Keeping Up With The Fast and Furious Web

Welcome to Syntax. In this episode, I'm gonna be talking with Scott, all about keeping up with the fast and furious web because things are constantly changing. It's hard. It's hard out there. It's hard out there. Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. So we're gonna talk about, tips for for keeping up, like, what should you be paying attention to, what should you not be paying attention to, those kinds of things. And before we get into it, shout out to JS Nation because as you can see, we're in wonderful New York City. So big thanks to them, for giving us the space to, to talk about this. New Jersey City. Yeah. Hello? Any keen viewer would know that if you can see the skyline, we're not in New York. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Let's get into it. Yeah. It's so funny giving a nontechnical talk at a conference. I'm typically giving more technical talks. Yeah. And so I I think it was good. I was, gonna be doing the last talk of the day, and I feel like everybody, after seeing talks all day, might appreciate maybe a a less throwing a thousand APIs or library announcements at you or something. So, yeah, when I was developing this, this was actually, like, a a talk I had given maybe, like, ten years ago.

Maybe not that long ago. Maybe, like, eight years ago for the first time. And so much has changed on the web, that so much has changed in my career and my approach. And I was thinking, like, would it be cool to, like, rethink well, my phone just almost bit it. To rethink and reapproach some of those, like, ideas? So I I took, like, a a look at this this idea of, like, man, throughout my entire career, it's been having to learn things as fast as humanly possible and as deep as I can. Right. So that way I can, really be able to express that in a way that, like, people will understand.

And and so that that was really the the approach to it was, like, taking a look at my systems for learning, but not just my systems. Because when I the previous version of the talk was very much like, oh, here are the systems that I employ to learn things fast.

And that was well received.

But when I started diving into it, I realized that it's it's not just since I started making content that I've had to learn things fast.

It's since I've started working on the Wes. Yeah. Since I started with table layouts and angel fire Bos sites.

So there's, like, a a point in the talk when I'm just, like, listing all of the things that have changed.

And, honestly, it was exhausting to type out and to even, like, think about every little thing that's changed over the course of even, like, five years, six years, seven years, and so on and so forth. And it it was really like, okay. Well, what hasn't changed too? So, that that's really the genesis of this this talk. And yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think I've developed a lot of systems and, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. So, like, when I was,

an an instructor of full stack, we always started off with learning how to learn. Because in this career, you just have you're constantly learning. Like, things are like, you can't just learn how does JavaScript work and then just use that until you retire. Totally. You're constantly evolving. You're constantly having to, learn the latest APIs or or learn the latest,

frameworks or the latest styles and ways of doing things. So maybe, like, what's your your first tip? Or Yeah. Yeah. Let's get into it. Like Yeah. Well, I I think even before I say a tip, I think people often lament the frequency at which things change.

They lament the next library. Now I gotta learn this. The new frame there's another new framework.

Like, I've seen all the comments. I've been on YouTube since 2012. So, like, I know what people think and say about all this stuff.

And I think that one of the key points is, one, you don't have to learn everything that's new, but you should understand why things exist and know that if it will benefit your users or not. Because at the end of the day, the people using your applications are really what matters.

So when you're approaching what to learn, take a surface level view of, is this thing gonna improve my users' lives in a meaningful way before taking that moment to really go deep on something. Mhmm.

Because, again, at the end of the day, the user's experience is is really what matters there. So, like, when I see comments about, like, oh, another new JS framework, it's like, well, you don't have to use it. Right. But, also, like, what if this new idea unlocks, a massive amount of new things for us? And I never wanna, like, dump on anybody's experience of, like, having that attempt to build something that will change things massively for users. So that's tip number one.

Understand why things exist before you wanna dive into if I need to learn this. Right. Yeah.

When you do want to dive in and learn something, I I think one thing that I think often gets overlooked is this idea of learning learning styles. Learning styles, I don't know if you know this, is a controversial topic for some reason. Node doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. I was actually this is a this is a story that I haven't told necessarily before because I don't know if I'm bound by any sort of legal obligation.

There was a company that was attempting to acquire Vercel up tutorials, and I was in pnpm, essentially, like, an interview with this company about whether or not they wanted to acquire us. And the guy I was like, oh, I'm about to go give this talk, and I'm it's a it's a a talking about how, like, I learn things, differently than other people. And he's like, alright. I said it's about, like, learning things fast or something. Okay. And this was back when I first gave this talk, and he was like, oh, that's really interesting.

I'm also doing, like, a talk about, like, learning things. I was like, oh, that's that's cool because this guy wasn't a a tech person. He was like a a business guy. Yeah. And I was like, okay. So, like, he's he's like so so what's your talk about? He's like, well, it's about how learning styles don't exist. And I was like, oh, shoot. Yeah. I'm like, well, I think there's a a hang up around that word or something. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And if I could talk a bit about it because so, like, I have a bit of an education background, like, working as a full stack instructor. Like, we had, yeah, instruction organizers, people

helping us come up with curriculum and and how to teach it. And I think learn the idea of learning styles itself that every person has a specific way that they like to learn, that's a myth because we all learn in different ways. I I think the the right way to talk about it would be, like, sure. I identify more with visual learning versus, like, actual, like, hands on. And these are the different types of learning styles. Like, are you a hands on learner? Are you a visual learner? Do you need to hear it first? But in in my mind, everyone can learn from every one of those things and should be learning from every one of those things. I think that's one of the main issues with learning styles is you don't wanna just focus in on one of those areas because you actually even if you do gravitate towards visual learning, hands on is still great for everyone regardless of, if you like it or if you think it's it's effective. I think, basically, changing modalities really helps solidify concepts because just taking it in one way isn't gonna be the way that you learn that thing. You you have to get it hands on. You have to hear about it. You have to talk about it. So I think that's the main myth is, like, we're not just pnpm. Everyone is kind

of all you might have some preferences, but everyone can learn from all learning styles. Yeah. And and they're they all have some pushback on some of that, but I I I do think, that you are right on many of those aspects. I didn't realize before getting into this that that was such a loaded word Yeah. In terms of, like, the way people perceive that. Mhmm. But let me tell you, like, so you've met my wife, doctor Tolinski. She, when we first started dating, she was in grad school to become a psychologist, and she had to perform x amount of, like, tests. And so she did literally every psychological test, like, known to man to me in our first, like, year of dating.

So she knew what she was getting into. Wow. If according to your if you're watching know it was happening, or was it, like, a slide? Oh, no. Yeah. These are very involved tests. Okay. Okay. They're very involved tests. She gave them to my friends. She gave she was diagnosing people, not, like, literally, but, like Practicing. I just thought that And one of the things that we discovered, through my psychological exams with my wife is that, I I have no IQ.

My IQ is invalidated, by my results of the test because I did really well in some areas and very poorly in others. Yeah.

And some of that is defined by, like, my learning disability, whether that's, dyslexia, or whatever. But my brain does not process written word the same way it processes audio. Right. And I always got on YouTube a lot of comments when I first started that video is really bad for learning. I can't learn on video. People should read blogs. They should read documentation.

They should read the code. They shouldn't watch on like, peep I would publish videos, and people would show up in my videos just to be like, why are you teaching programming on YouTube? And, like, in 2025, we we Node how stupid of a comment that is. But, like, for me, I never understood that because I was like, I need to hear somebody talk it through with me. Yeah. And, honestly, if it was somebody reading the documentation in a nice way, like, I I consume that better. Yeah. And I I do actually when I Wes blog posts, I select and do text to speech because otherwise, I am not, like, physically able to really comprehend it as well. I see. So I I do think our brains do function differently. Now I do agree that, like, having hands on, having the different types of ways that you can learn things are all helpful to have that wide breadth for everyone. Right. But in the same regard, like, if you plop down a a book in front of me and tell me to read this book or if you give me an audiobook, I'm gonna walk away with two very different understandings of that material. Sure. Yeah.

And and so, like, yeah, learning styles as a as a word is, like, loaded in that. Like, it consumes a lot of different intentions other than, like, oh, people have learning disabilities or yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think,

my main takeaway is, like, everyone should try and learn from multiple things even if you have preferences because you will take two things away from it. And, like, the idea of, like, watching YouTube videos, like, that's just step one. After you watch the YouTube video, you have to actually go out and try the thing that you just learned. Like, you you didn't you didn't actually learn it just by watching the video, which is hard to say because we make a lot of videos. We make a lot of videos, but getting your hands dirty, number two Yeah. Very much an important part of the process. I try to get my hands dirty as fast as possible even before I fully, like, understand what the heck it is. So we just interviewed

Evo, Plaza about TypeScript. Right. And the number one thing I loved about type GPU is that they have a massive amount of interactive docs. I can get in there. I can change some values. I can see how it affects visually this thing that's being output, and and that that to me is so much richer of a learning experience than just like, alright. Now I Scott a Npm. Let's get started. Like Exactly. And then maybe the thing doesn't work, and then you're oh, alright. I'm done.

