski

LevelUp Tutorials website where you get access to a ton of awesome video content tutorials. We have a new course on SvelteKit, and I'm I'm doing, like, a big SvelteKit course, where it's gonna be broken down into several parts to cover all sorts of different aspects. Maybe you're working with a DB. Maybe you're working with super bass. Who knows? Rid. It's, the first of those is out, and it's all fundamentals SvelteKit, stuff. And let me tell you, I built The site on SvelteKit. I know what I'm talking about here. So if you want to learn SvelteKit, head on over to level up dot video. I'll Shamelessly plug westboss.comforward/courses

Topic 34 01:06:09

Wes's course plug

Wes Bos

for a list of all the courses I offer.

Wes Bos

Beginner javascript.com if you wanna learn how to get rid Very good at JavaScript. Use a coupon code syntax for $10 off any of the paid courses. There's a bunch of free ones on there as well. Well, I'm gonna thank you. Thank you, US. Thank you. I appreciate it. Alright. Peace. Peace.

Scott Tolinski

Head on over to syntax.fm for a full archive of all of our shows.

Scott Tolinski

And don't forget to subscribe in your podcast player or drop a review if you like this show.

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