RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III 
Michelle Bakels [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] 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] Promo: Hey everyone. We want to invite you to join us at All Things Open. All Things Open is the largest open source tech web conference on the US East Coast. It’s hosted annually in the heart of Research Triangle Park in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Target audiences include developers, engineers. Decision makers and open source [00:01:00] community members and anyone else involved with open source software. 4,000 to 5,000 people from all over the world are expected in October. We’re gonna be there. More information can be found online at 2024.allthingsopen.org. I really hope I don’t have to spell that for you.
[00:01:19] Robbie Wagner: What’s up everybody? Welcome to more drinking a couple days after we drank last with your hosts, RobbieTheWagner and Charles William Carpenter III.
[00:01:28] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-Hmm. You shouldn’t, uh, tell everyone how much of a drinking problem you have. Everybody knows about mine. Yours is a secret still. You know, you’re never gonna
[00:01:36] Robbie Wagner: saying it’s been at least a couple days. You’re like every day, so,
[00:01:39] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Every day. Yesterday, yesterday I had a date night with my wife, so I had some nice wine. Yeah.
[00:01:44] Robbie Wagner: nice. Nice. Anyway, we digress. We have a special guest today. Michelle. What’s going on, Michelle?
[00:01:51] Michelle Bakels: Hi. How’s it going, guys?
[00:01:53] Robbie Wagner: Good. Good.
[00:01:54] Chuck Carpenter: Good. Good. I think Robbie forgot the whole lesson. We learned earlier this year about pronouncing your last name [00:02:00] thanks to your sister, where it’s kind of like, it’s not BALs, it’s like bagels, but with a K
[00:02:06] Michelle Bakels: Yes. Yes, exactly. Perfect.
[00:02:09] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. See, I re, I do
[00:02:10] Robbie Wagner: I’ve just been.
[00:02:11] Chuck Carpenter: things here and there.
[00:02:12] Robbie Wagner: I’ve been omitting all last names because I just don’t want to try anymore. I’ll let people introduce themselves, like, would you like to tell everyone at home who you are and what you do, Michelle?
[00:02:22] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, I, I love that too. Just toss it over to the fence. So my name is Michelle Bakels and I am program director at G two I, working on developer health initiatives, so supporting mental physical health for devs. I also organize React Miami Comp. That’s a. Kind of medium sized conference down in Miami for React developers and, and people who also just like development in Miami.
[00:02:47] I guess now it, we kind of expanded our audience unexpectedly last year, or this last April, I should say, which is very welcome. Yes, it’s a React developers conference every April. So those are my two main things.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Robbie Wagner: Nice. Nice.
[00:03:01] Chuck Carpenter: is a good point. I mean, you can’t change the branding at this point, but it feels like so much more than React.
[00:03:06] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, it drew a bigger crowd for sure.
[00:03:09] Robbie Wagner: yeah, before we dive too much into React Miami, which we’ll talk a lot about, uh, you mentioned physical health. I do have a really important question for you. Is creatine real? Does it do anything?
[00:03:21] Michelle Bakels: don’t, I can’t speak on creatine. I have no
[00:03:24] Robbie Wagner: Okay.
[00:03:26] Chuck Carpenter: I mean, it, it does a thing. It, it is ingestible into your body. That is for sure you can, it’s not poison.
[00:03:34] Robbie Wagner: it. Mm-Hmm
[00:03:34] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, and you can eat it, so
[00:03:37] Michelle Bakels: No, I think I saw a tweet a couple days ago that mentioned creatine, and I just kept scrolling. I’m sorry. I should have
[00:03:43] Chuck Carpenter: no, that, no, that’s reasonable. It’s, uh, you’ve got a better curated feed than I, I think there’s that, but something that is poison for your body, I think it’s fairly proven, is the whiskey. Let’s talk about this poison. Sorry, old Forrester. So today we’re having the old Forester, [00:04:00] 1910. It is 93 proof and so that’s not math.
[00:04:04] I’m gonna do 46.5. Yeah, that’s on the bottle. Uh, percent alcohol. This one’s not age stated. It has a mash bill of 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% malted barley, which is pretty significant. But this is like. They’re old. They have a, a number of these, a handful or so of these that are labeled by a year and what the mash bill was at that time.
[00:04:28] And this particular one is significant because there was a fire at the distillery in 1910 and they needed to move over mature whiskey already, and it did kind of like a second secondary, like short aging process. And so they replicated that for this particular one.
[00:04:47] Michelle Bakels: Wow.
[00:04:48] Robbie Wagner: So they go set the, uh, rec house on fire and move it whenever they
[00:04:53] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, exactly. That’s totally what happened. That was more of the impetus, not like, maybe it’s true, you had to heat it up to [00:05:00] fire levels of heat and then move it over to another barrel and imagine if something was on fire and you’re like, I had to whiskey. That’s just a very Kentucky
[00:05:09] Robbie Wagner: that’s what I would say.
[00:05:09] Chuck Carpenter: I would say.
[00:05:10] Michelle Bakels: Priorities.
[00:05:11] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know about that building, but say, no whiskey, we can’t sell the building. Anyway, that’s how I imagine they spoke at that time. So, Ooh, this is, um, had a little caramel smell for me, Michelle. That’s a very healthy,
[00:05:26] Robbie Wagner: It kind of smells like.
[00:05:28] Michelle Bakels: I don’t really know what I’m doing here. Um. This is not my
[00:05:32] Chuck Carpenter: Did you have a couple firsts? You’re
[00:05:34] Michelle Bakels: No, no, I didn’t, I did smell it ahead of time because I was like, let me just do some positive associations really quickly with whiskey, because most of my past association is just shots at a bar or something like that. So,
[00:05:46] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:05:47] Michelle Bakels: I wanna, I want a more sophisticated experience here.
[00:05:52] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Yeah. Sounds good. We’ll, we’ll do our best. We’re sorry that you’re stuck with us on this one.
[00:05:58] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I am getting
[00:05:59] Michelle Bakels: drink from the [00:06:00] bottle like Wheeler?
[00:06:02] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, good
[00:06:03] Robbie Wagner: I’m getting notes of like, uh, you know, those little chocolates with like liquor in them, like a, a caramel chocolatey liquory candy
[00:06:12] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Like actual liquor or like the L lur, like, I don’t know, the weird like fix syrup kind of stuff.
[00:06:20] Robbie Wagner: Oh no. I’m not sure. It’s, it’s not that specific. Uh, it’s like some kind of alcohol and candy.
[00:06:25] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Yeah, I could kind of dig into that like a little bit. ‘cause I’m getting a little cherry with my, yeah, so I get like a L. Yeah, A bit of caramel, a little cherry smell. So it kinda makes me think of like chocolate covered Cher.
[00:06:37] So it’s like probably closer along to what you were talking about. We could drink this too though. I’m gonna prime the
[00:06:42] Robbie Wagner: I, I am.
[00:06:43] Chuck Carpenter: Michelle
[00:06:43] Michelle Bakels: What’s the, what’s the tips here? It’s like you like swish it around in your mouth or.
[00:06:48] Chuck Carpenter: Yes, so what you’re, the whole priming the palate is you have an initial drink and swish it around so that you open up the salvatory glands and you don’t have [00:07:00] that like strong, crazy burn that overwhelms the flavor and then give it a few seconds, and then you take a second drink and then you’re actually getting more of what the flavors are.
[00:07:10] Robbie Wagner: It tastes a bit like a Japanese stir fry to me.
[00:07:15] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t associate stir fry with Japanese cuisine. Like tapan Yaki kind of thing.
[00:07:19] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Hibachi
[00:07:20] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I’m not getting that same vibe, but yeah. Like a dark cho, almost like a little bitter dark chocolate. But I’m gonna, I’m gonna have a little more here. Hmm.
[00:07:30] Robbie Wagner: a bit burny. What proof was this?
[00:07:34] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, 93.
[00:07:36] Robbie Wagner: Burns more than it should. For that,
[00:07:38] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. It’s got some fire. I got some hug, so that’s why I get a little cinnamon on the finish. And a bit of like woodiness.
[00:07:45] Michelle Bakels: You guys are really good at this.
[00:07:47] Robbie Wagner: we just
[00:07:48] Chuck Carpenter: You just believe us.
[00:07:50] Michelle Bakels: I was just like, yep, okay. I got that.
[00:07:52] Chuck Carpenter: Well there, there is the power of suggestion there though, to a degree with it. There’s something weird in the middle where I almost get like, not that I’ve [00:08:00] eaten this, but when I was growing up, my mom would clean with like lemon pledge, all the wood, you know, and you spray on the pledge and it kind
[00:08:06] Robbie Wagner: I love Lemon Pledge.
[00:08:08] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, the, like, the taste was good.
[00:08:10] This explains a lot about you. Uh, you weren’t dropped on your head, you just drank lemon pledge. I get it. Yeah. I did like, like there is something about that smell though. I don’t even know if they still make that stuff, but yeah. When the wood furniture would get cleaned and you have that like lemon pledge, like a little chemically, a little lemony and that, I’m getting that in the middle.
[00:08:29] Michelle Bakels: I definitely taste that too. To me it’s just like this kind of burn, like Robbie was saying, and I’m like, oh, is that just ‘cause I have like an unrefined. Pal and I’m just kinda weak here or, but
[00:08:42] Chuck Carpenter: I mean, it, it, it’s above 90, you know, and I think a lot of people who don’t drink whiskey every single week would feel that to a degree, I think like, right. And, uh, and I notice on my third one, I still get some of the burn down my throat, but in, I, in my mouth. [00:09:00] Now that it’s done all of that like salivating and you have more saliva in general kind of coating you there, uh, it me, it’s a little mellower.
[00:09:08] So the third time then I would say this as far as like having this while we talk or whatever else, if you find at some point you want to drop a couple of ice cubes in there to kind of take the edge off as well, which will prove it down some cool it off, totally fine. I just think it’s good to try it first as intended out of the bottle.
[00:09:28] And then, you know, make your adjustments.
[00:09:30] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, I could see that. I’m just gonna go with some small sips and paste it a little bit more. It is good. This is the slowest I’ve ever drank whiskey. I think.
[00:09:42] Chuck Carpenter: That’s, that’s fair. There’s nothing wrong with that.
[00:09:45] Michelle Bakels: At least not a cocktail, I should say’s straight.
[00:09:47] Chuck Carpenter: Right, right. Like you’re used to it as a shot
[00:09:50] Michelle Bakels: Yeah.
[00:09:51] Chuck Carpenter: of whiskey. I saw something the other day that like, they call it a shot of whiskey because the cost of like whatever, like a serving [00:10:00] of whiskey. It was a similar amount of like this bullet. Whatever the cost of like whatever kind of bullet. And so in the West they would come out and they didn’t have any ca If they didn’t have cash on ‘em, they’d just swap a, a shot for some whiskey.
[00:10:14] And so it would be like, I want a shot of whiskey Prime.
[00:10:16] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, I, I saw that the other day too, and I almost sent it to you, and I was like, Chuck knows this already.
[00:10:23] Chuck Carpenter: No, I had no idea. I’m glad that, like you, I have cast the illusion of knowledge, but uh, no, I had no idea. Never heard that. And I was like, that sounds cool, even if not true.
[00:10:34] Michelle Bakels: You guys did an episode with like Taylor Poindexter, which was like so high level, like it was like so deep into the whiskey. She was like
[00:10:44] Chuck Carpenter: knows all this. Oh yeah. She knows her stuff, so she’s fun. Yeah, like if you wanna hang out and explore whiskey, like I, I was saying to her, the next time I’m in DC I would love to just like, let’s go out to a place. I’d love to like see kind of what you’re into and what [00:11:00] you would recommend and all that stuff.
[00:11:01] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, I bet there’s great places in DC.
[00:11:04] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, there’s like the best place in DC
[00:11:06] Robbie Wagner: Mm-Hmm.
[00:11:07] Chuck Carpenter: I won’t go
[00:11:07] Robbie Wagner: I’m sure we’ll be there
[00:11:09] Chuck Carpenter: yeah.
[00:11:10] Robbie Wagner: a month or so.
[00:11:11] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, the Jack Roses is what it’s called. If you find yourself in DC, highly recommend amazing whiskey selection. No matter what you like, there’s thousands of bottles. Food for thought. We gotta find that in Miami.
[00:11:23] All I know is I, and the next time I’m in Miami, I do not want to drink my Lord.
[00:11:27] Robbie Wagner: Nope, no malor.
[00:11:29] Chuck Carpenter: Yep.
[00:11:29] Michelle Bakels: Oh, the payload guys gave that to you? No. Yeah.
[00:11:33] Robbie Wagner: Yeah,
[00:11:33] Chuck Carpenter: yes, yes. Yeah. I’m still a little salty.
[00:11:36] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, I think in Miami I’ve seen more rum.
[00:11:40] Robbie Wagner: yeah. Makes sense.
[00:11:41] Michelle Bakels: Yeah. Like more rum tasting.
[00:11:43] Chuck Carpenter: an aged rum is actually quite good. It’s not like some sugar bomb.
[00:11:48] Michelle Bakels: Right.
[00:11:49] Chuck Carpenter: I, I can get down with that
[00:11:50] Robbie Wagner: yeah. We could do rum, react, and ramblings instead of
[00:11:53] Michelle Bakels: Oh my gosh. Did you, you just came up with that off the top of your
[00:11:58] Chuck Carpenter: That, yes. [00:12:00] And. Okay. I, I don’t, I mean, we haven’t discussed or whatever, I don’t know if we’re gonna do another thing this year, but if we do, can we do that? Whatever it is, it’s that okay? Yes.
[00:12:10] Michelle Bakels: sounds amazing. I
[00:12:11] Chuck Carpenter: I,
[00:12:12] Michelle Bakels: source like local brands, and that’ll be a 10 out of 10 for me.
[00:12:15] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Yeah, I’ll work that out and we’ll even make some one-off t-shirts, hopefully ones that Don
[00:12:20] Michelle Bakels: Those ones will be,
[00:12:21] Chuck Carpenter: time.
[00:12:23] Michelle Bakels: yeah, I think it, I think it might go over well, or at least fit in, maybe better than React was a mistake at a React conference.
[00:12:31] Chuck Carpenter: But that got a lot of conversations going and yeah, prime Shield those for us a couple of times. So
[00:12:37] Michelle Bakels: I thought they were funny when I saw them, I was like, that was good. It’s good.
[00:12:42] Chuck Carpenter: I think Kent was the only one that didn’t like him.
[00:12:44] Michelle Bakels: Did,
[00:12:45] Chuck Carpenter: like,
[00:12:46] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Michelle Bakels: it, was it legitimate or was it just a disapproval?
[00:12:50] Chuck Carpenter: I think it was just a disapproval, so, and that’s okay. We could roll that. Well, should we, uh, heat things up, Robbie?
[00:12:56] Robbie Wagner: Well, we should rate this, shouldn’t we?
[00:12:58] Chuck Carpenter: Oh gosh, yes.[00:13:00]
[00:13:00] Robbie Wagner: you hosted this show before, Chuck?
[00:13:01] Chuck Carpenter: I sometimes listener,
[00:13:03] Michelle Bakels: I can take it from here. So we have a scale of zero to eight.
[00:13:07] Chuck Carpenter: go for it,
[00:13:08] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, go. Please go ahead.
[00:13:10] Michelle Bakels: Okay. All right. So we have a scale here from zero to eight for the tentacles on an octopus. And so zero is like absolutely terrible. Never gonna drink it again. And eight is like, you could switch to it and drink, drink it every day. Is that right?
[00:13:26] Chuck Carpenter: It’s pretty good, I would say.
[00:13:27] Michelle Bakels: Good. Good.
[00:13:28] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. And since, but our only listener is on the show and you already know the scale. This is, yeah.
[00:13:35] Michelle Bakels: Straight from your one listener right here. Choose. I’m gonna taste it again before I give it a rating.
[00:13:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, go
[00:13:41] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I think you should go first this time, Chuck, since you didn’t do the scale.
[00:13:44] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, I, I am punished. Uh, okay. Well, I’m a big fan boy of Old Forester in general. Their 1920 is probably in my top five of things that I would buy on a regular basis in spite of Lemon Pledge being a note that I. It. It [00:14:00] really just is evoked that memory.
[00:14:02] I still very much enjoy this. Definitely would get it. Again, I think it’s in like the 50 to $60 range if I’m right. So all of these like interesting ones that they put out have a very same price point, which I think is important as well. So yeah, a hundred percent would get this. Again, I am enjoying it now.
[00:14:19] I’m gonna open it up with some water here in a bit. I’m gonna give it a 7.2.
[00:14:23] Robbie Wagner: Ooh.
[00:14:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, take that. Rewind it back. I don’t know. There there’s something
[00:14:29] Michelle Bakels: a really high rating.
[00:14:30] Chuck Carpenter: that. Yeah, I think it’s a fairly, yeah, I’m feeling good today. It is what it is. So either Robbie or Michelle can go next. I don’t
[00:14:37] Robbie Wagner: Yes. We we’re aware that the per people who haven’t gone are probably next, but I was thinking you should choose who is next, Chuck.
[00:14:43] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. I, well fuck off you. I pick Michelle.
[00:14:47] Michelle Bakels: All right, so I think I’ll give this probably like a 6.8. Because I am a pretty novice whiskey drinker, so I think I’m just getting used to that experience [00:15:00] altogether. But with that said, I’m doing way better than I expected and I’m enjoying this. I’m actually like, it grows on you. I’m like really kind of like enjoying this, like as a drink.