Yeah. The interactive example is, like, in the world of education, it's like this idea of play. Like, it helps a lot with with kids. Yes. Yeah. Because, like, when they're playing, they're actually learning. But when we can go in and change a value and see it immediately reflected in the demos, that's huge for us because, like, that that connects the Scott. Like, okay. Now when I'm writing my own code with this library, that that's what that value is for Vercel just telling somebody what that value is for. Yeah. We we just, Wes and I recorded an episode about, like, like, strudel and some of these other things. It's sort of, like, making music in the browser with chain methods, and it's awesome. And Wes knows nothing about audio, and he was in there and just, like, messing with values and being like, oh, I made a hi hat. Like like, he has no idea what he's doing there, and he was able to get

something, like, real out there very quickly by by playing around with it. That is, like, my number one hack for if you have the focus time to to get your hands dirty and and play that, like, makes such a huge impact on things. That that's always been a a big thing for me JS, especially, when I'm learning something to teach someone else, I will start working on this and start getting into the code without reading docs, without, like, just glancing at things. And then when I hit little hiccups, those are the hiccups that people who don't read the documentation deeply beforehand are gonna hit. Right.

And people miss stuff all the time, especially if they're they're they're looking at the docs. They're gonna miss little things. They're gonna hit a bug. And if you can get out in front of that and learn where all of the edges are ahead of time, you'll Node, obviously, you hit edges, you find the answer. You hit edges, you find the answer.

And that can, like, get you that's obviously not the most optimized way or anything like that, but it it's a good way to understand, how to get yourself out of out of trouble kind of constantly.

Another tip I have for people who are looking to learn things and you're sitting down, you're like, I'm gonna build another to do app. We hear all the time on here about, like, people being stuck in tutorial hell.

Pick a project that is something you actually want in your life and push through that. One of my my favorite things to say is, like, if you're building an let's say I wanna learn zero, zero sync Mhmm. Like, local data syncing software, and you're like, I'm gonna build a to do list because that makes sense. And then you hit an edge, and maybe you can't figure it out.

A lot of percentage of people at that point, depending on how hard of an edge that is of, like, oh, shoot. I'm stuck, aren't gonna have the desire to push through that. And, like, that pushing through an edge there is, like, where so much good learning happens every single time.

And so because of that, like, one of the things I always suggest is really pushing that that project to be something that you you want. I say, like, let passion drive the learning where, like, if I'm building an app for my mom and it's not working and I've already, like, dedicated that energy to be like, my mom needs this app. Yeah. Like, I am going to push through that, and I'm gonna get so much further Deno, especially if you, like, really commit yourself to that idea. Definitely. I completely agree. I mean, that's where a lot of my learning has happened as well is, like, I want something to exist or I wanna solve a problem,

so I have to learn a new library or, like, learn a a new thing to try and make it work. But all the edges that I hit along the way like like you're talking about the edges, like, that's where the learning happens. That's always where the learning happens. Where the learning happens. Like, it's like when you run into pnpm error or a mistake, like, you are gonna internalize more why something went wrong and, like, how you fixed it versus things just working great

all the time. Yeah. I completely agree. Like, in in doing things that you're interested in, like you're saying, you can move move past certain blockers a lot just because you're so you're addicted to that problem. Like Yeah. You're right. That's just a problem you're trying to solve. It's the the learning technology is not a problem that you want to solve ever. It's like, oh, I I I kinda wanna learn how to do this thing. But it's also like like woodworking or something like that. I wanna build a workbench for my my basement.

If that's something I really wanna have, like, I'm gonna learn the tools and techniques I need. But if I'm just like, oh, I think I might learn woodworking. Let me just carve up some wood and hammer it together. Like, what's the point there? Right. So that definitely pushes through. That's something I can always suggest to people too is, like, we live in such a a a time where, like, all these libraries are hyper focused on library specific information, but the the core fundamentals of stuff is cannot be overstated.

Yeah. How important it is to learn browser APIs, to learn CSS deeply, to learn, JavaScript as it is JavaScript and not some library implementation of it, to learn these things deeply. But not only that, like, big concepts. When you're learning right now, a lot of people are learning there's a thousand AI buzzwords and stuff like that, and some people are gonna spend their time learning this specific platform, specific way of doing things. Your time would be way better served learning what all of the big concepts are. Right. I always say it's like learning the stuff that you can take with you because whether or not you agree with this or not, React is not always gonna be the thing. And and and some people disagree with that, but it might not always be the thing. Mhmm. Just like Angular at one point was the thing, just like Backbone was the one and pnpm React is obviously different than Backbone and Angular, but in in terms of where it exists in the industry in terms of the size and and magnitude there. Right. But, like, learning the things that you can take with you from from thing to thing and debugging those core issues, those core concepts, will always serve you well no matter what. And on top of that, like I said, just debugging in general.

And you mentioned it before, like, pushing through those edges where is where you you pick up so much stuff, but it's also where you learn the skills to debug.

Half the time when we're trying to solve a bug, it's just trying to figure out what the heck the bug even is.

Just trying to and so if you can reduce your time defining what the bug is, your your chances are of finding, how to fix it is endlessly faster. Definitely.

Use Century, by the way.

Century.io forward slash, syntax. Sign up for, use the coupon code Sanity treat, and you'll get two months for free. Yeah. Randy, if you could, a plane flying by with a Sanity. Yeah. Yeah.

Just tell Randy to do some, motion graphics here, Sanity in a plane. Yeah. I wanna I wanna touch on,

like, basically, like, seeing through the noise or, like, prank trying to identify which of these things you're trying to learn do have staying power or, like like, what you're you're saying earlier, like, cut cut through the noise. I think that that's one of the hardest parts is Yeah. Determining what should I actually learn and hold on to and not buy into the hype, but at least have something that I can carry with me past the hype. Yeah. Speaking about buying into the hype,

I have a slide that says ESLint dogma. Yeah. Influencers are lying to you for clicks. Yes. Let me tell you, there are so many times that I get an email that from some company wanting to push their thing and and offer some money for me to push it. Yeah. And we don't accept sponsorship on cent on Century.

Perfect timing on Syntax, but we are owned by century. Right? And, so because of that, I get to say no to all those things, which is great. Right. But it's also very interesting to see other folks talk about the same thing you were just pitched Right. Without disclosing it's an advertisement. Yes. And I can see it. Like, you are not you are not being honest with this. And it it is it is kind of shocking sometimes.

And then I'll see those people's opinions then being echoed by people on Reddit or people on Twitter, like, verbatim. Right.

And then it's like, oh, man. That marketing campaign really worked. Yeah. Like, they really hit on that. Yeah. Marketing in the world of dev these days, like, is absolutely crazy. Like and and it's kind of, like, evolved over, like, the past five years or so, but that's another thing that we kind of have to learn and realize what's happening is, like, when are you being advertised to and and when is something being hyped up Vercel when is this, like, an actual staying technology that's, like, foundational and is gonna be used for years to come? Yeah. That's that's another thing that we have to work on and and be aware of. I think something a a good,

test for that is if somebody is saying, like, this is the only way to do things, and it's like a paid product. Yeah. You Node? If it's a paid product, then they're like, this is it. This has changes everything, like, that kind of approach. Now I'm gonna show Svelte all day long, but there's no financial, anything involved in that. Right? There's no I don't even there there's nowhere to yeah. Like, what we believe the framework. Yeah. We like the framework.

And same thing with, like, Vue. Right? I'm gonna say nice things about it all day long. But, yeah, it is something to be aware of, that people who are saying use this, never use this, you only use this, or this is the only way to do things. If somebody says this is the only way to do things, they're they're they're they might not be saying it for financial gain, but they're saying for your clicks because it's not true. So resist that, like Yeah. Dogma of this is the the the cult of this particular library or framework. They're all tools for your users, the users. At the end of the day, they matter. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Cool. Any other tips for us? Yeah. AI. We haven't said the words AI. AI. I know c a CJ we gotta say AI AI for the clicks. No. I CJ has had a lot of great videos about, AI in development.

The thing I will say is that AI can be useful for learning, but used intentionally for learning. Yeah.

Summarize this I read this paragraph eight times, and I don't understand what it's saying. Summarize it. Explain to me like I'm five. Here's a bunch of code. I have no idea what it's doing. But the things that are important is, like, don't trust it. It lies to you. Yes.

It do do not trust it. It will it will tell you all kinds of stuff. But, also, like, you can use it to aid in your learning, whether that is more advanced text to speech, whether that is a back and forth, whether that is using it to compare things that if you're you're giving it this bit of information and this bit of information, compare these two things. So get that information, then validate.

But don't have if you're trying to learn a topic, I'm trying to learn React JS.

