Frontend First

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Software How-To
**Frontend First**

A podcast about modern UI development on the web. Hosted by Sam Selikoff and Ryan Toronto.

Latest Episodes:

APIs are about Policy Aug 21, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

1:37 – APIs are about Policy, by Steven Wittens
5:47 – Part 1: RESTless API
49:16 – Part 2: Regressive Web Apps
1:08:19 – Part 3: GraftQL

Links:

APIs are about Policy, by Steven Wittens

Object references considered helpful Aug 07, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

0:00 – Unique keys for lists in React and Ember
8:40 – Why Handlebars feels safe
9:34 – Solving a stale state React hooks bug, and how Ember avoids this via object references
24:29 – ESPN's website and self-imposed technical constraints
28:10 – React in Codesandbox
36:53 – Tradeoffs between "magic" in a framework vs. learning how to wire things up yourself - especially in a fast-moving ecosystem like JavaScript
50:35 – Hooks vs. components, and clarity in boundaries
53:29 – Pairing with Tuple experience

Listener questions:

55:43 – How can you limit FastBoot from turning user-specific bugs into bugs that take down your entire production app? (@davewasmer)
1:10:47 – What's the future of web components? (selbyk)

Sponsors:

TrueCoach, check out their engineering culture and hiring pages

Links:

You gotta feel the pain Jul 31, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

5:26 – Bringing Mirage to a wider JavaScript audience
17:14 – Setting up tests in Gatsby, and why wiring up boilerplate code is not always bad
28:56 – React's children API, MDX, and template imports in Ember
39:17 – How extracting things in React feels compared to extracting things in Ember
42:30 – React's children, and constraints vs. flexibility
1:05:52 – API design, and letting someone feel the pain rather than telling them they can't do something
1:23:16 - Dynamic vs. static children

Sponsors:

TrueCoach, check out their engineering culture and hiring pages

Links:

The burden of high-level APIs Jul 18, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

2:45 – Using Gatsby to build miragejs.com
12:05 – Tradeoffs between low-level and high-level APIs
30:21 – Writing Gatsby data providers, and using GraphQL to query Gatsby's content mesh
41:33 – GraphQL vs. REST is wrong
44:16 – API design
58:45 – What's the best architecture for building modern UIs on the web?

Sponsors:

TrueCoach, check out their engineering culture and hiring pages

Links:

Are staging environments an anti-pattern? Jul 11, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

1:35 – The benefit of no staging environments
10:14 – Using FastBoot without a runtime dependency, and pre-rendered SPAs
17:30 – Sponsor: TrueCoach is hiring!
23:02 – UI feedback, and Designing Fluid Interfaces by Apple
39:24 – Working with custom fonts, and typography lessons learned

Sponsors:

TrueCoach, check out their engineering culture and hiring pages

Links:

Percy Visual Regression Testing
Launch Darkly
Designing Fluid Interfaces, from Apple, WWDC 2018
The Inter typeface
Refactoring UI

When libraries go unmaintained Jun 26, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

2:44 – What to do if your app depends on an unmaintained addon
26:15 – The workflow of designers who are also coders
32:31 – Why the status quo of web tooling is insufficient for multi-app workflows
41:46 – Side effects in React and Ember, and how Hooks help authors avoid making API mistakes

Links:

Microscopic Frontends Jun 19, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

0:00 – Playing with React JS
- Using React after working with Ember for 5 years
- React's onboarding experience
- Why early success matters for OSS adoption
15:44 – Micro Frontends
- Comparison with service-oriented architecture
- Our experience using micro frontends at TED
- The tradeoffs that matter most to us
47:56 – Call for conversation: Ember-turned-React dev

Links:

Micro Frontends, by Cam Jackson

Open source isn't free Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

3:50 – Opinions on DHH's 2019 RailsConf keynote about sustainable open source
23:28 – Keeping tests dumb, dynamic tests, and TDD workflow tradeoffs
36:31 – Octane is not ready, and our conservative approach to adopting new tech
47:50 – Tailwind 1.0
53:23 – New series: Ember Animated

Links:

Katie Gengler on the tech and processes that power the Ember community May 29, 2019

Show notes

Topics include:

2:26 - Ember's 2019 Call for Blog Posts, and a retro on last year's call
7:50 - Why Katie's looking forward to Embroider, Ember Data, and updates to the Router
10:52 - What the process is for "finishing" Octane
14:37 - Katie's experience on the Steering Committee
18:02 - The infrastructure behind Ember Try and Ember Observer
34:18 - Common anti-patterns in apps, like deeply nested components
39:18 - Katie's preference for acceptance tests over unit tests in UI development
42:50 - Katie's stack of choice for a brand new app
44:58 - A look into Ember Observer's Code Search feature
58:06 - How much test coverage there is across Ember's OSS Addons

Links: