Frontend First

Latest Episodes:

Crossover: Declaring War Against the Frontend Jul 25, 2024

Show notes

Sam joins Lane Wagner in a crossover episode with the Backend Banter podcast. They talk about abstractions in frontend and backend frameworks, what JavaScript is doing differently from other languages and frameworks, why the frontend should drive the backend even if you're building in a server-side framework, and what's so special about React Server Components.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro
2:12 - When abstractions leak
6:37 - Recap of Sam's BigSky talk
10:51 - What is JavaScript doing differently?
19:10 - Why frontend frameworks should have more backend features
24:04 - Strong opinions on a library level
30:29 - Shipping more standardized interfaces
37:06 - The frontend should be driving everything in the backend
39:12 - Your types should flow from the database to the frontend, but not your product decisions
46:53 - React Server Components

Link:

Backend Banter

Blog Post Club: Queueing - An interactive study of queueing strategies Jul 18, 2024

Show notes

Sam and Ryan read and discuss a fantastic interactive blog post about queueing in HTTP written by Sam Rose.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro
6:57 - Queueing: An interactive study of queueing strategies
9:05 - Why do we need queues?
13:16 - FIFO and timing out
17:55 - LIFO
20:58 - Priority queues
25:21 - Active queue management
29:08 - Comparing queues
36:32 - Conclusion

Links:

SPAs in React 19 Jul 11, 2024

Show notes

Sam and Ryan discuss the new features in React 19 that will specifically benefit developers building single-page applications. They talk about how Suspense and Transitions let developers "teach" React about when their apps are in a loading or a pending state, how Client Actions improve upon using events in React 18 to handle data mutations, and how Actions enable React Components to automatically render and discard optimistic updates without any knowledge of the application's data layer. They also discuss several new Hooks like useOptimistic, useFormStatus, useActionState, and useOptimistic.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro
2:19 - How SPAs are built in React 18
5:29 - How Suspense made loading a first-class concept in React
7:48 - The problem with data writes in React 18
10:37 - What are Client Actions?
12:05 - What does it look like to use Actions?
14:13 - What are the benefits of Actions?
18:46 - How does React 19 change the Optimistic UI story?
29:40 - Working with Transitions outside of Actions
36:06 - The useActionState Hook
37:51 - Using Transitions to keep the old UI rendered and responsive
41:25 - How Transitions enable better composition patterns in third-party libraries
43:55 - Building a SortableList that flips between being controlled and uncontrolled

Links:

React Unpacked: A Roadmap to React 19

High floor, high ceiling Jul 03, 2024

Show notes

Sam tells Ryan about a recent talk he gave at BigSkyDevCon. They chat about how backend frameworks are raising the ceiling of what UIs they’re capable of delivering, how frontend frameworks are raising the floor of what backend features they come bundled with, and what each community can learn from the other.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro
4:23 - Recap of Ryan Florence’s talk
6:49 - Overview of "High floor, high ceiling"
10:02 - Cohesion is the biggest strength of backend frameworks
17:10 - Why doesn’t Rails for JavaScript exist?
23:48 - Locality of behavior is the biggest strength of frontend frameworks
33:14 - The use of lexical scope in React
50:27 - Which community is raising both the floor and ceiling the most?

Links:

"High floor, high ceiling" talk

Technical Cost vs. Product Benefit Jun 20, 2024

Show notes

Sam and Ryan talk about the difference between the costs of building a feature and the benefits that feature brings to our end users. They discuss how libraries and frameworks can lower the technical cost of building a given feature, how Ryan Florence framed this calculation in his talk at Big Sky Dev Con, and how sometimes developers’ opinions and tastes about tech can smuggle their way from the cost side of the equation into the benefit side.

