Whiskey Web and Whatnot: Web Development, Neat

A whiskey fueled fireside chat with your favorite web developers.

192: Are Frameworks Still Worth the Tradeoffs? w/ Adam Rackis

This week, Chuck talks with Adam Rackis live from React Miami. Along with special guest-host Aaron Francis, they dig into React Server Components, the quirks of modern JavaScript frameworks, and why TanStack might be the future. Sipping an Appleton Estate Rum,...

Creators and Guests

Charles William Carpenter III
Aaron Francis
Adam Rackis

Show Notes

This week, Chuck talks with Adam Rackis live from React Miami. Along with special guest-host Aaron Francis, they dig into React Server Components, the quirks of modern JavaScript frameworks, and why TanStack might be the future. Sipping an Appleton Estate Rum, they swap hot takes, get candid about developer trends, tech philosophies, and share some unexpected guilty pleasures.

In this episode:

  • (00:00) - Intro
  • (02:37) - Rum tasting and review: Appleton Estate
  • (11:27) - Hot Take: Why Adam is cooling off on React Server Components
  • (14:56) - What makes TanStack the most exciting tool in frontend?
  • (16:52) - Are we still chasing SSR for the right reasons?
  • (21:26) - Comparing frameworks: Laravel, Next.js, Redwood & more
  • (24:34) - Should you pay for Auth or build it yourself?
  • (25:13) - Why does the JS community resist “batteries-included” frameworks?
  • (27:54) - A look at Adam’s React Miami talk: From PHP to RSC
  • (30:45) - Hot Take: classes vs hooks
  • (33:31) - Adam’s military background
  • (35:08) - Milestones: Spotify, marriage, and careers
  • (36:56) - Has Disney ruined Star Wars?
  • (38:17) - Guilty pleasures: Jackass, Fast & Furious, and more
  • (43:29) - If not tech, what would Adam do instead?
  • (44:05) - Plugs

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.

[00:00:27] Intro: I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.

[00:00:36] Chuck Carpenter: Alrighty. Welcome back to React Miami, where we have rum react and ramblings. And our special guest today is. What is your name again? No, just kidding. Adam Rackis is finally joining us on the show. Adam, thank you. Thank you for having me. just for those who don’t know who you are and what you do, let ‘em know.

[00:00:56] Adam Rackis: Uh, I’m a senior software engineer at Spotify. Prior to that I was at Riot [00:01:00] Games. And before that, just some odds and ends startups here. Yeah. Excellent.

[00:01:05] Chuck Carpenter: And I would be remiss not to introduce our special guest co-host. , I like to call him my upgrade in the pocket. Aaron Francis. so for those listeners who maybe had, didn’t see your episode or don’t know who you are on the internet, , let them know.

[00:01:21] Chuck Carpenter: Sure. ,

[00:01:21] Aaron Francis: I’m happy to be here as your guest, co-host, , here at React Miami for the first time. , my name is Aaron Francis. I am, more probably a backend developer. , a lot of Laravel, a lot of databases, that kind of stuff. , but hey. You know, everyone’s learning react, so why not? Me too.

[00:01:38] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, , you’re finally due.

[00:01:39] Chuck Carpenter: I’m finally due. They have won you over. Yes. I can’t wait to see you in a triangle shirt. I think it’s gonna be amazing. Okay. That seems a little far, doesn’t it? That seems a little far. Fair enough. Yeah. I do very much think of you as like a database guy. I know you do a bunch of the database. Uh, screencast and learning stuff.

[00:01:55] Chuck Carpenter: I do love databases. I really,

[00:01:56] Aaron Francis: really do.

[00:01:57] Adam Rackis: Yeah, he’s not a database guy. He’s the database [00:02:00] guy. Subject matter expertise is my left clip.

[00:02:03] Aaron Francis: That, that’s perfect.

[00:02:04] Chuck Carpenter: That is great for me. I love that. I’ll give you that clip for later. Appreciate that. Uh, I think he’s. , rare in the sense that he’s a database guy who is willing to go on the internet and talk a lot and be somewhat personable.

[00:02:15] Chuck Carpenter: So I’ll give you

[00:02:16] Aaron Francis: that. It is a good way to stand out. Yes.

[00:02:18] Adam Rackis: It’s hard to what? It’s hard to find content for database stuff. Like, you don’t see a lot of people like, oh, I wanna learn about SQL execution plans and Postgres. Correct. And it sucks. Like, that stuff is so cool. That

[00:02:27] Aaron Francis: is extremely high leverage, and I find that it’s not taught very often.

[00:02:32] Aaron Francis: I don’t know. So it’s kinda like a wide open, a wide open market for us, which is nice.

[00:02:37] Chuck Carpenter: All righty. And so we got this trouble bottle for you and I unfortunately for listeners, you uh, I’ll have to just post this on the internet, but today we are having the Appleton estate signature Jamaican rum. , I know it’s made with either molasses or sugar cane.

[00:02:55] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know anything about the mash bill of these things. some kind of [00:03:00] grains and age, not age stated. , but it’s gonna be an interesting first foray into our rums. So I think that Nice. At

[00:03:07] Aaron Francis: 11:54 AM Yes. 1154 in the morning. It’s five somewhere. Everything’s fine. Yes. Yeah. If

[00:03:13] Chuck Carpenter: you delay slightly, this is Oh, wow.

[00:03:15] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it’s got it’s heavy.

[00:03:17] Adam Rackis: My favorite. It’s a handle. If you, if you’re not watching video, it’s a handle, but they shaped it not like a handle. It’s like it’s just a fat bottle of rum. Oh, he is? Got a heavy hand. Hello?

[00:03:26] Aaron Francis: Yeah. We’re, pouring into plastic cups at 11 in the morning. It’s gonna be a long day, my friends.

[00:03:31] Chuck Carpenter: I promise you. We are grownups, we’re professionals. Yes. So the format of the show begins with a taste of alcohol. Typically. This is whiskey today. It is rum. We talk a little bit about it. It, it, uh, looks like apple juice to me. Actually. It does. Has that visions of, I give it a little sniff to start. Oof. Ooh.

[00:03:54] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.

[00:03:55] Aaron Francis: It’s very rummy, very smell.

[00:03:58] Chuck Carpenter: That’s very Scooby doo of [00:04:00] you. Ooh, shaggy rummy. Ooh. Alright.

[00:04:05] Adam Rackis: we

[00:04:05] Chuck Carpenter: ready? Yeah, you can, you can sit however you want. We’re not taking shots, bro. To Adam Rack. Here we go to Adam Rack. Let’s have a take.

[00:04:12] Adam Rackis: Wow. Smooth little bit of fire on the front. Yeah. Yeah. It’s got a little heat to it and it’s got a little bit of char smooth, smooth finish. Little bit of like charred sugar to it. It had a smell of , apple cider vinegar to me. I’m gonna be honest, but like in a ni, in a pleasant way. So I think it demands pineapple juice though.

[00:04:29] Chuck Carpenter: This particular one, I’m gonna say. Yeah. Honestly,

[00:04:30] Aaron Francis: this doesn’t feel like a sit around the pool kind of drinking rum. This, this feels elevated or something. Like, it doesn’t taste like, Jamaica.

[00:04:37] Chuck Carpenter: You know what I mean? Yeah. Even though Jamaican rum, I know. Okay. Yeah. , it’s not a sipper, it’s a No, I’m on a party boat and I’m going to make some, , poor decisions like mm-hmm.

