Whiskey Web and Whatnot: Web Development, Neat

A whiskey fueled fireside chat with your favorite web developers.

143: Why Svelte Might Just Outdo React: Rich Harris Unveils Shocking Comparisons!

In this special International Whiskey Day episode of 'Whiskey Web and Whatnot', hosts RobbieTheWagner, and Charles William Carpenter III are joined by special guest Rich Harris. They share a toast with Lagavulin Offerman Edition whiskey and dive into a discus...

Creators and Guests

RobbieTheWagner
Charles William Carpenter III
Rich Harris
RobbieTheWagner
Charles William Carpenter III
Rich Harris
RobbieTheWagner
Charles William Carpenter III
Rich Harris
RobbieTheWagner
Charles William Carpenter III
Rich Harris

Show Notes

In this special International Whiskey Day episode of 'Whiskey Web and Whatnot', hosts RobbieTheWagner, and Charles William Carpenter III are joined by special guest Rich Harris.

They share a toast with Lagavulin Offerman Edition whiskey and dive into a discussion covering a range of topics from Rich's journey in software development, his work on the Svelte framework, to his thoughts on cheese, fermented foods, and brewing kombucha.

The conversation transitions into deeper tech discussions about TypeScript, the evolution of web development tools, the balance between developer experience and user experience, and the upcoming features in Svelte 5. Rich also shares personal anecdotes from his career in journalism and his passion for cooking and skiing.

The episode concludes with insights into the overabundance of tech conferences and a note on the upcoming Svelte Summit.

Key Takeaways

  • [00:00] - Welcome to the International Whiskey Day Special
  • [00:48] - Meet Rich Harris: The Man Behind Svelte
  • [01:28] - The Great Cheese Debate: To Love or Not to Love
  • [02:40] - Brewing Kombucha: A Fermented Adventure
  • [03:59] - Whiskey Tasting: The Lagavulin Offerman Edition Experience
  • [07:29] - Rating the Whiskey: From Smoky Notes to Leather Hints
  • [10:34] - Exploring Smoky Whiskeys and Beyond
  • [11:57] - Hot Takes on Tech: TypeScript, Tailwind, and More
  • [24:51] - The Evolution of Digital Journalism and Development Tools
  • [27:40] - Git Practices and the GraphQL Debate
  • [30:29] - The Developer's Dilemma: Tool Selection and User Experience
  • [31:17] - The Spicy Segment: A Critical Look at ES Build
  • [33:11] - Developer Experience vs. User Experience: A Shift in Priorities
  • [34:24] - The Evolution of Svelte: From Speed to Ease of Use
  • [40:34] - Introducing Svelte 5: A Ground-Up Rewrite
  • [50:03] - Beyond Tech: Dream Jobs and Personal Passions
  • [56:54] - The Global Developer Conference Scene
  • [59:18] - Final Thoughts and Svelte Promotion

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:05] Robbie: What’s going on everybody. Welcome to whiskey web and whatnot on a special international whiskey day with your hosts, Robbie, the Wagner and Charles William Carpenter. The third

[00:00:17] Chuck: No jokes,

[00:00:19] Robbie: dad, you look like you’re going to say something. So I stopped, but then you don’t we have a special guest today. Rich Harris.

What’s going on, rich.

[00:00:26] Rich: I’m good. I’m so honored to be doing this specific podcast on this specific day.

[00:00:32] Robbie: Yeah, it worked out.

[00:00:34] Chuck: timed, we timed it out perfectly. We’ve been planning this for months. We were like, Rich is the one to celebrate International Whiskey Day with us. And so we’re, we’re glad you could do it.

[00:00:46] Robbie: Yeah. For anyone who may not have heard of you, can you give a few sentences about who you are and what you do?

[00:00:52] Rich: Oh God. I hate this bit. Yeah. All right. So I’m, I’m a guy who writes software for a living. I do that at the [00:01:00] cell. The software in question is Svelte, which is a UI framework. I’ve been working on it for about seven years at this point. Seven, seven and a half long time. Prior to Vercel, I worked in the news, news business for a long time.

Worked at the Guardian, New York Times, using JavaScript to help tell the news. And now I just write Svelte all day.

[00:01:25] Chuck: You know, that’s it’s not a bad gig if you can get it. What are your feelings on cheese? So,

[00:01:33] Rich: cheese. I mean, does anyone not like cheese? Is there anyone who doesn’t like cheese?

[00:01:36] Robbie: there

[00:01:37] Chuck: there are

[00:01:37] Rich: Apart from people who are like lactose intolerant

[00:01:40] Chuck: Well, my wife is lacto My wife is lactose intolerant, and she likes it. So it’s not even a that thing.

[00:01:48] Rich: right, there you go.

[00:01:50] Robbie: yeah. I had a boss once who like, didn’t like cheat like Mac and cheese. I think I forget if he didn’t like all cheese, but like he would, if somebody put [00:02:00] cheese on this sandwich, he would like call and complain or whatever. And so I was like, I don’t know, just it feels weird to me that like, like that’s the best part of the sandwich, but

okay.

[00:02:07] Chuck: Yeah, I don’t trust those people. If you don’t like cheese, I don’t know. It’s like that’s the that would probably be one of the hardest things about being a vegan. Which I’m not, obviously, because I love cheese. Because I love cheese. And the not real cheese just isn’t cheese.

[00:02:21] Robbie: Yeah, although it’s

[00:02:23] Rich: think a love of cheese is one of humanity’s great levelers, honestly.

[00:02:28] Chuck: it’s amazing what we do with, like, mold. and

[00:02:33] Rich: It is. It’s crazy. Just like you, you, you get some, some bacteria and mold together and you can make amazing things. I’ve been really into brewing kombucha lately.

[00:02:43] Chuck: yeah.

[00:02:44] Rich: Which is like, I, I have this vat on the, on the shelf behind me

and

it, there’s just like

[00:02:50] Chuck: scoby, right?

[00:02:51] Rich: yeah, like this jellyfish looking thing that’s just swimming around in some cold tea and like periodically it produces a [00:03:00] beautiful drink

[00:03:01] Chuck: Yeah. So you’ve had good results. Would recommend?

[00:03:04] Rich: would definitely recommend I’m still like dialing it in been going at this a couple of months or so, so haven’t yet figured out all of the tricks of the trade, but it’s, it’s going well. Yeah. I recommend it. Anyone who wants to cultivate a weird bacterial colony on their, on their kitchen counter, this is a way to do it.

[00:03:27] Chuck: I do have a weird thing for like fermented foods. I love, I love fermented foods. I don’t know that there’s any that I’ve had that I didn’t like. So, you know, I think it’s kind of stems from like growing up with lots of sauerkraut. I don’t know.

[00:03:40] Rich: Yeah.

[00:03:40] Chuck: Alright, well,

[00:03:42] Robbie: could, go down this rabbit hole a long time,

[00:03:44] Chuck: yeah.

