Chats with Kent C. Dodds

Latest Episodes:

Funding Open-Source Maintainers Using Ethical Advertising With Eric Berry Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

It's challenging to sustain open source projects, a lot of time and energy is poured in without any compensation in return. Eric Berry created CodeFund to give developers who are finding it difficult to justify putting their time into open source projects a means to get compensated.

Open source today is not the same as it was five years ago. Ninety-six percent of all web apps are using open source. The web relies on it. Sixty-five percent of all projects have only one or two maintainers, and their work is providing value to a lot of companies and people. Maintainers having the option to be compensated benefits not only the maintainer but also everyone who relies on the project.

Advertising is a scary word these days with big advertisers tracking people across the web and gathering their data. CodeFund doesn't use third-party trackers and doesn't collect data from the developer's audience. Advertising doesn't have to be evil, it can serve a good purpose if it's used correctly.

Creating Successful Mentor Relationships With Emma Bostian Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

Emma Bostian launched codingcoach.io, a free, open-source project that connects mentees with mentors. Emma discusses how she launched Coding Coach before she had a real database. It's better to have your product out there than to sit on it until it's perfect, you can always iterate.

Mentoring doesn't just help others, you improve your teaching skills, and it also just looks good to be a mentor.

Mentees should respect a mentor's time since they are doing it for free. When asking someone to be your mentor briefly describe where you're currently at, and some tangible goals that you want to work towards.

Mentorship doesn't strictly have to be a one-on-one relationship with someone. You can mentor people through content creation as well. Blogging, recording videos, writing books, and giving talks all teach people.

Often people's goal with their mentor is to be ready for the technical interview. Many companies are wising up to the fact that someone's ability to write algorithms doesn't correlate with their expertise as a front-end developer.

Homework

Kent advises to keep your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills sharp, learn the abstractions you are using so you can talk about them intelligently.

Resources

Guest: Emma Bostian

Twitter: @EmmaBostian
Website: emmaBostian
GitHub: @emmaBostian

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com
Twitter: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: Kent C. Dodds
Epic React: epicreact.dev

Make Your Apps Resilient UsingFinite State Machines With David Khourshid Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

In this episode, David Khourshid gives the rundown on how finite state machines can make your app more testable, more resilient to bugs, and easier to refactor.

David's initial interest in finite state machines stemmed from his background in music. With music, there is a universal notation that crosses genre boundaries. David thought what if there could be music notation for logic? Well, it ends up people have been trying to figure this out for the last thirty years.

A finite state machine can only be in exactly one state out of a limited number of possible states. The machine can transition to another state through explicitly defined events.

David also chats with Kent about extended finite state machines, how state machines can be used to simplify integration testing, the differences between xstate and redux.

Homework

Take whatever feature you are working on and model it out in your head as a finite state machine

Resources

Guest: David Khourshid

Twitter: @davidkpiano
GitHub: @davidkpiano

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com
Twitter: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: Kent C. Dodds
Epic React: epicreact.dev

A Rundown Of What's Next For React With Dan Abramov Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

What's next for React? In this second interview with Dan Abramov React's direction is discussed along with overviews of exciting new features.

Dan gives a great rundown these incoming features. React suspense is going to provide a baked-in solution for the problems that async data fetching causes with component rendering, and concurrent mode is bringing non-blocking rendering. Further insight is provided into what problems sparked the need for these new features and why they were the chosen implementations.

There's also discussion on React Fire modernizing React DOM, JSX v2, if React is a framework or a library, what React is intended for, and React's end-game.

Resources

Guest: Dan Abramov

Twitter: @dan_abramov
Website: overreacted.io
GitHub: @gaearon

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com
Twitter: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: Kent C. Dodds
Epic React: epicreact.dev

Realigning Your Model of React After Hooks With Dan Abramov Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

In this episode, Kent and Dan talk about the ways in which you'll have to reconstruct your mental model of how React works in order to get the hang of hooks, and how hooks more closely align with React's intended model.

React has made multiple attempts at figuring out a way to share state between components. Mixins, higher-order components, render props, and now hooks. Dan Abramov walks through what went right and what went wrong with each of the implementations prior to hooks. None of these implementations lined up with React's model, they were too indirect, or too limiting.

Classes didn't properly fit in with React's component model either. Components don't use inheritance, they aren't ever instantiated, you don't call methods off of them. Dan explains how Components are more like a stateful function, and how Hooks are a closer approximation of this mental model.

Resources

How Are Function Components Different From Classes?

Guest: Dan Abramov

Twitter: @dan_abramov
Website: overreacted.io
GitHub: @gaearon

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com
Twitter: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: Kent C. Dodds
Epic React: epicreact.dev

Establishing Your Personal Brand With Cassidy Williams Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

Cassidy Williams is an engineer at Codepen. In the last five years, Cassidy has worked for five companies. She had left each on her terms as she learned through experience what she wanted and didn't want. Figuring out what you like and what you don't like is critical for ending up somewhere that you're happy with, Cassidy calls this establishing your personal brand. The term "personal brand" has negative connotations to it, it seems unauthentic, but really what it means is figuring out who you are and making that public, it's as authentic as you make it.

Kent challenges you to take five minutes and write down what you like and what you don't like. Afterward, reflect on that list and ask yourself if where you're at now lines up, if it doesn't dig deeper into figuring out how to make the necessary changes for your life to align more with your likes and dislikes.

Resources

Boundaries

Guest: Cassidy Williams

Twitter: @cassidoo
Github: @cassidoo
Website: cassidoo.co

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Website: kentcdodds.com
Twitter: @kentcdodds
GitHub: @kentcdodds
YouTube: Kent C. Dodds
Epic React: epicreact.dev

Growing Your Skills And Career Through Teaching with Ali Spittel Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

In this episode, Ali Spittel, a software engineer and developer advocate at Dev.to, joins us to talk about how excellent teaching can be for not only the people who are learning from you but also for developing your skills and your career.

Teaching is one of the best ways we can teach ourselves something. It requires you to build an understanding of the subject matter strong enough to explain the material to other people and answer questions. "At some point, you tell a computer what to do, and it does it. It's really predictable. If you tell it to do the right thing, it's going to do the right thing without failure." As you may know, giving instructions to humans doesn't end up being so straightforward, even if you explain something perfectly, mistakes can still be made. It's a challenge to understand the material from multiple angles to accommodate different people, but it's excellent for solidifying your understanding.

Ali challenges you to write a blog post! It doesn't have to be long. Kent C. Dodds will write articles that are only a few paragraphs. Even if no one reads it, you still took the time to learn something and grow.

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Guest: Eric Berry

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Homework

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Guest: Emma Bostian

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Homework

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Guest: David Khourshid

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Dan Abramov

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Dan Abramov

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Cassidy Williams

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Ali Spittel

Kent C. Dodds

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Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Chats with Kent C. Dodds

Resources

Guest: Eric Berry

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Homework

Resources

Guest: Emma Bostian

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Homework

Resources

Guest: David Khourshid

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Resources

Guest: Dan Abramov

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Resources

Guest: Dan Abramov

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Resources

Guest: Cassidy Williams

Host: Kent C. Dodds

Resources

Guest: Ali Spittel

Kent C. Dodds

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