[00:15:11] I’m learning how to drink whiskey, which is really exciting. So maybe we’ll bump it up to a seven because of the just general excitement around this new experience for me.
[00:15:20] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, and everything is context, right? So it’s just like compared to other things you’ve had, this is much higher for you and like it intrigues you and kind of opens up maybe some other things you’d be willing to try.
[00:15:31] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, I’m, I’m pretty stoked about this. Looking forward to sharing it with a friend actually after she likes whiskey and I feel like this is gonna impress her.
[00:15:40] Chuck Carpenter: Very cool. You’re welcome.
[00:15:42] Michelle Bakels: Thanks guys.
[00:15:44] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah, I think this, uh, I don’t think I’ve had Old Forester other than the 1920, uh, probably have had like one here or there, you know, at Jack Rose or when we’ve been out. Various whiskey drinking times. I’ve probably had some, but like on the show you said that we haven’t done another one. I don’t think comparing it to [00:16:00] the 1920, it’s a little less good and I feel like I probably gave that like a seven.
[00:16:05] So I’m gonna have to give it just a little bit less, but it’s still pretty good. So I’ll say 6.75.
[00:16:11] Michelle Bakels: 6.75. Wow.
[00:16:13] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, you know, we just kind of mess with it a little bit. There’s no science behind any of that anyway.
[00:16:22] Robbie Wagner: I just wanna make it hard when we have to do floating point math to like average them together.
[00:16:27] Chuck Carpenter: That’s true.
[00:16:27] Michelle Bakels: Yeah. I was like, which types are we getting into?
[00:16:30] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, because we do want, and I did this a long time ago actually, I’ve done that whole like develop a star rating system for, not the system itself, but for display in a ui, and it’s super fun to figure out what is 0.75 or 0.8 or whatever else in a
[00:16:46] Michelle Bakels: Hmm.
[00:16:47] Chuck Carpenter: If we make it a whiskey bottle, it would be even more fun
[00:16:50] Robbie Wagner: Well, if it’s one solid bottle that’s easier than a separated star. But anyway.
[00:16:57] Chuck Carpenter: You digress. Some sort of CSS [00:17:00] masking or something else tailwind will have to do for us.
[00:17:02] Robbie Wagner: We can figure it out,
[00:17:03] Chuck Carpenter: All right. Heat it up, bro.
[00:17:05] Robbie Wagner: yeah, something we often don’t figure out well, is TypeScript. So TypeScript, do you use inferred types or explicit types?
[00:17:15] Michelle Bakels: I use inferred types mostly, so I’ll just give some context there. I am a solo developer on a lot of projects have been for the last three years and nothing that I’m really working on in the last few years is super data intensive. But in the past, like I did work on like really data intensive projects in which.
[00:17:36] I definitely found that explicit types were helpful for like understanding the code and getting clarity, but not so much these days.
[00:17:47] Chuck Carpenter: That’s
[00:17:47] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that makes sense. I don’t know that I would bother with types at all as like being one of the only people working on something.
[00:17:54] Michelle Bakels: The amount of times that I’ve typed things to any, and I’m like, and it’s a private repo, no one will know.
[00:17:59] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.[00:18:00]
[00:18:00] Chuck Carpenter: There you go. Your secret’s safe with
[00:18:04] Michelle Bakels: Who’s gonna know? They’ll never know.
[00:18:07] Chuck Carpenter: No one? Yeah. All right, so actually we’ve touched on this, but Tailwind or vanilla, CSS.
[00:18:13] Michelle Bakels: I love Tailwind at first. I was one of those people that just kind of had that gut. Reaction, like that averse gut reaction to looking at it again, like I, I don’t know how to explain this, like everybody’s busy, so I don’t like to sound like it’s this complainer, but I really do feel often strapped for time.
[00:18:30] So I am trying to always use the thing that I’m fastest with, especially if it’s like good and proven. So it took me a while to jump on the tailwind train, and I did it because. I just kept seeing more and more people that I respect, like speaking really highly about it, and so I gave it a shot and it was definitely, there was a bit of a learning curve, but it was way faster to pick up.
[00:18:58] I. Than expected. And then at [00:19:00] some point you start getting used to using it and then you can start kind of like guessing what something might be in in Tailwind instead of like going back and referring to the documentation, which in my opinion is still the number one developer documentation in my book that I’ve ever seen anywhere.
[00:19:18] And so I just think it’s like now it’s just. Kind of a no brainer, just to see everything on the page altogether. And once you know what all the abbreviations are and how everything works together, I just feel like it makes me work so much faster.