Before you teach us how to do that, because that’s mostly why I wanted to talk to you, I don’t know about this spell thing or whatever, but I heard you were into kombucha, and I’m like, finally, someone can show us how to do that, so, it’ll be great. Alright, [00:04:00] today we’re having the Lagavulin Offerment Edition, charred oak cask isle, I always say it wrong, isle, isle?

I don’t know, do you know?

[00:04:09] Rich: think it’s Islay, but

[00:04:12] Chuck: Islay, yeah, that sounds

right.

[00:04:14] Robbie: right.

[00:04:14] Chuck: Yeah, you are more adjacent to where these things are produced, and so I feel like, Not currently, but I mean you’re from England, so, You should know. That’s kind of was my point. So it’s single malt scotch, 100 percent malted barley, aged 11 years, and is 92 proof.

I don’t know. Let’s get to it.

[00:04:39] Robbie: That is smoky.

[00:04:43] Chuck: yeah. Okay.

[00:04:49] Robbie: Yeah, just lots of notes of burnt logs. I

[00:04:56] Chuck: that’s like, actually smells a [00:05:00] bit like liquid smoke. You know that stuff you put in for ma marination? No,

[00:05:05] Robbie: think liquid smoke, it’s kind of smells more fake to me, but, but yeah, it’s evokes similar feelings.

[00:05:13] Chuck: Okay.

[00:05:14] Rich: How does it work here? Do you, do you pull up the tasting notes and

[00:05:17] Chuck: Mm mm-Hmm.

[00:05:18] Rich: see what you got?

[00:05:19] Robbie: We make it all up. Whatever you smell and taste, just roll with it.

[00:05:24] Chuck: Yeah, I get a little orange in there, so I don’t know if you’ve ever like when you say you make like an, like an old fashioned or a Sazerac or whatever, you know, like you’ll burn a little bit of the peel to like draw the oils out before you do the little twisty squeezy thing.

[00:05:42] Rich: Get that.

[00:05:43] Chuck: Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m getting right there. A bit of smoke, a bit of like, orange oil from the peel kind of? Like, I don’t know.

[00:05:53] Robbie: Yeah, there’s a little bit of that.

[00:05:56] Chuck: We’ve also really worked on our powers of [00:06:00] suggestion, Rich. And so, we’re gonna say some things and then you’re gonna somehow figure it out. Like, I don’t know, a little bit of red vines?

A little bit of red vines in the middle? You know, those like Better than Twizzler kind of licorice things?

[00:06:15] Robbie: Perhaps Swedish fish.

[00:06:17] Chuck: Mmm

[00:06:19] Rich: Yeah, you’re leaving me behind on that one, I’m afraid.

[00:06:22] Chuck: Yeah, yeah, we’re just seeing where we can get. Thanks for calling us on our bullshit. No really it actually just kind of has Just it is heavy smoke in the beginning it definitely gives me some of that orange. It’s got a little burn not too bad It’s overall pretty smooth Yeah, man, that smoke hangs out for a bit.

So I’m a little leather little leather in there for me There’s no right answers here, by the way, too, so that’s why we don’t even get out like tasting notes because it’s just whatever words that you can correlate that we all what it means. No,

[00:06:59] Rich: to [00:07:00] it that, that lingers, but not in an unpleasant way, kind of like, like in the way that coffee is bitter,

[00:07:07] Chuck: yeah, yeah, yeah, I can kind of get that a little bit the way that like maybe an espresso or something hangs out a little bit on the back of your throat. Yeah, I’m not getting any like, but I bet bitterness does kind of I think that’s what I was trying to call leather. Which I do chew on from time to time, but yeah, I think. Hmm. Alright, Rich. So, since you are our one and only avid listener, you’re probably very familiar with this rating system, but since you’re on, other people might be listening. So, it works like this. It’s a really well thought out and, in depth rating system. Zero to eight tentacles. Zero being absolutely terrible, I don’t want this, what was Nick Offerman thinking?

For being, like, not bad. I guess I’d have it again, but it’s not the best thing I’ve ever had, and obviously 8 is [00:08:00] exactly that. Amazing. This is all I want to drink. And you won’t have to go first, so, you know, we never force that upon our guests. Unless you would truly like to go first.

[00:08:10] Rich: go ahead.

[00:08:11] Chuck: Nah. Alright.

Robby’s up. I always throw him under the

[00:08:15] Robbie: Oh, man. Yeah, I this one is pretty smoky for me. I’m having a hard time, like, getting any other flavor notes other than smoke, which is not my favorite. That being said, I would drink it. Like, I’ve had some scotches that I have a couple sips and I’m like, I’m just not gonna drink that. So this one is not terrible.

I’m gonna give it, middle of the road, like a four.

[00:08:38] Chuck: Okay. You know. Also not a regular scotch drinker, but I tend to prefer things, I believe, like McAllen, that kind of thing. So the, not a strong smoke, not a strong peat. I think it leans more towards peaty, like things like McAllen. But for what this is, I mean, [00:09:00] obviously evokes the, the flavors that they’re going for there.

And this is less of a, a smoke bomb for me than some other Lagavolins have, have been. So, I, I’m probably going to put it at like a 5 for me. It’s like, it’s interesting, it’s distinct. I do appreciate that it’s got a little more in the burn, a little more in the heat. I want some of that, that hug, I say.

But, yeah, I think it’s just, in general, like, smoke, super smoky isn’t for me. Maybe camping. If I was camping, I’d be like, into this, because I’m already getting that.

[00:09:35] Rich: That’s exactly what I was going to say, actually. Like I’m drinking this and I, I feel like I’m sitting by a bonfire in the Scottish Highlands. Drinking it makes me feel sophisticated. You know I, I did, I do like, like scotch a little more. Like it’s what I grew up drinking. I’ve developed more of a taste for bourbon, you know, American whiskey is since I’ve been living here, but like Scotch is still [00:10:00] my, my go to and I do tend to lean towards the smoky whiskies.

So this is right up my alley. I would, I would give this a six and a half.

[00:10:09] Chuck: Yeah, I think that’s pretty solid.

[00:10:11] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:10:12] Chuck: you been camping in the Scottish Highlands?

[00:10:15] Rich: I have not,

[00:10:16] Chuck: Oh, okay. I was going to say, because that

[00:10:18] Rich: but I have been to the Scottish Highlands and I have been camping. And if I combine those those two experiences, then I can imagine what it’s like.

[00:10:28] Chuck: Yeah, you can get an idea there. Yeah, I guess there’s that. Yeah, okay, well that’s a pretty decent, solid rating. Have you had the so there’s like a campfire whiskey by a distillery out of Utah. And it’s like, What am I thinking of? It’s Robbie, we’ve had their other things. No? Yeah? There’s like a Boo Rye, which is a bourbon rye blend.

And then they have another one called like, American Campfire Whiskey. And it has a lot of smoke [00:11:00] to it, too. I would suggest trying that if you’re kind of like, in the mood for smoky, but then maybe you want to try some different flavors along with it. High West. That’s it. Yep. That’s all out of Park City, Utah is where their distillery is.