[00:04:47] Chuck Carpenter: Snorkeling lately. Yes. Yeah. Pineapple juice is what I’m stuck on. Like

[00:04:51] Adam Rackis: this would go. Go great with

[00:04:53] Chuck Carpenter: pineapple juice down by the beach

[00:04:54] Adam Rackis: later. Even sipping though very smooth finish. Nice warm after glow. Yeah, it goes down [00:05:00] well.

[00:05:00] Chuck Carpenter: Adam’s standards are very low, so he mad us in mind. And I’m by no means a, , rum expert, but I am an alcohol expert in some ways.

[00:05:08] Chuck Carpenter: I actually like the Ron Z Kapa 23 Rum, like, 45, $50. Very approachable. It is a sip by the fire. Kind of fun on the beach camping out thing. Delicious. So that’s, that’s gonna be my standard in baseline.

[00:05:22] Chuck Carpenter: And I explain this because as anyone who’s listened to the show before, we have a very technical scale with which we rate our booze.

[00:05:30] Chuck Carpenter: And that is from zero to eight tentacles. So zero being like, this is horrible, throw it away. That doesn’t mean just mix with pineapple juice. Four is kind of the middle. It’s not bad. It’s not the greatest. It’s okay. Eight is clear, the shelves. This is amazing. I want more of this and I tend to categorize, but honestly, you can do whatever you want.

[00:05:50] Chuck Carpenter: We yolo this stuff, so for you, you can compare it to other rums, you can compare it to aged rums, you can compare it to just booze in general, if that’s kind of your thing. , no [00:06:00] worries. But. I’m gonna have Aaron go first actually, if you don’t mind. Oh, wow. We hate that. You know, let’s do round two before we rate ‘em.

[00:06:05] Chuck Carpenter: Gotta Yeah. Take another sip. Yeah. Get it fresh in your mind. We, let’s try this again. The second taste to always different than the first. I think so, because, you know why they call that it’s actually priming your palate? Yes. And it’s, it’s a thing, the alcohol first hits your taste buds and it always feels hotter and it starts to trigger the salvatory glands.

[00:06:22] Chuck Carpenter: So they always tell you to like prime first. How much of this is made

[00:06:24] Aaron Francis: up?

[00:06:26] Chuck Carpenter: Zero on it. Oh, wow. Okay. I, I learned this at a distillery actually in Tennessee a long time ago. Okay. Keep going. I know I come off as very stupid. There are certain, if, if the information seems like not that useful or relevant for like, making money in your life, I know it.

[00:06:41] Chuck Carpenter: I’m all over. It was the

[00:06:42] Aaron Francis: salivary gland that it’s personally just taking this up, isn’t it?

[00:06:46] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. You’re buying it though. You are. So like, is this real or not real because I’m not sure. Let’s

[00:06:51] Aaron Francis: go, I’ll give it. You know I thinking I’m gonna go a little bit harsh. I’m gonna give it a four. Okay. There’s nothing wrong with that.

[00:06:58] Aaron Francis: There’s no wrong answer. [00:07:00] So no offense to whoever created this fine round Appleton Rum. Sorry, Appleton, I hope you’re not listening. Yeah, I give it a four. I don’t know that rum is, is ever on my scale gonna hit much higher than a six? Just like the best rum for me is probably gonna hit a six. ‘cause I’m not a big rum guy and this is not the best rum.

[00:07:15] Chuck Carpenter: Well, I think you’re right in your current opinion. I, I think I might be able to challenge that standard. Okay. Yeah. So, but we’ll see, you know. All right. Mine’s a four as they say. Adam, what, what do we got? Yeah, Adam, you’re

[00:07:26] Adam Rackis: up. I’m not a rum, rum guy either. but I, I think this is way better than your typical average rum.

[00:07:32] Adam Rackis: So if you’re listening to this, this is a great rum. If you’re into rums. For me, rum is just something you mix with other things to make a tropical drink when you’re on the beach. Yep. Uh, I’m gonna give it a six. Oh wow. it’s not often that you can sip a rum. That’s very rare. So this, you can do that. , I don’t know what an eight would be like.

[00:07:49] Adam Rackis: Maybe bumbo. But even that you wouldn’t Sweet. That’s overly banana sweet. You just mix it it with something else.

[00:07:54] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. See again, mixer drinks are never gonna just hit overly high. I do think though, [00:08:00] that I can challenge both of your assumptions about rum because. Lucky for you. I’m an alcoholic and I have tried many things and I think that aged spirits, like very aged tequilas are different.

[00:08:13] Chuck Carpenter: They will reset your baselines on that and very aged rums will surprise you. Okay. As long as they’re made with natural ingredients too. Because the problem is that cheaper rums tend, tend to get, like they’re based with like molasses and corn syrup. Microplastics. Yeah. and flavored and, and they’re essentially mixer, things.

[00:08:31] Chuck Carpenter: And I am also very much about like context. Hey, if I’m on a beach vacation, I do, I want like a rum fruity, like bullshit cocktail. Mm-hmm. And that’s just fun in that context. But if I’m sitting around drinking or trying to taste someone and something and someone, whoa, Freud you slips, I don’t do that anymore.

[00:08:50] Chuck Carpenter: But anyway, yeah, if I’m actually just trying to like, enjoy the spirit and kind of see what’s in there, then I will go for something more aged. So given that [00:09:00] with this one, yeah. I’m kind of at a three and a half, 24. Whoa. And that’s not bad. Bad. That doesn’t make it bad’s bad. That’s just like, makes it kind of average.

[00:09:07] Chuck Carpenter: Like this is drinkable, but it would be way better with like coke and a lime or I agree. Pin diet, diet coke and a lime. I agree. Yeah. Diet. Yeah, we know Diet Coke. I get it. diet Coke with lime too, just amazing on its own. , so yeah, I’m kind of, I’m just gonna say three and a half. And I don’t mean that in the worst way.

[00:09:23] Chuck Carpenter: I just mean that like. It doesn’t sit well on its own. It came in a handle. Mm-hmm. At a very reasonable price. So I would, I thought I a little bit

[00:09:32] Aaron Francis: of foreshadowing.

[00:09:33] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And I try to spend between like 40 to $60 on a lot of our things. And if I think like, that’s too pricey, I think let’s say it was 40 bucks or 50 bucks for that size, your party is covered.

[00:09:45] Chuck Carpenter: So it’s good value for that, but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna actually sit well on its own anyway. So, yeah, three and a half. It’s fine. It’s drinkable. Definitely mix it.

[00:09:55] Adam Rackis: I’m getting motivated to try more rums now. Like you’ve got me a little fired up. when my wife and I were at Key [00:10:00] West, there is a rum distillery there.

[00:10:02] Adam Rackis: Mm-hmm. And they sell a bottle of raw and unfiltered rum, and it is the most amazing thing. They like brew it in bourbon barrels. And so it comes out like a super smooth, slightly sweet bourbon, but it’s a rum. And it is phenomenal and I wish I had some here right now to share with you guys. Yeah, sounds good.

[00:10:20] Adam Rackis: Covering Oklahoma.

[00:10:21] Chuck Carpenter: I would definitely look it up. There are some American produced rums. There’s one out of Georgia actually, where it’s an estate rum, which means they grow their own sugar cane. That’s cool. And then it’s right from, you know, ground to bottle. Really good, highly recommended.

[00:10:35] Adam Rackis: I mean, it’s only a three hour drive.

[00:10:37] Adam Rackis: We could just swing by Key West real quick.