Topics include:

0:00 - Intro
6:53 - How Ryan Florence framed the problem in his talk “Mind the Gap”
14:38 - How frontend frameworks and backend frameworks both have their own ways of crossing the network gap
19:11 - How Network-Sensitive Interactions force technologies to grapple with both server and client environments
23:02 - How React is trying to lower the cost of moving interactions between the server and client with Server Components and Server Actions
26:53 - Why “Use the right tool for the job” doesn’t capture the dynamic requirements of living software
31:53 - How discussions about the product benefits of a feature and the technical costs of that feature are often conflated with each other
34:08 - A thought experiment from economics that highlights how uncertainty plays a role in the estimation of product benefits
56:54 - How to think about tech choice independently of the estimation of product benefits

Links:

View Transitions in React Jun 12, 2024

Show notes

Ryan tells Sam about his experiments with using the new View Transitions API in a React photo gallery app. He talks about how he likes the flexibility of the API, how to think about integrating it into any client-rendered app regardless of the framework, and how he used a Promise with an Effect to tie a View Transition to a React Transition.

Topics include:

0:00 - Intro
1:11 - What it’s like to integrate View Transitions with React
7:30 - How View Transitions work
16:09 - Building a gallery that animates photos across page navigations
19:38 - How to use startViewTransition for enter/update/exit animations
26:52 - Using a Promise to link a View Transition to a React Transition
43:02 - Do View Transitions replace framework-specific animation libraries?
45:17 - Using DevTools to preview and tweak transitions

Links:

CodeMirror | Radix Themes Apr 17, 2024

Show notes

Sam tells Ryan about his experience setting up an in-browser code editor with CodeMirror that he plans on using for blog posts and code recipes, as well as what he thought about using Radix Themes for the first time in earnest on a side project of his currently styled with Tailwind.

Topics include:

0:00 - Intro
4:01 - Building an authoring tool with CodeMirror
18:47 - Refactoring Tailwind to Radix Themes

Links:

Throw is about control flow – not error handling Apr 10, 2024

Show notes

Sam and Ryan talk about why it’s better to think of throw as a general-purpose JavaScript language feature rather than something that should only be used for error handling. They discuss the ambiguity around the phrase “error handling”, situations that call for dealing with errors locally vs. globally, and how throw can be useful for non-error control flow. They also discuss the problems with trying to shoehorn dynamic features into a static site.

Topics include:

0:00 - Intro
4:07 - Error handling vs. throw-try/catch
23:34 - Errors vs. Exceptions
31:52 - How Next.js uses throw for non-error control flow
40:44 - Adding a dynamic feature to a static site

Links:

The Philosophy of Next.js Mar 22, 2024

Show notes

Sam and Ryan discuss the core values of the Next.js framework, and how those values motivate several of the framework’s design decisions. They talk about caching, why layouts don’t have access to the URL, and why the router doesn’t expose navigation events, as well as how developers should think about extending Next’s functionality with their own application code.

Topics include:

0:00 - Intro
2:58 - Why don’t layouts re-render in Next.js?
7:10 - Push-based vs. pull-based rendering
8:56 - Thinking about re-renders in a pure React app
11:07 - Why Server Actions need to call the revalidate* APIs
12:26 - Why doesn’t Next.js pass the request to every page and layout?
31:40 - Immediate-mode rendering vs. “Do the least amount of work possible”
51:54 - Is opting-in to more re-renders framework fighting?
53:44 - Helping users by communicating the philosophy
56:25 - Why doesn’t Next.js expose global router events?
1:00:17 - Why it’s important to understand Next’s design decisions when choosing it for your next project

Beyond Data Fetching with RSCs Mar 13, 2024

Show notes

Sam talks to Ryan about refactoring an MDX blog post to a React Server Component. They discuss how RSC’s ability to render server-side content with “client-side holes” turns out to replace MDX for many uses cases. They also talk about other tools that are (surprisingly) a conceptual subset of the RSC architecture, such as custom Webpack loaders.

Topics include:

0:00 - Intro
5:05 - The Next.js happy path for MDX: Local files
11:15 - Exploring remote MDX content with mdx-remote
14:46 - Separating the serializable parts of MDX from the runtime imports
17:13 - Realizing that RSC covers the same problem space, and ditching MDX
26:50 - Exploring other APIs and plugin ecosystems that RSC could replace: Webpack loaders, next/image, and Liquid templates
32:11 - React’s vision for RSCs
35:18 - How RSCs could replace build-time plugin APIs
44:51 - Replacing MDX with Markdoc, Shiki, and custom node code during render

Links:

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