It’s very interesting. Cause like their founders, a chemical engineer who decided like, who was you know, really into whiskeys and he was like, I can go out here and I can test these chemically to put together a particular like well suited flavor flavor profiles and has done really well for that. So I would say high west,

[00:11:33] Rich: but I don’t think I’ve tried that specific whiskey.

[00:11:36] Chuck: Oh, well, cool. Yeah, I would, I would suggest trying that. Like, if you do tend to lean towards smokier, but then, like, if you want to evoke some of the flavors of more of a bourbon or rye, like an American version of those, like, it’s a nice, nice, like, mix of that. Anyway.

[00:11:54] Robbie: Yeah. A flavor I enjoy is spice. Should we get, get into some hot [00:12:00] takes?

[00:12:01] Chuck: Sure, let’s get into some hot takes. You.

[00:12:05] Rich: a smooth segue

[00:12:06] Chuck: Yes, yeah, he’s been working on that for a long time. He’s learned over time how to, like, nudge me through when I start, like, just, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, a bunch. So, happens here and there.

[00:12:18] Robbie: Somebody’s got to keep this train on the tracks here. Yeah. So the, the first one we usually ask is a little bit, Different here. And I have several tiers to how I want to ask this, but I’ll just ask it as normal first. So if you’re using TypeScript, do you use explicit types or inferred types?

[00:12:39] Rich: to the extent possible. I mean, that’s the whole point, right? It’s supposed to be doing grunt work for me. The only time I’ll really do explicit types is if I have like a very long function and I want to explicitly set the return value, but. Everything else is inferred. [00:13:00] Otherwise, why am I using TypeScript?

[00:13:03] Robbie: totally agree.

[00:13:04] Chuck: that’s a lead in response right there. Yeah.

[00:13:13] Robbie: I feel like Svelte removed all of TypeScript at some point. Like the internals are not TypeScript anymore something like

[00:13:20] Rich: They are TypeScript, but they’re not written in TypeScript. So we love TypeScript. I love TypeScript. I’m a huge TypeScript fan. not live without TypeScript, which is actually kind of sad when you say it out loud. But what we did is we removed the ts files from the code base. Instead, we have JavaScript files and all of our TypeScript is expressed using JS doc annotations, but it’s still type checked with TypeScript.

We still get all of the same level of type safety. We just don’t have to compile the code before it runs. And that, that is how I build. All of my libraries is I put the types in JS doc. It’s a little bit more work. You know, you have to [00:14:00] deal with a slightly less concise syntax, but you get exactly the same expressive power and the stuff that you ship hasn’t been through like layers of transpilation.

And it, it makes developing libraries so much easier. I wouldn’t do it for applications. Like I use TypeScript when I’m building apps, because like, I want to have a build step there. But for libraries, you don’t need it.

[00:14:24] Robbie: Yeah,

yeah, that’s, that’s a big problem right now is like, so we, we just converted a shepherd to typescript and like trying to get it to ship the like build and ship those declaration files in the right place to where when you import stuff, it like finds them and everything is like harder than it should be.

So if you’re just shipping the JavaScript and using it, then that’s, I can see the appeal of that for sure.

[00:14:48] Rich: Yeah. I mean, we are still running TypeScript to generate declaration files when we publish the package.

Um, like that’s very important because if someone’s consuming the package, like TypeScript, isn’t [00:15:00] going to go into the contents of your node modules and like figure out the types of your stuff. Like you have to have a DTS file.

Otherwise types is going to be like, yeah, whatever. Don’t care. Not doing that.

[00:15:11] Robbie: Okay, so it

[00:15:11] Rich: And, um,

[00:15:12] Robbie: problem, I guess.

[00:15:13] Rich: It doesn’t fix that problem. And like, that’s kind of annoying. Like I wish it did. I wish that TypeScript was just, I don’t know, fast enough or whatever enough to just do that, but that’s not the world that we live in. And so you still need to ship DTS files when you ship a package.

If you want the people using your library to have a good type safety experience, but it doesn’t mean that you need to actually transpile the code. And if you do it right, then, you know, you can, you can ship a package in such a way that when someone command clicks on. Something that they’ve imported from your library.

It will take them directly to the source code inside their node modules, where they can like add a console dot log statement or a debugger statement and actually understand what’s happening, inside, inside that [00:16:00] package. Or if, you know, if you want to clone a repository of a library and link that to your, To your application, then you can make edits inside your application in your node modules.

And then when you’re ready to open a pull request, the changes are already there. And this is a way of working that. I think everyone was used to like 10 or 15 years ago, like before the rise of the, like the industrialization of, of all of this stuff and now no one does it and no one even understands like what we’re missing by, by jumping through all of these absurd hoops in order to publish stuff these days.

[00:16:41] Chuck: yeah,

[00:16:42] Rich: So, yeah, I got to, I got to write up all of this. I’ve got to like put it in an article that I can reference somewhere because people All the time people ask me this question about this TypeScript versus JS doc thing. And there are so many misconceptions about it, but I really feel like the entire ecosystem is just [00:17:00] missing a trick here.

[00:17:01] Chuck: Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good trick too to like get all of the benefits of TypeScript without additional compilation. I’m sure some people like show up to your library and just see JS files and make the assumption that like, oh, okay, they’re not using it. Right? Like it’s easy to have that quick glance opinion to it.

That’s a very interesting perspective to take. And I think definitely one worth writing about for reference for other people because. It just seems kind of logical in the same way like the question around inferred versus explicit, right? Like, you know, what, it depends on the context.

[00:17:41] Rich: Yeah. I know that the inferred versus explicit is a little bit more, controversial. A lot of people have the exact opposite opinion to us.

[00:17:54] Chuck: Yeah, but I mean, I think it’s, it, it, well, there you go. [00:18:00] It, it’s controversial in a bubble where these hot takes come from though. So let’s bear that in mind too. Is it like, it’s controversial there. There’s a lot of people that probably don’t care to debate it. You know, and can take, like, constructive feedback and make a smart decision there just to be productive, really. Yeah, anyway. Alright now to the

[00:18:24] Robbie: Yeah.

Yeah,

[00:18:29] Rich: Ooh, I, ah, this is, I don’t know. I really don’t know. I, I like tailwind. I like tailwind a lot more than I thought I would like tailwind. For a long time, I was one of these people who looked at market with tailwind in it. And I was like, what the fuck are you doing people? This is absolute madness. And then like, I used it and.

I discovered that it makes a lot of sense. And, you know, [00:19:00] I’d always been very sold by the, the high level concept of tailwind, there’s this essay that Adam wrote. Years ago, like explaining why tailwind exists. And I read that essay and I was like, this makes so much sense. So why do I hate the look of it so much?

But once you start actually using it, you don’t really mind the way that it looks. And I really feel like a lot of the people who rail against tailwind, they just haven’t used it yet. They’re just so like stuck in a particular mindset that, that they, they, they won’t even get that far. If you try it. You will like it. It does have some, some limitations though. Like there are certain things that are pretty difficult to do with tailwind. Like, you know, a lot of the harder problems that you encounter when writing CSS are to do with the relationship between different elements. It’s not just the styles that go on a specific element.