[00:10:40] Chuck Carpenter: Take a boat. We can do our uh, Hemingway tour. Yeah. I

[00:10:43] Aaron Francis: do feel like that is something that could happen at React Miami is people be like, what if we did a three hour boat tour to go get some rum? I 100% believe that could happen here.

[00:10:53] Adam Rackis: Can Wheeler Spidey

[00:10:54] Chuck Carpenter: sensor? Yes, exactly.

[00:10:55] Chuck Carpenter: Something’s happening. I was actually gonna say, I know someone we could probably convince.

[00:10:59] Aaron Francis: [00:11:00] It would take very little convincing.

[00:11:01] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, as long as I’m back in time for my Saturday flight, I’m up for a lot of options. I think

[00:11:07] Aaron Francis: Adam has a talk. He’s probably gotta be back for at some point.

[00:11:09] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, right after we go tomorrow afternoon.

[00:11:11] Chuck Carpenter: Tomorrow

[00:11:11] Aaron Francis: afternoon. All right.

[00:11:12] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And you have like

[00:11:13] Adam Rackis: kind of an early flight after that, right? Yeah, unfortunately I’m meeting my wife in Orlando. We got a thing together, so. Oh, Disney. Are you one of those weirdos? No, not Disney. It’s, it’s a long story, but it’s not Disney.

[00:11:23] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Fair enough. Yeah, it’s not

[00:11:24] Adam Rackis: like a shady, or I

[00:11:25] Chuck Carpenter: might prod

[00:11:26] Adam Rackis: you a little

[00:11:26] Chuck Carpenter: about that, but that’s okay.

[00:11:27] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Let’s talk about quasi professional things. I am gonna touch on the hot takes of things ‘cause you do like to yell at people at the internet and so on the internet and I cannot completely avoid all of that stuff. ‘cause you’re a bit of a right fighter for React state components. I think so. Would you agree with that assessment or no?

[00:11:46] Chuck Carpenter: React server components. Oh, server components. Yeah.

[00:11:48] Aaron Francis: How much, how much REM have you been tasting over there, Charles?

[00:11:50] Chuck Carpenter: I have had, I have had a double espresso for breakfast. Uh,

[00:11:54] Aaron Francis: react state components. Even I,

[00:11:56] Chuck Carpenter: Adam, even, I

[00:11:57] Aaron Francis: know

[00:11:57] Chuck Carpenter: that’s RSCs, more RSCs, whatever they [00:12:00] know, you know? So in the React world, they’ve been playing a game of hot potato with state on the client side for a long time.

[00:12:07] Chuck Carpenter: I’m well aware and acronyms.

[00:12:09] Aaron Francis: Okay. So

[00:12:09] Chuck Carpenter: yeah,

[00:12:10] Aaron Francis: you are a little bit of a fighter for RSCs. I will agree with that.

[00:12:13] Adam Rackis: What is right fighter? Am I for it? Or against it for it? Oh.

[00:12:17] Aaron Francis: Oh, that’s interesting. That’s not a phrase I’ve ever heard Fighter and you never heard of somebody.

[00:12:20] Chuck Carpenter: Right. Fighting so that just means you’ll fall on the sword of being correct, like sometimes to your detriment. And I’m not saying that’s the place where you’re in by any means, but like like you very much Right. Fight for that cause like you believe in them and you are pressing.

[00:12:34] Aaron Francis: I like that. I think that’s a good thing to be.

[00:12:36] Adam Rackis: Yeah. Times have changed a bit. I’ve cooled on ES quite a bit. Oh, I see. Yeah. I would’ve, I I didn’t mean to set you up, like No, this is perfect. This is good. Tell

[00:12:45] Aaron Francis: us, tell us the journey. Yeah. I, I love this.

[00:12:48] Adam Rackis: So the vision that Versal kind of came out with originally was beautiful, right? You can just fetch data right from your components.

[00:12:56] Adam Rackis: They always run on the server, so you don’t have to worry about, you can just do whatever you [00:13:00] want right on the server.

[00:13:00] Aaron Francis: Okay?

[00:13:01] Adam Rackis: Your components will run in parallel, so you can fetch in parallel. Obviously, you don’t want to network waterfalls, but for me, the big thing is what happens when you change data and you need to reload things.

[00:13:10] Adam Rackis: Okay? And then as you’re fetching, you can add tags to Elle’s special fetch wrapper. You add tags. And then you can do something called revalidate tag. Mm-hmm. And people will think, well that’s just gonna reload the data associated with that tag. But what it really does is it re-render your entire RSE tree.

[00:13:27] Adam Rackis: Everything re fetches. The only thing revalidate tag does is it kicks out some cache entries because they’re assuming that you’re caching everything. And when you think about it, like there’s no other way they could do this, you’re sending a server action to the server. It has like your session data, it’s got.

[00:13:42] Adam Rackis: A URL that you’re on the server action id. There’s no way for your web server to just magically introspect your entire componentry and figure out what little pieces of data to re-request. I. The web server has no context to be able to do that. So it reruns everything. ‘cause it has to,

[00:13:58] Chuck Carpenter: that’s a whole [00:14:00] contradiction to what React was to begin with.

[00:14:01] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. It was supposed to client side react to your component, data tree changes specific to that component. Yep. Right. So that’s a, is that a react problem or ell? Well, a next problem, sorry, I do want to separate or sell from next, just to give them, I guess that context.

[00:14:19] Adam Rackis: So this is only one implementation of RSE and revalidate tag, and that’s stuff that is specific to next.

[00:14:25] Adam Rackis: And there are other possible use cases for RSE that don’t quite exist yet. Basically the short of it is you can just render some HTML using RSE and hit that from an end point, and that could prevent you from pulling down a deep component tree bundle. If you have a lot of stuff being imported and conditionally rendered, that’s gonna blow up your client side JavaScript bundle.

[00:14:47] Adam Rackis: So if you do that on the server and then just send down the result, that could result in smaller bundle sizes. And that’s a use case that’s under Explored for now.

[00:14:56] Adam Rackis: Tant Stack is working on some stuff in that space.

[00:14:58] Aaron Francis: Yeah. So is that the new [00:15:00] hotness Tant stack?

[00:15:01] Adam Rackis: Tant Stack definitely is, yeah. Yeah. In my opinion.

[00:15:03] Adam Rackis: And you get a lot of engagement anytime you see Tant stack come up. Very, very popular. A lot of people love it.

[00:15:08] Aaron Francis: is that the more pure implementation of RSC that you’re. Looking forward to,

[00:15:13] Adam Rackis: uh, there is no RSC in Tant stack yet, and that’s one of the least things that I’m looking forward to with Tant Stack.

[00:15:19] Adam Rackis: But they’re working on it and I’m happy for them, but I’m excited about Tant Stack for some other reasons.

[00:15:23] Aaron Francis: Okay. Tell us those reasons. Yes, I’d be happy to. Um,

[00:15:27] Adam Rackis: so the type safety is second to none in anything. TanStack TanStack Router has typesafe routing typesafe query, params typesafe everything.

[00:15:36] Adam Rackis: And TanStack start. And this is a big part of my talk tomorrow. they handle meta framework stuff better than anyone else, I think. So the short version is when you navigate to your web application, their server-side loaders will run on the server for your initial load and then everything happens on the client from then on out.

[00:15:56] Adam Rackis: So you have all the benefits of traditional spas, but now you get [00:16:00] the server rendering performance benefit for that initial route and everything else. Remix SvelteKit next. Those loaders or loader equivalents, they always run on the server. And so you’ve got your client app interacting with these things that are always running on the server.