Don't go to to your AI tool and say, write this React function for me. You're not gonna learn shit that way. You're not gonna learn anything. So you still, like, not to say that you shouldn't use AI tools or whatever. CJ might say that. But, like, not to say that you shouldn't use those tools, but if you're trying to learn something, it it it's the equivalent of, like, letting your mom do it for you. Right. Like,

you Node? Or hiring somebody to go do your learning. Right. Yeah. What are you what are you what are you gaining out of that? So yeah. Yeah. I think the the the little bit of pushback I have is, yes, AI is good for learning, especially because it takes a lot of work to figure out how to search the web and how to find the answer that you want. And so AI gives us that instant gratification of, like, oh, it just tells me what the thing is. But the pushback I have is that process of searching the web, finding the the answer yourself is something you'll need even when you don't have AI. And before we had AI, that's basically all we could do. We became really good, web searchers. Right? Mhmm.

And that's kind of a skill that's going away with AI because you can just ask it a question and instantly see an answer. But like Scott said, you need to verify it and validate it. So my only advice to you is, start to work that into your workflow. It's like, maybe take half the day and use web search instead of AI Sure. To work on that skill because, you're gonna reach a point in your learning and in the things that you're doing Wes AI can't help you or it doesn't have an answer or the answer is wrong, and you're gonna have to figure it out yourself. But if you haven't practiced actually searching and figuring it out yourself, you're not gonna be able to. Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, like, when we were talking about TypeScript a minute ago Yeah. And they're excellent, examples and stuff in their docs. Let's say there's some new CSS API,

and you can copy and paste the entire MDN page for that API, paste it in the chat GPT, and say, give me a demo with this. Maybe that spits out an example working example, and then now you have, like, yes. We just said, get your hands dirty, write it from scratch. But if you wanna just see something in action and then tweak it, modify it, explore it, and then go and write it for Vercel, you can have a better idea or at least, again, you're exploring, like, in real demos in that way if that doesn't exist. But yeah.

You Node, MDN.

Right? That's instead of Google, just go to MDN. For sure. Right? Yeah. Just start searching for APIs and browsing through them. Definitely.

So with that, let's get into sick picks.

I'll go first, and, analog watches are my my sick pick. Oh, nice.

So, I mean, I haven't called attention to it, but I've kind of been kind of addressed, like, the nineties of sorts.

But first of all, I got this watch, which has a calculator on it. That's sick. You put two watches? I have two watches on. That's a very this is more of, like, an eighties thing to do. Like, two hats, two watches. Yeah.

But, surprisingly, being able to tell that like, I don't even wear a smartwatch, but being able to tell what time it is is pretty great. So having a watch is awesome.

Yeah. Nothing too crazy. And I have two watches because this has Denver time, and this has New York time. So Okay. Interesting. But I'm not gonna wear two watches into the future. Maybe just one. Yeah. The first, agency I worked on had a, like, a wall full of clocks. Oh, yeah. And I Wes, because of where each of their,

because they had just some a couple of remote work remote workers, which is ahead of their time for, 2011.

Yeah.

I always thought that was the coolest thing in the world. I was like, I'm gonna get a bunch of clocks on my wall. Definitely.

Yeah. I'm gonna sick pick. Man, I don't know if it can be stated or not because dbrand is, like, pretty, popular, but this is my first dbrand ESLint. Okay.

Not sponsored.

And I gotta say it was really nice. The skin was nice and applied nice.

I hated all the colors for the new iPhone, so I was like, I'm gonna put a skin on this thing. And then also this is the the dbrand ghost case Wow. Which also is very nice. I I was actually you Node? I don't know if it's something about that brand has always, like, kinda turned me off a a little bit even though I think they are funny.

But JS somebody who's had a lot of phone cases in general and stuff, I gotta say I'm impressed with all the stuff. And the and the process was really good to install it all. So So it's kinda like a vinyl stick kind of thing? Like, there's adhesive? Or Yeah. This is a vinyl sticker, and it's thick.

And you do it with a hair hairdryer, and, yeah, you you get it all on there. And I don't have a I don't have the steadiest of hands. I'm a clumsy ass dude, and I was able to get this thing on with, like, zero issues. So, perfectly aligned. The install instructions were great. There was a good video. And then I even have, like, a a glass a glass screen protector on here, which I never have. Oh. And that install was great. No bubbles. Nice and easy. Nice. So they've really, like, perfected the whole onboarding of this stuff. So,

yeah, I I'm sure dbrand JS, like, needs no help here. But, I was impressed, and I've never bought their stuff. Not sponsored. Yeah. Cool. That's all we got for you. Thank you everybody, for tuning in, and go out there and learn. We'll catch you in the next one. Peace.