It’s like this element when it’s next to this element or like a parent of this, like stuff like that [00:20:00] is a little bit more finicky to express with tailwind. And so there are. Certain limits, I think, to where tailwind is applicable. And if I’m going to have to break out of tailwind for that last 5%, then kind of lessens its usefulness a little bit to me.

And then there’s just like the extra moving parts. Like I, now I have this, this extra tool in my stack that I need to worry about that I need to update when there’s a new version and things like that. And like, I always want to minimize the number of moving parts that I’m having to deal with. And so my answer is, this is why I was like, vacillating at the beginning of this answer is there’s a lot to the, to really love about tailwind, but then like the bar for whether or not something should be included in a project is so high.

And. I’m just not decided as to whether tailwind clears that bar for me.

[00:20:55] Chuck: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that it makes you [00:21:00] incredibly productive, right? And let’s say you’re working towards, like, the MVP of a project, right? You’re not. You’re not way down the path where scale exists. Users exist, all of those things. But if you’re just trying to build a thing and be incredibly productive, you’re probably introducing a lot of ugly code to begin with.

So what are what are some some additional strings on your JSX like or whatever it like, you know, for me, I remember early days react and seeing JSX basically having HTML in my JavaScript and I had the same reaction. I was like, what is this shit? We’ve been fighting for years to have a separation of concerns and now i’ve got this crap back in my files then later on you had like Uh, you know the the styles css, which was like basically, you know Pojos and css right in that same file and the whole thing is a mishmash.

So getting just strings to a degree Kind of felt like well there’s a slight regression here that i’m that i’m open to but [00:22:00] like you’re saying is like when You the nature of your UI becomes more complex, then it’s a bigger question of like, you know, are you just building a dashboard with crowd operations or are you doing something that maybe like this abstraction becomes counterproductive on?

[00:22:18] Rich: Yeah. So I, you made a really interesting point there about like combining your markup inside your JavaScript. And then why wouldn’t you have your styles there there as well? Like the, the trend over the last 10 years or so has been towards greater and greater encapsulation. Initially it was like, you want to have your markup and your behaviors together.

And then we started thinking about like CSS and JS solutions so that you can have your CSS as part of your component as well, and then now with things like React server components, a lot of people are thinking about how you co locate your data requirements with your components and there’s like a very clear trajectory here that the industry is, is [00:23:00] kind of going on.

And I think one of the reasons that the Svelte community has been a little bit slow to adopt Tailwind relative to other communities is the, the We already have that when you write a spelt component, you’re writing what is essentially a superset of HTML and inside that superset of HTML, you can just write CSS in a style tag and it gets scoped to that component.

So it, it solves that problem of like, how do I have styles that are associated with my component, but you still get to write vanilla CSS. And so you have your nice clean markup. You have your co location. And because of that, like, I just think a lot of people just didn’t feel the need for it. But the co location that you get with Tailwind is, is like as co located as you can be.

It’s right there on the element. And you don’t have to name anything. You’d have to come up with like the name of the element so that you can have a class name that targets it. And that is just, that is just so nice. And as you [00:24:00] say, you’re moving quickly. Like you don’t have time for naming stuff.

[00:24:03] Chuck: Yeah. You’re just like, whatever, this is

[00:24:04] Robbie: that’s the hardest part.

[00:24:05] Chuck: of like what, what it is in MDN or whatever else. Great.

That’s what it’s called.

[00:24:09] Robbie: container, card,

[00:24:11] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:24:12] Robbie: wrapper.

[00:24:13] Chuck: Yeah, yeah. Or BEM, you go down like the, yeah, the whole

like BEM ideology and it made sense. I, I mean, it, it fixed a lot of problems for me back in the day when I was at Nat Geo.

So I loved it then. Obviously we have a different set of tools

and different problems.

[00:24:32] Robbie: fixed a lot of problems for me too.

[00:24:34] Chuck: Yeah Yeah. I mean, maybe, if you were coming from Backbone or something, then you were like, Oh my gosh, this is better. Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, there was definitely things there. I will have a follow up question, but I know we want to get through some of these hot takes.

So, when you were at the New York Times, were you doing interactive development then, predominantly? Okay,

[00:24:58] Rich: Yeah. My, my background is [00:25:00] in journalism rather than development. I, I drifted into JavaScript as a way of doing more interesting journalism, essentially.

[00:25:09] Chuck: Did you, did you have anything to do with Snowfall? No.

[00:25:12] Rich: No, Snowfall was before my time at the times. I was still at the Guardian when that came out.

[00:25:18] Chuck: Okay, yeah, I

[00:25:19] Rich: no, Christ, Snowfall. That was, I think I, I might’ve been still in the UK. That might’ve been before I was an, a newsroom developer.

[00:25:32] Chuck: Yeah, I want to say that was probably around 2012, 2013, maybe, something like that.

[00:25:37] Rich: I want to, I want to Google that now. Snowfall avalanche

at

[00:25:41] Chuck: then Robbie will have another question for you.

[00:25:43] Rich: tunnel Creek.

[00:25:44] Chuck: Going down the hot takes, bro.

[00:25:46] Rich: Yeah. 2012, man, this is long time ago, but that was, but that was like a seminal moment in in digital journalism. That was the point at [00:26:00] which a lot of people realize that, Oh, if you, if you start to use web technology. Like to its full potential, then you can do things in a, in a richer and more immersive way than you can just do with text and images.

And I, I don’t know that we’ve fully lived up to the promise of those early days. Like a lot of stuff has sort of been kind of templatized and, and so on. There aren’t that many places doing that kind of work,

[00:26:30] Chuck: yeah,

[00:26:31] Rich: but like there’s, there’s still this, this idea that just the nature of the web, like is this fundamentally new medium that we haven’t yet figured out how to completely capitalize on,

[00:26:42] Chuck: Well, if we bring flashback, it’ll get easier.

Yeah.

[00:26:48] Robbie: I mean, Jay’s doing a lot of cool stuff. He just needs to teach us, the rest of us, how to do it.

[00:26:52] Chuck: Well, you need to figure out, so, after Snowfall came out, basically I was part of a team that was tasked [00:27:00] with figuring out how to create a CMS to allow them to do that with like, A choice number of Nat Geo magazine articles. They wanted to translate magazine articles into that format and create this whole CMS.

They would eventually be, they could read grass back through the entire catalog. Needless to say, we failed.

[00:27:21] Rich: But NatGeo did some amazing stuff with like 3d reconstructions of fossils and stuff like that,

[00:27:27] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:27:28] Rich: that, that stuff always went straight on my jealousy list.

[00:27:31] Chuck: I didn’t make any of those things, so you don’t have to worry about that. I did like advertising tech and some other stuff. But anyway,

[00:27:39] Robbie: all right.

Uh, Rebase. Or Get Merge.

[00:27:44] Rich: I mean, that’s an easy one. Git merge. Cause I don’t really know what Git rebase does. I know I should know. I’ve been writing code long enough that I should know more Git than I do, but I, I just, I just know the basics. [00:28:00] I,

[00:28:01] Chuck: a manager for you, you know? Because, or, or, or just a senior peer, which would be a fallacy. But anyway, it still would just be fun for me to like, eat a bag

[00:28:13] Robbie: The get

[00:28:14] Chuck: throw, yeah, and throw like some old like, git manual at you and just be like, RTFM. I’m not taking your merges, declined.

