Chats with Kent C. Dodds

Latest Episodes:

Lydia Hallie and Evan Bacon Chat About Leveling Up Your JS Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

The JavaScript ecosystem is vast and solves a wide array of problems. Because of this, it is key that you have a foundational understanding of JavaScript if you want to be able to work across the JS spectrum.

It is also helpful to know the layers of abstraction that are going on. Become familiar with what comes with the browser like the navigator API and what comes with Node like file system or assert. If you can understand these parts then it becomes easier to know how to use JavaScript in whatever context you are in.

Inspiration is the most important thing when learning to code. Do what excites you. Without that fire, you are going to burn out when things get difficult. Try to build whatever sounds fun to you, and see how you can incorporate what you're trying to learn into that. Afterward, you can learn a lot by trying to optimize your project!

Always strive to gain a deeper understanding of your tools beyond their applications. When you read specs and source code you'll become more familiar and be able to write much better code.

Homework

Take 30 minutes to dive deeper and try to understand how a tool you use works under the hood.

Titus Wormer Chats About ECMAScript Modules Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

It's time to embrace ESM (ECMAScript Module). NodeJS is providing support for ESM out of the box. With ESM modules coming out of the experimental stage we're going to see a lot of packages begin to embrace it.

ESM provides superior organization of your code by allowing you to more easily create smaller, reusable chunks of code. ESM gives you a "module scope" where not only are functions and variables available to each other in the same module but also allows you to explicitly make them available to other modules. There is also the Loader API that is currently in its experimental stages.

In this episode, you'll also learn about more differences between ESM and CommonJS, and some of the challenges and potential problems of using native ESM today.

Homework

Follow along with one of the following blog posts:
Super Simple Start to ESModules in Node.js
Super Simple Start to ESModules in the Browser

Resources

Guest: Titus Wormer

Twitter: @wooorm
GitHub: @wooorm
Website: wooorm.com

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

Titus Wormer Chats About Natural Language Processing Tools Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Titus Wormer does a lot of work with natural language processing. He is the creator of Retext, Remark, and many many more open-source projects.

In this episode Titus chats about his extensive open-source work, and goes a bit deeper into his ecosystem of natural language processing tools and plugins. You'll also learn about abstract state trees and their practical applications!

Homework

Play around on astexplorer.net
Follow along with Kent's blog post - Write Your Own Code Transform for fun and profit

Resources

Sponser Titus on Github

Guest: Titus Wormer

Twitter: @wooorm
GitHub: @wooorm
Website: wooorm.com

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

Will Johnson Chats About Landing a Job in Tech Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Will Johnson used to work for call centers and factories, but he managed to make the daunting career change into tech. This especially isn't easy when you're clocking in 12 hour days. To make time to grow Will was waking up early, staying up late, and doing stuff on weekends.

"It was very, very time consuming, but it was one of those things where like I knew if I got that one chance that all of this would be worth it."

In addition to building up technical skills, networking is absolutely critical for landing a roll.

"I knew that I had to network and meet people in the industry to advocate for me, because I knew that my resume wasn't going to have anyone beating out the door saying, 'Let's hire him.' Right? But as far as the process of building relationships was completely organic. There's not any strategy or networking books I've read. I just knew that taking people's advice, sharing things with them that they might find interesting, and following up with them was a good way to nurture a relationship with someone."

"Growth hacking" style networking is disingenuous and suboptimal. It's about building genuine trust and relationships with people. When you have real trust, there won't be fear when they take the risk of referring or hiring you. To build those relationships just help people out without an expectation of something in return. Chances are you might be the person they think of when they need a podcast guest, a role needs filling at their work, etc.

Homework

Find somebody who has a need, and try to fill that need, whether it's on Discord or Twitter or wherever, without any expectation of reciprocation.

Resources

How I Switched Careers Into Tech With No Degree In My Mid 30's

Guest: Will Johnson

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

Ryan Florence Chats About Remix Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Modern web development has given us a cornucopia of powerful abstractions. But as we've moved to higher levels of abstraction Ryan has noticed that we are reinventing the wheel in places, especially with what the browser provides by default.

Remix aims to solve this problem. Remix is trying today's benefits of a highly dynamic page, but still have that same feeling of simplicity that we had with PHP.

The whole point of Remix is to emulate what the browser does so that you don't need those full page reloads, but programmers get to just develop with the same mental model as if there was no JavaScript on the page

As you use Remix what ends up happening is that you accidentally become a better web developer as become a lot more familiar with the browser's abilities.

Homework

Spend an hour or two reading the MDN docs on HTTP

Resources

Ryan Florence: Embularactymerbone JSConf2014

Guest: Ryan Florence

Twitter: @ryanflorence
GitHub: @ryanflorence
Website: ryanflorence.com

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

Cher Scarlett Chats About The Consequences of Modern Software Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Web development isn't as simple as it used to be. We can't view the source of any webpage and be able to recreate it anymore, it's all bundled and obfuscated. That increased complexity comes from the increasingly larger role that the internet is taking on in our society and the need for our websites to do more than display static information.