[00:16:14] Adam Rackis: And so you have this kind of impedance mismatch and some things get a little bit awkward at times figuring out how to interact with those server-side loaders appropriately.

[00:16:23] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I think that you need to have that good floor to ceiling connection. Mm-hmm. Between client and server. Otherwise I just ask why react?

[00:16:31] Chuck Carpenter: And my follow up to that is, so that’s. Generally a statement, and you can react to that if you choose. and I would say that like RSCs just feel like the latest isomorphic implementation. That makes me ask things like, why not just use Ruby Laravel, Django, something else? Who has been doing server side re

[00:16:52] Chuck Carpenter: server side Render is not new service side render is the base of the internet.

[00:16:56] Chuck Carpenter: Right? And we keep chasing a a, a looped [00:17:00] around version of this that we went away from before. And so my follow up is really more around like what do you think the motivations of that are? Is that chasing a talent pool or is there something real and tangible that’s beneficial to users and developers

[00:17:16] Adam Rackis: about that?

[00:17:16] Adam Rackis: Dan Abramoff has written really compellingly about this, and he was one of the voices that really made me excited about it and it. It is such a beautiful vision where you have things that are formed on the server and then you interlay your client components for your interactivity and you can interleave them arbitrarily, which itself is an incredibly impressive engineering feat specific to react. That’s not a ELL thing. and then he, the way he talks about server actions as RPC. Also beautiful. Again, the one thing that I’m hung up on is there’s no way to just change one thing and get that one thing updated without adding a full caching layer in JavaScript as of now.

[00:17:55] Adam Rackis: And I don’t see any way they can fix that. So that’s what fails for me. But, but what

[00:17:59] Chuck Carpenter: you describe [00:18:00] architecturally sounds to me like I could build a Laravel app that is server rendered. And I could add HTMX that would do exactly what you’re saying. ‘cause Hypermedia controls have

[00:18:10] Adam Rackis: this, I know little about Laravel, but I, I’m almost certain you can build it with Laravel.

[00:18:14] Adam Rackis: As I understand, Laravel does what I just described with Tant stack start where it will let you build your app and React and Laravel can handle that initial server render and then React just takes over and does everything. Yeah. And where your React components have access to that server fetched initial data.

[00:18:29] Adam Rackis: So that’s just tack start in a different form if I understood everything correctly. So I love Laravel and I haven’t even used it, but from everything I’ve heard,

[00:18:37] Aaron Francis: yeah. Laravel has taken an interesting approach, I think, to front ends in that they have tried to make them make Laravel work really nicely with View Reacts, felt all of them.

[00:18:49] Aaron Francis: And we do that through inertia. And so you’ve, you’ve described it exactly right, the first load. You know, we can server side render with inertia using View or React, and then after [00:19:00] that you can just do the HX requests, I think the promise of React server components, and I’m not up on the implementations, but I think the promise is a more tightly coupled version of kind of like the traditional request response.

[00:19:13] Aaron Francis: Y’all get like type safety composition over the network boundary and you can call anything from anywhere and it’s just a lot more fluid. Then, in Laravel, Ruby Phoenix, maybe. I don’t really know. , it’s very much more like request response, not just let’s dance over the network boundary as if it doesn’t exist.

[00:19:33] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And that’s always the gap. That’s the gray area. And there’s been some great talks about this, like Sam selloff is talking about like a great talk high floor, low ceiling. Mm-hmm. And then same conference where Ryan Florence was kind of talking about like. Blending that gap together, like those are two for any listener that would be interested in exploring this topic further, I would say look up Big Sky Developer Conference 2024, Sam Selloffs talk there about that is a good primer.[00:20:00]

[00:20:00] Chuck Carpenter: And then what Ryan Florence kind of sees that at us, and I’m not saying I agree necessarily a hundred percent, but like. Server components are basically trying to eliminate that, gray area in between, like the network responses mm-hmm. Are no longer the sort of exchange and agreement layer that you don’t have as much control of and they’re just trying to like, you know, react everywhere basically as syntax of the internet To a degree.

[00:20:26] Chuck Carpenter: That’s how I perceive it, at least, you know, I could be wrong, but I, I would definitely encourage those who haven’t listened to those talks to do. So

[00:20:32] Adam Rackis: I think that. A really good analysis, , dancing over the network boundary. It seems great. You know, there’s risks. there were some like kind of bugs where if you mess up, you could accidentally expose server side client secrets into your JavaScript bundle.

[00:20:47] Adam Rackis: If you do things just the wrong way with server actions, I think there’s value in keeping your server side stuff well-defined. also composability seems beautiful with RSE, [00:21:00] but. So refactoring your componentry has traditionally been like a super safe thing. You just move your components around. That’s the beauty of React.

[00:21:06] Adam Rackis: If you do that with RSC, you risk creating network waterfalls where the new parent component, fetches and awaits and the new child can’t render until the parent’s done awaiting and the child now needs to await its own thing. Yeah, it’s fixable. You have to hoist and pass the promise, but.

[00:21:20] Adam Rackis: It’s something you have to think about now. Like a lot seems like a lot refactoring is dangerous now.

[00:21:26] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know. I mean, that’s the thing is like, well when you’re chasing the latest and greatest, and this is kind of one of my problems and where I start to progress into like well treaded things. I use Laravel as an example today because of my guest host and I think that you can chime in well about that.

[00:21:42] Chuck Carpenter: I haven’t used it. I may at some point for sure, but you know, your tried and true traditionals You can definitely find the flaws in Ruby, and you can definitely find the flaws in Django. But at the end of the day is they do their jobs well and they are truly complete web frameworks [00:22:00] If your web framework doesn’t have an auth layer already built in. If it’s not giving you queuing, if it’s not giving you a mailer, then it doesn’t have what you need. It is not a framework, it’s just a piece of the puzzle. And you can choose your own adventure. I have no problem with that, but just don’t call it as such.

[00:22:17] Chuck Carpenter: So that is kind of the disconnect for me. That’s

[00:22:19] Aaron Francis: great. Those are my, those are all my talking points. That’s awesome. I I love that.

[00:22:23] Chuck Carpenter: Well, you should have told me to shut

[00:22:24] Aaron Francis: up. No, that’s, that’s you’re, that’s my hobby horse. I love it.

[00:22:28] Adam Rackis: People have talked a lot about how JavaScript seems so allergic to just.

[00:22:32] Adam Rackis: Agreeing on one set of standards for those things. The counter argument is ‘cause they, , innovate more quickly. I believe that a little bit. Things like drizzle I think are a good example of that. But my god, something like off and mailers. I don’t effing, oh, it’s, I can, can curse here. I don’t fucking care.

[00:22:51] Adam Rackis: Yeah,

[00:22:51] you can,

[00:22:51] Adam Rackis: just off as long as it works and it’s secure. Nailers, my God. Just give me something outta the box.

[00:22:56] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah. That’s actually what I like about redwood js. So Redwood [00:23:00] JS is a, oh gosh, to one of the GitHub founders, Tom Preston Warner. Thank you. You got it. Thank you. we even interviewed him years ago, so it’s a nice fellow.

[00:23:09] Chuck Carpenter: I’m pulling

[00:23:10] Aaron Francis: my weight here.

[00:23:10] Chuck Carpenter: do you? That’s all I need from you. Be you. so yeah, Redwood js has those things. Mm-hmm. Out of the box. You may not agree with the paradigms across the board, but like you can with JavaScript. Create a full, full web application and has those things. You don’t need to engage vendors.

[00:23:27] Chuck Carpenter: You can, you have the option of swapping those in and that’s what I want. Let me produce fast and improve as needed, but if I have to go find a queuing system and pay someone. And so that’s what I think, that’s what part of the motivators are, is you hire some smart people to tell you that you’re not smart enough to understand mailers or not understand Q or not understand all, don’t make your own awe.

[00:23:50] Chuck Carpenter: ‘cause you’re not smart enough to do it. Don’t waste cycles on this. Pay us. There’s a financial motivation and I, I do feel strongly you about that and that’s okay. People are selling us stuff, but[00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Chuck Carpenter: you know,

[00:24:01] CTA: This just in! Whiskey.fund is now open for all your merch needs. That’s right, Robbie. We’re hearing reports of hats, sweaters, and T-shirts, as well as a link to join our Discord server. What’s a Discord server? Just read the prompter, man. Hit subscribe. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and tell your friends about our broadcast. It really does help us reach more people and keeps the show growing. All right, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[00:24:34] Adam Rackis: I do sympathize with the don’t roll your own auth. You don’t have to pay Clerk. We’re all thinking of Clerk.

[00:24:38] Adam Rackis: That clerks great. They’re nice people. Auth0 too. Come on.

[00:24:42] Adam Rackis: Auth zero. , next auth, which doesn’t just work with Next. Yeah, there’s the basic auth that just came out better. That’s T people Better off Open auth. better off. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking from the SST people. Yeah. You don’t have to pay someone, but it’s not just, oh, I’ll hash my passwords.

[00:24:56] Adam Rackis: There’s a lot more to it than that. Or I’ll salt and hash my passwords now I’m done. [00:25:00] There’s more people are gonna want two FA people are gonna want password reset. Yeah. There’s just a bunch of shit to get right. there’s plenty of out of the box solutions. But ship one outta the box, like with, like Laravel does give me one.

[00:25:11] Adam Rackis: I don’t care. Give me a starting point. Yeah.

[00:25:12] Aaron Francis: What is your,

[00:25:13] Aaron Francis: what’s your take on why everyone in the JavaScript community is so allergic to like a battery’s included? because like next is a framework. Sure. Laravel is a framework. Sure. But they’re fundamentally different.

[00:25:26] Aaron Francis: And so I’ve started saying batteries included. So what, what is the, allergy in the JavaScript community to a

[00:25:32] Adam Rackis: batteries included framework? The argument is that. The innovation happens more quickly in the JavaScript community. , and people will smirk at that. they’re right to smirk at it for some things.

[00:25:40] Adam Rackis: Like we don’t need 10 new off solutions every year. But for me the best example is drizzle. That is just such a phenomenal, impressive, if you had built a batteries included thing, it probably would’ve been prisma. ‘cause that was the hype way back when. Sure. And drizzle is just on another level, in my opinion, and a lot of people’s opinions.

[00:25:59] Adam Rackis: And so [00:26:00] when you’re free to explore, I think the argument is if you codify something now it’s gonna be obsolete in a year or less. I think that’s true for a small number of things like ORs for things like, like off the perfect example where I don’t care. Yeah, just give me something with oof providers like GitHub and Google, it does

[00:26:20] Chuck Carpenter: become a set it and forget it thing.

[00:26:21] Chuck Carpenter: Like once you do your initial implementation, you configure. You’re barely gonna touch it ever again. I get that. Unless there’s like, I want a magic password option or something like that, you get something. Well, actually I would say the times when it gets complicated is if you’re a B2B application and you have to do active directory syn.

[00:26:43] Chuck Carpenter: Oh geez. You know, that kind of stuff. So then there’s a vendor, there’s like work os there’s like someone who is kind of giving you that middle layer, but like you don’t need that to get started. and I think like as a startup, if you’re getting pitched off of Zero or you’re [00:27:00] getting pitched to clerk, doc dev and, you know, sorry, no shade to them to like, they wanna make money.

[00:27:04] Chuck Carpenter: back in the day, I definitely helped launch a couple of apps where we started with AU zero because it was fast and we moved on, and we were using next, or we were using some, you know, we were using Ember or whatever else, and it didn’t include those things. So you have to make a choice there. There wasn’t great open source.

[00:27:21] Chuck Carpenter: Options, like you said, next auth, which is now off js, which is more ubiquitous and that’s helpful. But you know, a lot of people were just like, I wanna get started and I don’t want to think about this part. They have moved forward, but backing out of that choice is hard. And there’s a lot of other things.

[00:27:40] Chuck Carpenter: I just think over time, I prefer a solution that gives me something I can count on for the long term. Mm-hmm. And then features are what push me, not like just getting started with login. Makes me make that choice.

[00:27:54] Adam Rackis: Yeah.

[00:27:54] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:54] Aaron Francis: Your talk has a great title, tell the people the title of your talk, and [00:28:00] then give us, give us a little run through for the people that aren’t here.

[00:28:02] Aaron Francis: What, what the arc is gonna be.

[00:28:04] Adam Rackis: Sure. the title is, , serving Content on the Web from PHP to RSC. so pH p it

[00:28:09] just, it just has that sing songy. It’s, I love it. It’s just so good. From PHP to RSC,

[00:28:14] Adam Rackis: thank you so much and beyond. So PHP was the lingua franca of the web or a SP maybe, , server generates the HML sends it down and that’s it, and you’re done.

[00:28:21] Adam Rackis: , if you want any kind of client interactivity, you use JavaScript and you know, way back in the day it might be sliding in a side panel on your blog to show some links or whatever, but years later, we’re building fully interactive applications. And so. A little bit of JavaScript here, a little bit of J Query there.

[00:28:37] Adam Rackis: It just gets hard to organize. So we started developing JavaScript frameworks like Backbone and Ember. Oh yeah. And, and then we develop better ones like React, and it was great. But the one thing you give up is that initial render. Now when the server responds with your webpage, it’s just a loading spinner.

[00:28:52] Adam Rackis: And now your browser has to do a bunch more round trips to the server to get your script tag, content to fetch data that you need [00:29:00] to serve your page. And finally that finishes in your paid shows and that was good enough and it’s fine and you can still make money like that, but you know, why not do better?

[00:29:07] Adam Rackis: We’re engineers, we’re trying to optimize. Can we improve on that? And so we started building meta frameworks like next that help you, that do the same thing, but also SSR, that server render that first path. But now there’s other difficulties you have to serve all your data and get server side props. And then we started seeing like remix and spelt kit and next app directory.

[00:29:28] Adam Rackis: All different attempts to try and solve that same problem of server rendering, that initial page, giving you back the client interactivity. But those solutions all had the server kind of hanging around, tied at your hip, and it makes it a little more difficult to have these client driven applications.

[00:29:45] Adam Rackis: And for me, the end game here is Tans deck start, which does that. In a better way with those isomorphic loaders. The server gives you your content and then it just gets outta your way. Now every, your whole thing runs on the client Tan stack router, which is fully client side. You need data, you just [00:30:00] fetch to an API endpoint somewhere and you get your data and now you have your SPA back.

[00:30:04] Adam Rackis: Hmm. So that’s the two minute version.

[00:30:07] Aaron Francis: Oh, that’s gonna be great. , are these talks streamable later? Can people watch this later? Yeah, they

[00:30:11] Chuck Carpenter: said that. So they’re gonna be live streamed during the conference. Mm-hmm. And then they will go up, , like in a week or so after. Cool. Good. They’re live stream. So you’re Yeah, they are gonna, well

[00:30:20] Aaron Francis: that’s what I saw yesterday.

[00:30:22] Aaron Francis: Yeah, I saw It’s already live streaming on Twitter right now. Perfect. Yeah.