[00:28:24] Rich: I need that. I get in trouble with with my teammates. Every time I forget to enable squashing,

[00:28:32] Chuck: Oh, yeah.

Ha

[00:28:34] Rich: reams and reams of fix, typo, oops, WIP.

[00:28:39] Chuck: Yeah, that’s great. Alright, see? So, everyone is flawed.

[00:28:45] Robbie: yeah.

[00:28:46] Chuck: Yeah, just hit him up. Let him know, A he owes me a bottle of whiskey, and two, that if, if you want, if you want a man, an experienced manager to take you down the old school path, I’m, I’m here. I’m here for you, bro. [00:29:00] Anyway you know what?

[00:29:03] Rich: Oh

[00:29:04] Chuck: All tongue in cheek here, you know. Was GraphQL a mistake?

[00:29:10] Rich: God. I think GraphQL was an interesting detour. I think it was. A very clever idea that picked up more steam than maybe it should have. And I think that back when it came out, like, I don’t know that people could have predicted some of the ways in which front end technology has developed. Looking back in hindsight, like it’s clear that that wasn’t the right direction for, for most things, but at the time it was a super interesting idea.

And like a lot of money was made building things around Grecuel. People had a great time, so I, I don’t think we should go back in [00:30:00] history and change anything about but yeah, I, don’t know that GraphQL is the future of anything.

[00:30:09] Robbie: Yeah, I do want to spin that a second here. So similarly, do you think people that all just kind of blindly chose React over the last decade and didn’t try things like Svelte or Vue also had a similar problem of like just picking the hot thing and like rolling with it without understanding it? Yeah.

[00:30:35] Rich: it’s, it’s kind of a bug bearer of nine, not, not because people aren’t like evaluating. It’s like, I can give a shit if people are using Svelte or not, but the fact that the average developer is. Pretty much completely oblivious to how their tools work is not good.

It is an indictment. Like our, our industry needs to get a whole lot better [00:31:00] treating these things with like the care and attention that, that they deserve. Like, I don’t think that other industries have the same sort of lackadaisical approach to, to like the things that we use to do our jobs professionally.

I mean, I don’t, I don’t really want to like get into sort of naming and shaming, but I’ll give you one example for free since you, this is supposed to be the spicy segment, ES build. A lot of people piled into ES build, yes, build. Doesn’t generate particularly good output, like compared to some of the alternatives to ES build.

[00:31:39] Chuck: Right. Hmm.

[00:31:43] Rich: in your eventual bundle. And that is like a little bit of a problem. Like the whole reason that we’re bundling stuff and that we’re subjecting code to build steps is to provide users with the optimal experience, and that means having a [00:32:00] smaller bundle as possible. And like a lot of people picked a tool that doesn’t do that as well as some other tools.

And the reason they did that is because it’s the one that felt the nicest and the fastest to use for them. And so their users are suffering because they made a decision based on their own needs. You know, I’m going to get, I’m going to get yelled at for calling out ES build here, but like, this is just a general problem with tools generally that people don’t understand them.

[00:32:28] Chuck: You already have people yelling at you. I guess you don’t need me. So, first of all, there’s that. You know, maybe someone on the internet will yell out. But,

[00:32:36] Rich: And to be clear, like ES build is an incredible piece of software. It is, it is a brilliant package. And it serves a very useful need and it’s very well made and it has inspired a lot of really important development in the ecosystem. My gripe is not with the existence of VS build or its creator, Evan, like massive respect to the project and the people who work on [00:33:00] it.

My gripe is with people opting to use it and not doing a deep dive and a thorough evaluation on what trade offs they’re making on behalf of their users.

[00:33:11] Chuck: Well, yeah, I think that there’s a fallacy in the process. I think you’ve highlighted something very interesting there. Is that There’s more of a, a preference towards developer experience over user experience, which

is kind of like a shift.

[00:33:27] Robbie: to do? Because they’re the developers.

[00:33:29] Chuck: Well, yeah,

right. And, yeah, they’re like, somebody cares about how hard this is, this process is to go through.

Maybe I I mean, suffices to say, Vercel is not, I mean, they’re a part of that process in a way, right? Like, they provide, like, a really great, fast interface for developers to deploy particular types of apps, right? Like, it’s a similar thing. I’m not saying they’re doing anything bad. I’m just saying that, like, it feels like over the last five years [00:34:00] or so that there’s been a lot of marketing and preference towards improving friction for developers.

Like, their

tools Easy button for everything. I wrote code, I want to get it, I want to see what happens, and I don’t have to think about ABCD things. And I think there are implications to that. So.

[00:34:22] Rich: And I’m, I’m guilty of it too. Insofar as nowadays, when I, when I talk to people about Svelte in the context of trying to explain why they might want to use it, I tend to focus on the fact that it allows you to build. Things more easily than some of the alternatives. When I first started working on it, all I would talk about is look how much faster it is, look how much smaller your applications are going to be.

If you use this thing versus, you know, this clunky old other framework. And now, like what I realized after working on this for a few years is no one gives a shit, but as soon as I started talking about, Hey, look [00:35:00] how much easier this is, everyone was like, all right, sign me up. I want some of that.

And the, it’s.

It’s okay to, it’s not just okay. It’s good to focus on developer experience. Like the faster we can build stuff, the more stuff we can make, the better we can make it. But if there is a tension between developer experience and user experience, then we are abdicating our professional responsibility. If we don’t resolve that tension in favor of user experience,

um, And, you know, I mean, that’s literally in the W3C’s priority of constituencies, right?

Prefer users over authors

over, uh, right?

[00:35:41] Chuck: read those. So.

[00:35:42] Robbie: Yep.

[00:35:42] Rich: Right. I don’t, I don’t even need to finish it. Um, and so yeah, like the cell does talk a lot about developer experience. It’s true internally. Like I see the, the, like a lot of the Slack messages from other people on the engineering team. And the people who, who work on the edge network and, [00:36:00] and like the actual infrastructure of the company are so laser focused on, you know, Like minimizing latency and building things in a way that is good for you.

And I’m not just like saying this because I’m a Vercel shill. I’m a little bit of a Vercel shill. I have to be, cause I work there, but

like the, the the internally people are laser focused on user experience, but marketing wise, unless you can sort of turn that into, you know, look. Look how many millions of dollars your enterprise will, will not lose to customers who, who left because it was a slow site or whatever

[00:36:36] Chuck: Right.

[00:36:37] Rich: that, that is not the, that is not what resonates in a marketing context.

[00:36:41] Chuck: Yeah. And I get that. It’s an interesting thing. Actually, if you think about, so we’re making a lot of things easier for developers, which, but then we’re increasing complexity in other areas too, though. Right. So like there becomes like this ever growing onus [00:37:00] on. Understanding like so many of like the internals of the libraries and stuff that we’re working on that Maybe we can’t think about like the output of it How it affects like browser scores and things like that.

It just kind of reminds me how I mean ten years ago You had people working in Like that were focused completely on performance 100 percent of their job was performance in the way that like Developer relations is such a like a normal function. Now, previously, there was not that at all, and there was like performance because that was a part of what helped like our users have a better experience and them having a better experience, kept them on our site, sold our stuff, whatever we were trying to do, and then conversely, we had accessibility is a big part of that.

So I feel like those are things that have unfortunately kind of. less of a priority in favor of some of these other, other like developer [00:38:00] ergonomics, like things,

[00:38:01] Rich: Yeah. And sadly, I think I agree with that.

[00:38:05] Chuck: I don’t know, just, just like a point to note out, but then like, conversely, we’re just like, think a part of the, I think part of the issue there is that. You know companies and in particular like non tech companies, they don’t know how to structure a team to sort of cover all of that. They don’t know how to hire for that.

They don’t know, right? Like, and then conversely even let’s say technology focused companies, especially depending upon where you are in the journey of building your company, A developer relations person to help like bridge that gap and get you developer customers because you’re building tools for them.

That’s more important than like the finality of your product and how users engage with that because which one moves the needle and that’s what you care about right now.

[00:38:53] Rich: Yeah, it’s tough. I mean, I don’t think there are any straightforward answers to how you get people to care [00:39:00] about the right things,

[00:39:01] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:39:01] Rich: I do think that we should continue to call it out and

[00:39:04] Chuck: Yeah. That’s really all we can do at this point because I certainly don’t profess to like, have the answer of like, this is the perfectly structured development team in order to create a, you know, a product, but also do right.

[00:39:18] Robbie: Yeah. There just is too much stuff and like, everybody can’t know everything. So if you don’t have someone that’s like focusing on accessibility, then yes, the rest of us should know about it. But like, yeah, it just becomes like, if you’re expected to kind of do a little bit of infrastructure, DevOps stuff and do a little front end, do a little back end, do a little, like, you’re not going to be an expert at any of those pieces because.

You’ve had to do so many different things. So like, I think we’re at a detriment of like, kind of new things come out and we just tack it onto someone’s job versus like getting specialists in each thing.

[00:39:56] Chuck: And there you go. That’s a statement. There was [00:40:00] no question there. So we can.

[00:40:01] Robbie: Yeah. Well,

[00:40:03] Rich: I confession, your audio went silent for, for most of what, whatever you just said, and so I have no

response.

[00:40:12] Chuck: yes, I

[00:40:12] Robbie: worries.

[00:40:13] Chuck: out for me.

[00:40:14] Robbie: What I do want to circle to here, I don’t know if we finished this hot takes, I don’t think so. But, Svelte 5 and Runes and I don’t know. Tell me about the new stuff coming out. Like, how is it different than Svelte 4? I don’t know. What’s, what’s hot and new and cool in Svelte land?

[00:40:34] Rich: So it’s a ground up rewrite for one thing. We basically discovered that the, the model that we introduced in 2019 was, was felt free and which continued in Svelte 4. You can, you can take it a very long way. But because it’s been around long enough that people are starting to really push the boundaries of of what you can do with the framework, [00:41:00] we’ve basically hit, hit the limit.

And what I’m talking about is the fact that because Svelte is a compiler and it kind of looks at your declarative component code and it turns it into tightly optimized JavaScript, we’re, we’re doing a lot of stuff with static analysis and there are limits to what you can do with static analysis. And so Svelte 5 is.

Sort of a, it’s a ground up rewrite first of all, but it’s also kind of a ground up rethink of what writing component code should, should be like. And so it’s a drop in replacement to a large extent, insofar as everything that worked in Svelte 4 continues to work. But under the hood, we’ve swapped out all of the guts with a signal based implementation of reactivity.

So shout out to the solid team for, For really extolling the virtues of this way of building stuff. [00:42:00] In Svelte 5, when, when values change, you get these super targeted updates as opposed to mostly targeted updates, which you get in Svelte 3 and 4. And so as a result of that, it’s it’s a lot faster, particularly in like the pathological cases where you have a very large list and just like one thing inside that list is changing.

It’s going to scale better than Svelte forwarded. You can have, a lot of components on the page and they’re not going to cost much if at all. And we’ve also introduced this idea of, of universal reactivity and this is where runes come in. So in Svelte three and four, you can write JavaScript inside a component and it becomes magically reactive.

You know, you have like a variable, like, you know, you want to do the classic demo button counter. You click on it and a counter increments. In Svelte 4 you just do let count [00:43:00] equals zero. And then inside your click handler, you do count plus equals one. And Svelte will figure out through static analysis, what, what needs to happen in order for the DOM to update, to reflect that, that new state.

But you can’t then take that logic and move it outside a component because then you’re just back in regular old JavaScript land where obviously things do not magically update when you. And so what we’ve done is with, we’ve basically created a language extension to JavaScript, which we call runes, and it allows you to express reactivity directly in the language.

You can mark a specific variable as being state, and you can mark a variable that is derived from other pieces of state as a derived variable. And you can create effects, which do things in response to those variables changing. And you can put that inside your Svelte components, but you can also put it in svelte.

[00:44:00] js files or svelte. ts files. And so you can have the same reactivity inside components as outside components. And it’s a little bit hard to, to describe on a podcast. This is not the ideal medium,

candidly. Um, but we’ve been working with this for a few months now. It’s getting close to a releasable state and it’s just really, really, really nice to work with.

It’s sort of makes JavaScript a valid language for building reactive user interfaces, like up until now, we’ve had to jump through some pretty absurd hoops to make JavaScript suitable for describing declarative user interfaces because JavaScript is, you know, at a fundamental level, not designed for this task.

And it, and it feels like we’ve made like a little bit of a breakthrough in, in how we think about some of these things.

[00:44:55] Robbie: Yeah. Yeah, it kind of I don’t know if you’ve heard of [00:45:00] Starbeam at all. The thing that Yehuda, if I remember, was working on. Starbeam. But it sounds a little bit like that. Like some primitives to do like kind of signals, the kind of like functional programming hooks kind of like kind of all the things, you know, people are used to in modern development, but like trying to, I mean, I guess it’s not framework agnostic exactly, but it’s like, you can apply the same ideas to, you know, kind of whatever JavaScript.

[00:45:27] Rich: It is. I mean, the big difference with StarBeam and other things of that ilk is that like you’re just interacting with variables as normal variables. So you’re the, the, the count example from, from before. In Svelte 4 you do let count equals zero, but that only works in this very specific context. In Svelte 5 you do let count equals dollar state.

Parentheses zero and that dollar state thing. That is the rune. That is what we’re calling a rune. But then after, after that point, you can do, you know, count plus equals one console. log count, [00:46:00] whatever it is. Like that is just a value that you can use like any other, whereas, you know, in Starbeam, you would create a thing called a cell and then you access cell.

current. And so you have to interact with, with, with, with cells. In this sort of framework or library specific way. And the same is true of view and solid and preact signals and all of these other things, like it’s just one step removed from JavaScript. And by the way, this is one thing that reacts got absolutely right.