The growing role of software in our society has had its consequences. Addictive design, and biases being built into software waste people's time at best, but also have the devastating ability to ruin lives. In this episode, Cher Scarlett brings awareness to these issues and recommends some books that you can read to educate yourself further.

Homework

Read one or more of the following books
Race After Technology
Technically Wrong
Algorithms of Oppression
Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

Guest: Cher Scarlett

Twitter: @cherthedev
GitHub: @cherscarlett
Website: cher.dev

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

Joel Hooks Chats About Standout Developer Portfolios Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Landing your first developer job isn't easy. Companies don't want to take the risk of hiring a junior, they have no idea how competent you are. A traditional resume doesn't adequately prove your abilities.

Why would they just take your word for it? In order to standout you need to show those hard-earned skills off!

You need to publicly showcase your work. That doesn't just mean spinning up a fancy blog or linking your Github full of tutorial projects you followed along with. Tutorials are excellent for personal growth but they don't prove that you're capable of applying that knowledge elsewhere. It's all about proving your skills are valuable to a business.

This doesn't mean that your site has to be boring though! Showcasing your practical skills might be the most important thing but you should still make your site your own. You are more than the sum of your skills and you are also communicating your interests and personality through your website and portfolio

Homework

Spend 30 minutes to assess your own portfolio. Figure out what it's communicating about you and ask yourself if aligns with what you want to communicate. Try to see if there is anything missing from it.

Resources

Guest: Joel Hooks

Twitter: @jhooks
GitHub: @joelhooks
Website: joelhooks.com

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

Maggie Appleton Chats About Creating Effective Visual Metaphors Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Almost everything we experience in the world we experience through metaphor. Even when we talk about abstract things that don't have physical form, we talk about them in terms of directionality and bodies.

Stock markets go up, our moods are low, and past years are behind us.

So what makes this useful to us on the internet? Strong visual metaphor is really key for people understanding things. Capturing someone's attention is critical, and you want people to immediately understand what you're trying to tell them before you lose their attention.

If communicating to your users more effectively is something you're interested in, in this episode, you'll also learn about Maggie's process for creating, illustrating, and effectively using visual metaphors on the web!

Homework

Spend 10 minutes brainstorming metaphors for a website that you want to build or something else that you're building right now.

Guest: Maggie Appleton

Twitter: @mappletons
Website: maggieappleton.com

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

Michael asks Kent about his site rewrite Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Kent's spent the last several months completely focused on rewriting his website, recording new episodes for Chats with Kent, and creating an all new podcast called the Call Kent Podcast.

Michael Chan joins Kent to ask him about the motivation to rewrite kentcdodds.com with Remix. Kent explains what technology he used to create the unique experience on the site and why Gatsby falls short of the needs of most apps. Michael also asks about the new teams feature of kentcdodds.com and how it helps you get more out of the content.

Kent also introduces the new Call Kent Podcast where people like you "call" in right in your browser and record a ~2 minute question or discussion topic. Then your recording and Kent's response is turned into a podcast episode. It's a fun new way to engage and participate in the greater KCD community.

Lots of exciting stuff to unpack in this first episode of Season 4 of Chats with Kent!

Homework

Stay Curious
Checkout remix

Guest: Michael Chan

Twitter: @chantastic
Website: chan.dev

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

Tanner Linsley Separates UI State And Server State May 19, 2020

Show notes

Tanner Linsley is the creator of react-table, react-charts, and react-query. Tanner also has a startup called nozzle.io where they track rankings in Google and do cool things around technical SEO.

A lot of Tanner's libraries were born out of necessity at nozzle. We often reach for abstractions that were built to solve problems that we don't have and that ends up creating awkward problems for us. We wind up with poor performance or a bigger bundle size than we need, so having a custom made solution can be a good thing.

Your UI state is not the same as your server state and they should be separate things. By keeping these types of state separated from each other you can simplify your app. Server state is different enough in structure, persistence strategy, consumption, and lifecycle to be managed in smarter systems that are configurable to an apps needs of data freshness.

Homework

Take inventory of your state. What is UI state and what is Server state?

Resources

react-query

Guest: Tanner Linsley

Twitter: @tannerlinsley
Github: @tannerlinsley

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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

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Guest: Lydia Hallie

Guest: Evan Bacon

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Titus Wormer

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Titus Wormer

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Will Johnson

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Ryan Florence

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Cher Scarlett

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Joel Hooks

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Maggie Appleton

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Michael Chan

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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Guest: Tanner Linsley

Host: Kent C. Dodds

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