[00:30:25] Chuck Carpenter: So there’s that. Mm-hmm. And then, uh, the rest will be coming later. So you and I aren’t gonna miss talks. I know you really hoping. Well, I want to catch

[00:30:34] Aaron Francis: that one. I’ll be honest. I don’t wanna catch a lot of them, but I do wanna catch that one.

[00:30:37] Chuck Carpenter: No pressure. don’t worry. I got a handle, a rum. If you need a little confidence booster before you head up there, let me know. I got you hooked up. I appreciate it.

[00:30:45] Chuck Carpenter: I want to ask you this. it is somewhat still of a hot take. classes or react hooks.

[00:30:50] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, it’s like that meme lifecycle methods or react hooks. How about that? Because that is the thing that still kind of pisses me off.

[00:30:57] Adam Rackis: Never forget what they took from us. We have to return seriously. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. [00:31:00] I get it. I get why they did hooks. So like for the simple case classes are like so much simpler and you have get.

[00:31:05] Adam Rackis: component will update or whatever there was, yeah, component will Mount, component will update. They were like, those were two realtime component will mount. That was, that’s the ultimate example of what they took from us. It’s way better than use effect with an empty, ,

[00:31:20] Adam Rackis: dependency that

[00:31:21] Chuck Carpenter: runs, runs twice in

[00:31:22] Adam Rackis: dev mode.

[00:31:22] Adam Rackis: So make sure you’re careful and it’s perfectly safe to run twice. We don’t care about

[00:31:26] Chuck Carpenter: re-render anymore, except we always cared about them before. It’s all a bunch of annoying stuff like, you know.

[00:31:32] Adam Rackis: It is annoying and I wish people had owned it more, and I wish people had accepted it. So then you could see the benefits a little more clearly.

[00:31:38] Adam Rackis: the simple case was better with classes, but the harder case is better with hooks, right? Because prop drilling sucks and you know, 20, it’s not even prop drilling, it’s reusing functionality. so remember render functions. Remember how annoying those were. Remember higher order components.

[00:31:53] Adam Rackis: He doesn’t

[00:31:53] Aaron Francis: know. Uh, we have those in view.

[00:31:55] Adam Rackis: Do you? Yeah. Oh yeah. You’re a database guy. Why am I looking at you?

[00:31:57] Aaron Francis: I view js, I love view. We’ve got [00:32:00] render functions. Got the second one. Higher order. We’ve got higher order. It’s fine. So keep going? Yeah. Higher order. I’m with you components. There you go.

[00:32:07] Adam Rackis: Yeah. So that’s how, if you had like a, I know you had some stock ticker functionality that you wanted to reuse, you would have to build that as a higher order component.

[00:32:15] Mm-hmm.

[00:32:15] Adam Rackis: And you’d use like a, it’s kinda like a mixing, even though we didn’t call it that. And it’s just a pain. And then the mixings can , collide with each other. Or you can use a render function and then that’s awkward and kind of weird hooks lets you have a used stock ticker that you can just plop in anywhere and the price you pay for that is Now we don’t have component did mount, which sucks.

[00:32:35] Adam Rackis: And maybe they should have added a component, did Mount Hook, but I think this is one of those places where the purists won the battle, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. The pure function folks,

[00:32:45] Aaron Francis: that was a pretty nuanced answer. That was good. Thank you. Yeah, it was all, it was like. Well reasoned.

[00:32:49] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You made no enemies there.

[00:32:51] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, and I kind of like that was because I did, did try to spark you a couple of times and it seems like you’re not as angry in real life as the

[00:32:58] Adam Rackis: internet. I, [00:33:00] I hate that I come off that way. I only get mad when like. The anime avatar, children start talking shit to me. Yeah. Like then I just give keyboard what I get.

[00:33:07] Adam Rackis: Keyboard cowboys. Yeah. This is

[00:33:08] Chuck Carpenter: what I miss about forums is at least they were like controlled into like now they can sort of go anywhere and Yeah, God, I do. I do love forums. I do. I love forums. Forums. I feel like forums were great and I don’t feel like Reddit really fills that void. Void. Like it’s still, I don’t know.

[00:33:26] Chuck Carpenter: No, we should bring the forums back, like and BBS and all that, whatever.

[00:33:31] Chuck Carpenter: okay, so you have a military background. Do you wanna talk a little about that? Uh, marginally military, I went to the Air Force Academy a long time ago, very short Air Force career. I was a communications officer. I flew a desk, not even a cool job.

[00:33:44] Adam Rackis: And then, , when I was in, they had a force reduction going on. I just finished my master’s degree in computer science. So you can’t

[00:33:49] Chuck Carpenter: root, you can’t use the force. ,

[00:33:53] Adam Rackis: newly married and my wife was a career Air Force officer, so I just took the force reduction and I got to get out early after two and a half years.

[00:33:59] Adam Rackis: Nice. [00:34:00] Moved in with my wife and so that was great.

[00:34:01] Aaron Francis: Your wife’s was in the Air Force as well?

[00:34:04] Adam Rackis: Uh, yeah. She, uh, flew on the aac. She was a mission crew commander on the aac. How

[00:34:07] cool is that? Is that how y’all met?

[00:34:10] Adam Rackis: Uh, yeah. We met at, , there was an initial training back then for Second Lieutenants and we were both second lieutenants and so we met at Maxwell, Alabama at Maxwell Air Force Base.

[00:34:17] Adam Rackis: That

[00:34:17] is so cool. Huh?

[00:34:18] Adam Rackis: Montgomery, Alabama, Maxwell Air Force Base.

[00:34:20] Yeah. Oh,

[00:34:20] Aaron Francis: that is so cool. I did not know that.

[00:34:22] Adam Rackis: Yeah, that is kind of cool.

[00:34:24] Aaron Francis: Yeah. Is she still in the force at all? ,

[00:34:26] Chuck Carpenter: she just retired a few years ago. Cool. That is fun. I mean, that is what’s nice about like government and military in particular, public service in many ways, is that you do have this earlier retirement endpoint and then like.

[00:34:40] Chuck Carpenter: You can actually start another career if you want, or you can obviously enjoy those benefits and they’re, they’re well earned. Like sure. That is something that doesn’t exist in many careers in life. Like nobody gets the gold watch anymore. Nobody spends 40 years in a single company. and for better or worse, I guess, right?

[00:34:59] Chuck Carpenter: [00:35:00] Like your opportunities are open, but then it’s a highly competitive employment marketplace. Like it’s a little crazy when you think about it. Yeah.

[00:35:08] Aaron Francis: How, how long have you been at Spotify?

[00:35:10] Adam Rackis: Uh, I just had my four year anniversary. Wow.

[00:35:13] Aaron Francis: Four years. Yeah. I don’t think, think I’ve ever done anything for four years.

[00:35:16] Aaron Francis: That’s crazy. Nothing. Well,

[00:35:17] Chuck Carpenter: you’ve, you have done databases for longer than four years. Yeah, that’s true. Not for the same place per se,

[00:35:22] Chuck Carpenter: but you know how long you been married? 10. Oh, okay. So you’ve done, so I just had my 10 year anniversary at the beginning of this month.

[00:35:29] Aaron Francis: Oh, congratulations. Yes,

[00:35:30] Chuck Carpenter: thank you.

[00:35:30] Chuck Carpenter: There you go. I, uh, I kept it going.

[00:35:32] Aaron Francis: Adam, do you have a beat? How long have you been married? Uh, a little over 20

[00:35:35] Adam Rackis: years.