When you’re dealing with state inside a react component, like, yeah, there are some gotchas that you’ve got to work around with use effect and use memo, needing like the dependency array and like, blah, blah, blah. But when you’re actually interacting directly with the state, when you’re reading the state.

It’s just variables. It’s just values. Like you don’t need to think about like what type of thing this is. It’s like a number is just a number. And that, that sounds [00:47:00] maybe like it’s not that important, but when you’re actually working with it, like the bulk of the time that you spend authoring this stuff, you’re dealing with state.

Like our whole job is to take the state and turn it into the state. Like a representation for the user. so when all of that state is just reactive by default and it’s represented as normal values, it just feels different in a way that people kind of need to experience to understand.

[00:47:27] Chuck: I mean it sounds really cool and I’m sure you’re oversimplifying it. I mean that, that, I mean that sounds awesome. We use, we use Felt actually for our Shepard library, our tour library. So, I’m

[00:47:40] Rich: Nice.

[00:47:41] Chuck: to to playing with some of that.

[00:47:44] Robbie: Yeah. Yeah, we don’t use anything too complex, but we’ll definitely try out the new stuff.

[00:47:49] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:47:51] Robbie: Let’s see. I forgot what I was going to say. We’re kind of towards the whatnot portion here now, [00:48:00] I guess. So we should probably pivot a bit.

[00:48:02] Chuck: I just want to ask one question before you go down there. One more tech centric question. Okay. So I watched or I watched and or listened to some other podcasts with you as a guest. And it was like last year and Primogen asked you about, if you like discuss with the next JAS team on like how to solve issues and any overlaps since they’re working on one particular.

framework and direction. You’re obviously working on a different one, but still kind of in the same house. Like, is that a resource that ever overlaps? And you have like kind of bounce ideas and discussions

[00:48:44] Rich: A little bit. I mean, it’s, it’s definitely informal. Like we don’t have regular meetings or anything like that, but like, we’re all friendly with each other and we’ll, We’ll share notes on some of the problems that we’re solving in common. You know, some of the [00:49:00] design decisions that we took in SvelteKit, which is the, the application framework that is kind of the the next to react as wait, how, how am I saying this?

SvelteKit is to Svelte as, as next is to react. Some of the design decisions that we made in SvelteKit regarding routing would like directly lifted from, internal discussions that were happening. Within next at the time that we’re not at that point public. And so when, when next eventually unveiled their plans, people like, Oh, Hey, this looks a little bit like Svelte kit and there’s a

[00:49:33] Chuck: and you’re like, yeah,

[00:49:35] Robbie: ha

ha

[00:49:37] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:49:39] Rich: notes from time to time, but it’s not like a, like we’re not like doing it on a, on any kind of a formalized basis.

[00:49:47] Chuck: You don’t have to take that to you or you’re right.

[00:49:50] Rich: Well, my phone,

[00:49:52] Chuck: Yeah. I heard somebody’s phone. I was just going to make a joke there.

[00:49:56] Rich: Nah, it can, it can wait.

[00:49:58] Chuck: Alright, fair enough, thanks. [00:50:00] So anyway, Robbie, you were saying?

[00:50:03] Robbie: I was just gonna say if you were not in tech What other career would you choose and it can be like you don’t have to possess this skill already Like if there’s just something you think is really fucking cool and you want to do that Like, you know, what what is your dream job outside of tech?

[00:50:23] Rich: I got a little tired of it towards the end. I mean, the last 18 months of my, my career at the times were spent working on the coronavirus tracker almost exclusively. So in a time when we were just living COVID, like you wake up in the morning and you’re worrying about COVID, you go to bed at night, you’re worrying about COVID for that to be the day job as well,

[00:50:42] Chuck: yeah.

[00:50:42] Rich: kind of, kind of a lot.

So like. At the end of it, I was ready to do something different, but newsrooms are a super fun place to work. And if, if I wasn’t in tech, I would probably slink back to, to a newsroom and, and try and, try and weasel my way back into that industry. [00:51:00] When I was growing up, I believed that I was going to do some kind of like education thing. Like taking people, like, you know, school kids, kayaking and, and camping and like teaching survival skills

[00:51:15] Chuck: Yeah, I

[00:51:18] Rich: that did not happen.

[00:51:20] Robbie: for adults in the scottish highlands and do some Ha ha ha

[00:51:24] Chuck: you definitely strike me, We obviously don’t know each other well, But you strike me as someone I would gladly take a tour from. I’m like, this guy, Yeah, he knows where he’s going. Let’s follow him. In the

[00:51:35] Rich: that you’ve been making a terrible mistake, but I appreciate that.

[00:51:38] Robbie: ha ha ha

ha ha ha.

[00:51:40] Chuck: you know, you’ll

[00:51:41] Robbie: Yeah. ha

[00:51:42] Rich: honestly, my, so my, my, my plan B for when AI comes and takes all of the tech jobs. Is like, you’ve got to be doing something physical. You’ve got to be doing something with your hands because that stuff is going to be the last stuff to go.

And the, the, my, my [00:52:00] little daydream, maybe this is embarrassing, but I want to open a cookery school. I’m not a chef. I’m not a chef. I’m like a, an enthusiastic home cook. I probably wouldn’t be doing the actual teaching, but I think that like, like having, having a space where people can come and like learn cooking, cooking skills is like something that the world needs more of.

[00:52:21] Chuck: Yeah, I agree.

Especially.

[00:52:23] Robbie: favorite things to cook?

[00:52:25] Chuck: That’s what I was going to say.

[00:52:27] Rich: I. I love to make fresh pasta. That’s a favorite of mine. I, I, I bake a lot. Like I, I make, I make fresh bread a couple of times a week.

[00:52:37] Chuck: Oh, nice.

[00:52:39] Rich: Yeah, stuff like that. I’m not like, like Kenji Lopez all over here, just like pushing the boundaries of culinary science. But, you know,

we, we try and cook most of our meals here.

[00:52:52] Chuck: Yeah, you can take care of yourself in the grand scheme of things.

[00:52:56] Rich: And that’s

a fairly recent thing, actually. It was the [00:53:00] beginning of the pandemic through a combination of, needing to feed myself when. was shut and also trying to impress a girl. Like I started

learning how to cook. The girl is now my wife. so it worked

[00:53:16] Chuck: it worked out.

Okay.

[00:53:18] Rich: yeah. Yeah. It helps.

[00:53:20] Robbie: Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Yeah. Hm

[00:53:22] Chuck: what’s your favorite shape pasta, or what shape pasta do you make?

[00:53:27] Rich: I’m very basic. I make lasagna sheets and I make fettuccine.

[00:53:32] Chuck: Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s fair.

[00:53:33] Rich: yeah, I, I don’t have the tools that you need to make a lot of the more interesting pasta

[00:53:40] Chuck: Uh,

[00:53:40] Rich: quite an expensive hobby when, when you really get into it.

[00:53:43] Chuck: yeah, I imagine. Alright there’s a thing I must know. So, since you’re from, since you’re from the UK, I’m curious, do you like football?

[00:53:53] Rich: No,

[00:53:55] Chuck: Everybody in tech that is from Europe does not like, [00:54:00] does not like football. I’m obsessed. I’ve, you know, played a good portion of my life, watched for a very long time. I mean, I was alive and around during the 94 World Cup here in the States. And, you know, have, I went in, I went to Brazil in 2014 and I’ve been to Europe in a bunch of matches there.

But anyway, that’s all boring to you because you don’t like it. Womp

[00:54:25] Robbie: ha.

[00:54:25] Rich: sorry. Yeah. I’m a, I’m a bad ambassador for my country.

[00:54:29] Chuck: Yeah. Where part of the UK are you from?

[00:54:32] Rich: The North York.

[00:54:34] Chuck: Oh, okay. I’ve been to York actually. I, yeah. Yeah. I had, yeah. He lives

[00:54:43] Robbie: ha ha

ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha.

[00:54:46] Chuck: beautiful, very old city. I think like the newest stuff in the old town is like 15th century, 16th century, something like that. I don’t know. Yeah.

And.

[00:54:58] Rich: Roman [00:55:00] ruins. Like before you do any construction, you have to have like a archaeological survey of the area and that they’re always

[00:55:06] Chuck: Right. Oh yeah, for sure. That’s, yeah, that’s happened quite a few places, actually. A bunch in Spain, too, because since they were, under that dictatorship for so long, like, they didn’t excavate a bunch of things. Every time they build a parking lot, they’re like, Oh, here’s a new Roman ruin. Yeah. I stayed in Leeds for like a month, so I was all over Yorkshire.

Up in the

[00:55:26] Rich: Oh, nice.

[00:55:27] Chuck: and, and Manchester. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a very beautiful town as well. But, lots of good football up there. It’s Just saying anyway.

[00:55:39] Robbie: Oh, yeah. I think the quick look at your Twitter that I was doing, I saw you were doing some skiing. Is that right?

[00:55:50] Rich: I was yeah, I just had a couple of weeks in Colorado. It’s

nice out there. Not as much as I would like. [00:56:00] This is the first trip in a couple of years. But I, I had like two separate trips planned kind of for, for this winter managed to just combine them into one mega trip. So I had a week in Breckenridge.

[00:56:14] Chuck: Oh, okay.

[00:56:16] Rich: lovely town, and then a week in Vail, which I hadn’t been to before. The skiing there is just unreal.

[00:56:23] Chuck: You yeah, if you like that, I would say go up to Utah and Alta is the spot, like Park City’s like fun at night. And you’ve probably done Park City, right?

[00:56:35] Rich: I have, yeah.

[00:56:36] Chuck: yeah. Have you been to Alta?

[00:56:37] Rich: I have not.

[00:56:38] Chuck: That’s the spot. That’s the one,

[00:56:41] Rich: Ah, good to know.

[00:56:42] Chuck: yeah. Are you going to Epic Web Dev? Like the epic web conference, sorry.

[00:56:49] Rich: No, I don’t have any

[00:56:51] Robbie: What is that?

[00:56:52] Chuck: When?

[00:56:53] Robbie: is?

[00:56:54] Chuck: It’s like a week or two before React Miami. It’s the one that Kent is putting on. And you know, [00:57:00] he’s all about snowsports,

so.

[00:57:01] Robbie: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that he, like, trapped someone to speak in there or something. It was like, hey, do you want to go on this skiing trip? Like,

[00:57:10] Chuck: Haha, yeah.

[00:57:11] Robbie: date? And they were like, yeah, yeah, that’d be great. And he’s like, well, now that I know you don’t have anything going on that day, do you want to speak at this conference?

[00:57:17] Chuck: Yeah, I forgot who he did that to, but that’s pretty

funny. yeah. Oh,

well, anyway. Well, that’s a thing. I guess if

[00:57:27] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:57:27] Chuck: Remix, you know, it’d be different.

[00:57:29] Robbie: Yeah, I mean, there’s too many conferences. I can’t keep up with all of them.

[00:57:34] Chuck: Yeah, they’re starting to bump up to one another too. There’s like

[00:57:37] Rich: Yeah, it’s, it’s it’s, it’s pretty mad. Like is it like this in other industries? Is this just a a or even other parts of the development industry? Is it, is this just a JavaScript thing?

[00:57:48] Chuck: I

think, it

[00:57:50] Robbie: I think some, like, just because of the nature of how fast things move, there’s like a bunch of different conferences. But I think also, like, there’s probably like a big, I don’t know, [00:58:00] Java conference, or

like.

[00:58:01] Chuck: are also like, like DjangoConf, right? Like they do one in the States, they do one in Europe, and so it’s more like biannual. So yeah, I think that because there’s so many different flavors When’s SvelteKitConf? Mm.

[00:58:18] Rich: Spelt summit spelt summit.com is happening on April 27th. It’s a virtual conference.

[00:58:24] Chuck: Okay.

[00:58:25] Rich: We, we had an in-person one in 2022, I wanna say. And now we’re hoping to have another one at some point in the near future,

[00:58:37] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:58:38] Rich: the one that’s scheduled right now is April 27th and it’s going to be on on YouTube.

[00:58:44] Chuck: There you go. That’s a good

[00:58:47] Robbie: Yeah, we’ll have to make sure we air this before then.

[00:58:49] Chuck: Yeah. Or just tweet about it or something. Yeah, we’ve got a month. Can we do this? Geez. I think we can make it work.

[00:58:57] Robbie: Yeah, listen, I got code to ship, man.

[00:58:59] Chuck: [00:59:00] I mean Our producers Our video producers are just so slow and behind.

[00:59:05] Robbie: are, yeah. And they just always wear hats, it’s weird.

[00:59:08] Chuck: Yeah, they only wear hats, I think, these days, and grow beards. I don’t know.

[00:59:13] Robbie: Alright we are about at time here. Before we end, is there anything we missed talking about or stuff you’d like to plug?

[00:59:23] Rich: Stuff I’d like to plug. No, just use Svelte, go to svelte. dev, learn all about it. Actually you don’t have to do that.

[00:59:34] Robbie: Ha ha ha

ha.

[00:59:37] Rich: if it’s interesting to you. If not, then we will not be offended, but we think it’s pretty cool and that people should check it out. People seem to like it for the most part.

That’s all I’m plugging right now.

[00:59:49] Chuck: Yeah, and if you don’t like that, then go to Remix. I would skip all the other ones. I don’t know. What else?

[00:59:54] Rich: Controversial.

[00:59:56] Robbie: we’re going to skip next, is that what you’re saying?

[00:59:59] Chuck: [01:00:00] Next framework!

[01:00:01] Robbie: Hmm,

[01:00:02] Chuck: Anyway, I’ve used plenty of

[01:00:04] Robbie: no, they’re all pretty good options these days.

[01:00:06] Chuck: Indeed.

[01:00:07] Robbie: Alright, thanks everyone for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe, leave us some ratings and reviews. We appreciate it and we will catch you next time.

[01:00:14] Chuck: Boom, boom.