[00:35:36] Aaron Francis: Oh, yeah, you got a beat 20 years. We were second lieutenants

[00:35:38] Adam Rackis: when we met. She just retired a few years ago. So the math checks out

[00:35:41] Aaron Francis: Yeah. For you? It does. I have, I have no very little about Air Force math, so I’m sure that the math checks out 20

[00:35:46] Adam Rackis: years for a retirement in the military.

[00:35:48] Adam Rackis: Okay.

[00:35:48] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. Which is not, that’s rad. Like I, that’s why I say like it’s pretty awesome if you think about it. Like if Youngme was much more pragmatic and like thoughtful in that way, like it would’ve been a decent [00:36:00] direction to go. Like I remember in high school scoring Well, and those like tests they give you and they’re like, yeah, you could come in and blah, and then free college and whatever else.

[00:36:07] Chuck Carpenter: I was like, fuck you. I’m gonna be an architect, not military. And I. Did not do that. So obviously Yeah. The short, yeah, the short version is I eventually quit college and yada, yada yada. I floundered for a while. There was a blackjack dealer and a bartender and like, you know, whatever other ridiculous careers that I’ve had in my life.

[00:36:25] Chuck Carpenter: So I did not get here in any natural way, but, uh, I, I could have retired a long time ago. I don’t know who’s older, me or you. , it’s one of those things, I’m happy to not win. Yeah. All right. so I made a Star Wars reference already. I do like Star Wars a lot ‘cause I was born the year the first one came out.

[00:36:43] Adam Rackis: Oh, you look good for your age. I think you’re older than me. That was in the seventies, wasn’t it? 77. Okay. Uh, 82. Oh shit. So, yeah, right before returning the Jedi, Jedi was, , 83. They did it every three years then, so. Oh, wow.

[00:36:56] Adam Rackis: Yeah.

[00:36:56] Adam Rackis: Alright, so you’re a Star Wars fan, right? Yes. Has Disney [00:37:00] like. Made the franchise better.

[00:37:01] Adam Rackis: Like every fucking year there’s a new Star Wars. Like are they diluting the brand or do you love it?

[00:37:06] Chuck Carpenter: I enjoy most of it. I’m gonna say like, I’m not some insane person who has read every novel in and out of Cannon. I play some of the games ‘cause I enjoy the storylines of some of them and all of that.

[00:37:18] Chuck Carpenter: So I’m not like a crazy fan. But I have been a long time fan and I enjoy quite a bit of the content. I even liked like the prequels and the latest trilogy. I enjoyed them enough. I can understand some of the criticism, but I mean, if you even watch the originals, there can’t be in a lot of ways and people insure what they want and then dive into what that means.

[00:37:37] Chuck Carpenter: I’ve been to the Star Wars land at Disney World. I I love that. I flew the Millennium Falcon twice. That is fucking amazing. So the fact that I could do that in my lifetime, I enjoy that. Yeah, so I don’t watch everything, but the things I watch, I kind of enjoy. And if I’m a couple episodes in, just like any other show, I’ll move on.

[00:37:55] Chuck Carpenter: Like I’m getting older, I’m half dead, so I better, I [00:38:00] better not waste time. Hell yeah. So in general, I’m a, yes. Mandalorian was amazing. Good. Yeah.

[00:38:05] Adam Rackis: I love that for you. So you like it. I’m not a Star Wars guy. I saw the originals like when they were re-released in the theaters when I was in high school, so, okay.

[00:38:13] Adam Rackis: Yeah. In the nineties. Remember that? They were okay. They were fine.

[00:38:15] Aaron Francis: Yeah.

[00:38:15] Chuck Carpenter: Karen, don’t care. Yeah, don’t care. Don’t care.

[00:38:17] Chuck Carpenter: What, what do you like outside of like the tech world? ,

[00:38:20] Aaron Francis: fast and Furious franchise, obviously, obviously big, big, big, big, big, fast and furious guy. Ah, it’s great cinematic universe right there.

[00:38:28] Adam Rackis: I would never have guessed that. A million. I’m

[00:38:31] Aaron Francis: a car person and I enjoyed, oh, I’m enjoyed the first couple. I’m not a car guy. No. Just a

[00:38:34] Chuck Carpenter: fast and furious guy. Just campy like whatever. Oh

[00:38:37] Aaron Francis: dude, it’s so bad and so good. Okay. I love it so much. I’ve seen ‘em all in theaters, I think. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Well we all got a thing.

[00:38:45] Aaron Francis: What’s your thing,

[00:38:47] Chuck Carpenter: Adam? Oh, Jesus. I should say this is audio. I can’t just

[00:38:49] Adam Rackis: point to you. And mine’s older and dumber. , I’ve always been a sucker for jackass. That’s my guilty pleasure. Oh, that’s great. There’s nothing wrong with with that. Nice.

[00:38:57] Chuck Carpenter: Bam is not looking good these days though. BA is, I

[00:38:59] Adam Rackis: [00:39:00] feel so bad for that guy, but BA is

[00:39:01] still alive.

[00:39:01] Chuck Carpenter: He, so that’s good. He is still alive and I think he’s cleaned up and he’s, well, I think he’s trying, he’s trying. I think he’s kind of trying. He’s trying. Steve-O has cleaned, nobody’s cleaned up. Like Steve-O shout

[00:39:10] Adam Rackis: out to Steve-O my God, you see video of him today and he looks amazing. He looks amazing. He does.

[00:39:15] Adam Rackis: He looks like a person. And then does you see like the old season one jackass? It’s like, oh man, oh my God. The stuff they

[00:39:19] Chuck Carpenter: put themselves through is insane. Not even that,

[00:39:22] Adam Rackis: the dude was always like overtly on something and he just looked like shit. Yes.

[00:39:26] Chuck Carpenter: How else could you do that stuff to yourself? Yeah, like there’s just too much like genitalia manipulation for my own comfort.

[00:39:33] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that was,

[00:39:34] Aaron Francis: that was

[00:39:35] Chuck Carpenter: a great show. But yeah,

[00:39:36] Aaron Francis: they, They put themselves through a lot and DeVos looking great. I’m really happy for him. Yeah. So

[00:39:42] Adam Rackis: I so happy for him. Like, my God, Knoxville’s still alive. Still alive, Knoxville’s doing great. Great. He’s

[00:39:48] Chuck Carpenter: looking,

[00:39:48] Adam Rackis: he’s

[00:39:48] Chuck Carpenter: looking, he’s looking rough these days.

[00:39:50] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. But he’s, he’s older. He’s a lot of those guys. Yeah. Because , the funny thing is that most of those guys. Were from Pennsylvania, like bams from Pennsylvania, and they were doing the [00:40:00] CKY skate videos. Mm-hmm. Which had all these like crazy things in it. And Knoxville had just started doing weird stuff in LA because his acting career hadn’t kicked off, which was fun.

[00:40:10] Chuck Carpenter: Fact, if anybody doesn’t know the backstories there and they just ended up sort of coming together for this MTV show and then there you go. Man, there was that and there was

[00:40:19] Aaron Francis: Viva la ba. Did you watch that one? Yeah, I did not.

[00:40:21] Chuck Carpenter: His little after thing, that one was,

[00:40:23] Aaron Francis: that one was even more wheels off. Really?

[00:40:26] Aaron Francis: Yes. I check that. It

[00:40:27] Chuck Carpenter: was crazy. I feel bad for his parents. Like Yeah. You know, just the fact that they were just Uncle Phil. Yeah. Yeah. They were just subject to all of that torture. Yes. I mean, I’m sure they opted in,

[00:40:37] Adam Rackis: but, um, they had a nice house though. Like why wasn’t he a baker

[00:40:39] Aaron Francis: or something’s?

[00:40:40] Adam Rackis: No, that was even in the early seasons before they had the money.

[00:40:43] Aaron Francis: I don’t remember what his parents actually did.

[00:40:45] Adam Rackis: Yeah, I could have sworn Phil was a baker.

[00:40:47] Aaron Francis: I just remember, bam one time put iron on hamburgers on all of Phil’s shirts. Like every shirt he put like this iron on decal hamburger and Phil’s just pulling shirts out of his closet. What the hell? Ba, just that kind of stuff [00:41:00] made me laugh so hard.

[00:41:01] Aaron Francis: It hard as a pretty, it was so funny.

[00:41:04] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, he had good comedic timing. He’s one of those that kind of, , just. Got ruined by fame, I guess. Yes. You know they and drugs. I hope that doesn’t happen to you, Aaron. I hope not. I

[00:41:12] Aaron Francis: won’t do drugs. That’s that’s one thing that’ll keep me on the straight narrow. Well, that changes

[00:41:16] Chuck Carpenter: the next episode.

[00:41:17] Chuck Carpenter: Oh shoot. I was like, let’s start with Appleton Rum. Moving on. MDMA.

[00:41:21] Adam Rackis: Perfect the way. Cancel the Coke order.

[00:41:25] Chuck Carpenter: Not Diet Coke this time. Well, this will kind of put you on a diet, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Really? Get your heart going. Yeah. What? Only in Miami? Miami. In Miami.

[00:41:33] Aaron Francis: Yeah. I gotta get home to the kids.

[00:41:35] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how’s your life insurance policy?

[00:41:37] Chuck Carpenter: So.

[00:41:38] Aaron Francis: Uh, expensive.

[00:41:39] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very expensive. And I don’t know if it pays on a Coke binge.

[00:41:44] Aaron Francis: I don’t think it does. Yeah. And I’m not gonna find out

[00:41:46] Chuck Carpenter: it does

[00:41:46] Adam Rackis: unless

[00:41:47] Chuck Carpenter: it’s, you know, it is getting dark. Yeah.

[00:41:49] Aaron Francis: It doesn’t matter. It’s, it is irrelevant. It’s a moot point. Do we have anything else for Adam? I guess that’s a good question.

[00:41:53] Aaron Francis: Off of the Coke.

[00:41:54] Adam Rackis: I didn’t bring up the drugs though. I’m gonna approach that. Okay. I just went with it. But you just sat down. I mean, the problem, I’m a guest. Yes. And [00:42:00] yes, and that’s right. This is the problem is these close associations with Ken Wheeler and you, you guys are buddies, you’re like mm-hmm.

[00:42:06] Chuck Carpenter: Jersey

[00:42:06] Adam Rackis: boys. Uh, New York for me, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I should avoid those references just to stay extra on the straight and narrow being next to that guy. I know, right?

[00:42:13] Chuck Carpenter: Just, yeah. Just, you know, sit back and let him roll. That’s what you gotta do there. Yeah. no, I guess, uh, we can wrap up here do you got anything you want to promote or talk about or? Oh, actually I do have one more question. Here we go. Here we, here it is. Let’s get a splash around. It’s a good one. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Let’s do it.

[00:42:29] Aaron Francis: my cup is still quite full, so I’m good over on this side. Okay.

[00:42:32] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Listen. There’s only one thing you have to do on this podcast.

[00:42:36] Chuck Carpenter: And I’m doing it. I’m doing it. You have to drink it.

[00:42:38] Aaron Francis: I am doing it. I just, you know, maybe my poor, maybe y’all gave me more in the beginning. Didn’t, that’s probably what it was.

[00:42:43] Chuck Carpenter: I didn’t, this is what in some circles they would call being a pussy.

[00:42:47] Aaron Francis: Not in my circles. We’d call it being a very tired down.

[00:42:51] Aaron Francis: I know. Yeah,

[00:42:51] Chuck Carpenter: I know. I Yeah. I’m not all about pressure, peer pressure in, in my days anymore, honestly. But, uh, I love, we’d like to

[00:42:57] Adam Rackis: thank our sponsor, Appleton Estates signature.

[00:42:59] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. The [00:43:00] Jamaican rum. We also want to thank Laravel Cloud. If you’re thinking about taking Laravel and putting it anywhere, try the Laravel Cloud.

[00:43:07] Aaron Francis: That’s a nice free ad read for, you know, a company I don’t work for, but that’s perfect. Yeah, I love that. For them.

[00:43:12] Chuck Carpenter: What am I talk? Am I targeting like, what is it? screencast.com or something? Screen casting.com. screencasting.com. This episode is brought to you by screencasting.com. Now that I can get behind, maybe I can at least get a fucking promo code out of this.

[00:43:23] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see.

[00:43:25] Aaron Francis: I gotta go make a promo code. All right. Yeah, there’s gonna

[00:43:27] Chuck Carpenter: be a pallet of rum at your house in a way,

[00:43:29] Chuck Carpenter: down in case, but we’re, but we’re

[00:43:30] Aaron Francis: refilled. So what is your question for Mr. Adam?

[00:43:33] Chuck Carpenter: If you, if you were not in tech, what would you do? And you are not limited by current skill or ability, just like desire, like what other career path would you love to have?

[00:43:43] Adam Rackis: , I would love to be a. College professor of computer science, maybe at the Air Force Academy. Cool. Colorado Springs. I think that’s cool. Yeah. That’s super cool. And also imminently doable when you’re done. Exactly. When you decide, man, I want to get outta the game. Yeah, that’s a pretty good retirement right there.

[00:43:56] Aaron Francis: I have a master’s in computer science, so it’s Wow. Technically qualified. [00:44:00] Okay. I’m gonna ask you about monads later or something. Oh, that’s fun. Anyway, I can tell you shit about Mon Ads.

[00:44:04] Adam Rackis: I’m sorry that’s not your guy. Uh,

[00:44:05] Adam Rackis: anything you’d like to promote or. check out TanStack Start if you haven’t. , it’s still in beta, but TanStack Router is fully released and TanStack start is just a thin network layer on top of router.

[00:44:17] Adam Rackis: So it’s, uh, easy to get involved with that later when it comes out. Awesome.

[00:44:21] Aaron Francis: And where can the people find you? ,

[00:44:23] Adam Rackis: I am on Twitter at Adam Rackis. I am on Blue Sky. I’m not really active there that much, but you can say hi if you want, , at Adam Rakus at whatever, you’ll, you’ll find me. Um, I’m mostly on Twitter, R-A-C-K-I-S.

[00:44:34] Adam Rackis: That’s me. Alright. Thanks for being on. Thank you for having me.

[00:44:37] Chuck Carpenter: Alright. Thanks for

[00:44:38] Aaron Francis: being on. It’s good hanging. Thanks having me. Yeah. Alright.

[00:44:40] Chuck Carpenter: Bing. Binging you go. Is that the outro music? Okay, that’s perfect.

[00:44:48] Outro: You’ve been watching Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Recorded in front of a live studio audience. What the fuck are you talking about, Chuck? Enjoyed the show? Subscribe. You know, people don’t pay [00:45:00] attention to these, right? Head to whiskey.fund for merchant to join our Discord server. I’m serious, it’s like 2% of people who actually click these links. And don’t forget to leave us a five star review and tell your friends about the show. All right, dude, I’m outta here. Still got it.