[00:19:32] Chuck Carpenter: yeah,
[00:19:33] Robbie Wagner: agree. Their docs are so good and I’ve learned so much CSS from them that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.
[00:19:40] Michelle Bakels: Uh, agreed. Agreed.
[00:19:42] Chuck Carpenter: so much easier. And the examples and everything else too, it’s just like so much easier than anywhere else. And I love MDN docs in general for the web, but like, I don’t know, it’s just, uh, apples and oranges there a little bit.
[00:19:55] Michelle Bakels: Adam and his team like really shifted the culture around [00:20:00] docs, if that makes sense. Like docs have come a long way in the last year or two years. They get so much attention and I think there’s this understanding that helping developers, I. Understand your tool, especially in a really competitive environment, help them understand your tool, how to use it and how it benefits them as quickly as possible is like a huge competitive advantage.
[00:20:21] They had that quickness of usability and their documentation and that really strong search engine inside like that. It just changed kind of the game and now everybody’s kind of on that path now.
[00:20:33] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I’d say docs are your first Devereux a hundred percent.
[00:20:36] Robbie Wagner: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. If your docs aren’t good, no one’s gonna use it. ‘cause if I can’t figure out how to use it within like. A couple of minutes at least getting started in a couple of minutes, like I’ll have to spend some time learning it later, but if I can’t like Hello World in a couple minutes, I’m probably not using it.
[00:20:50] Like,
[00:20:52] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, we’re all busy, like we’re all busy and everything that we’re already using is good.
[00:20:58] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that’s fair
[00:20:59] Robbie Wagner: Speaking [00:21:00] of good things, what about get Rebase or get Merge.
[00:21:03] Michelle Bakels: Pushed to prod straight away, so.
[00:21:06] Chuck Carpenter: Levels.
[00:21:08] Michelle Bakels: Again, I, I work alone, so I guess I’ll just, I guess I would use merge by myself more, but it, it’s so simple. In the past when I worked on a dev team, we used Merge because that was. Kind of just what the, the team liked to use and so we were fine using it and we used JetBrains products, which have like really great UI for resolving merge conflicts and stuff.
[00:21:32] So we just merged, not, I actually hadn’t even heard of rebate until it started. Picking up like some commentary on Twitter, and I was like, what’s rebate? Like, I don’t even know what this is. This is another option. But yeah, I like merge, uh, mostly these days. I just, I just pushed to prod. Okay. Not to like deviate too far off of this topic, but I just started using feature flags recently, which I like for.
[00:21:59] [00:22:00] Essentially not creating a bunch of branches for like different ideas and then merging them into Maine, which is nice. You can kind of develop fully behind the scenes and then just flip a flag and it’s out there. That’s kind of exciting. I, this, maybe I’m late to the game, but I, I’ve, I just started using them and I enjoy it.
[00:22:17] Chuck Carpenter: Is that in verse or is uh, another, do you use something else?
[00:22:21] Michelle Bakels: I use Versas because I deploy ‘em Versal for my applications, so they have so many like seamless integrations with other tools that they make. I have a toolbar you can use with feature flags that’s like really elegant and so yeah, I just go with them.
[00:22:39] Robbie Wagner: I didn’t know they had feature flags built in. They have so much stuff.
[00:22:42] Chuck Carpenter: They do, they really have a ton as to say, I saw something about it recently. So
[00:22:47] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. RIP LaunchDarkly.
[00:22:50] Chuck Carpenter: that’s a whole, that, that’s a side conversation, but, uh, okay. So third, yeah. I mean, they’ll probably be, they, they charge a lot of [00:23:00] money, so I think they’re, they’re probably doing
[00:23:02] Robbie Wagner: They probably have more robust features than Versal has if they just put it out, but.
[00:23:06] Michelle Bakels: Uh, I’m sure.
[00:23:08] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Okay. Third party, or roll your own off.
[00:23:12] Michelle Bakels: I, honest to God, go third party as hard as I can wherever I can. Like again, it’s just like part of being a solo dev, like on projects like, I mean, sorry if it’s not a great or respectable answer, but if somebody else has already made it and it works, then it’s good. Pull it in and use it, and you’re done.
[00:23:32] We’ll
[00:23:33] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. None of these are intended to,
[00:23:35] Robbie Wagner: always with like, everybody’s like, oh, I need to engineer everything. Like I want to own all of it, but why? Like, I think everyone should use as much third party stuff everywhere as they can. I. Then just spend your time on your specific thing that’s different than those things that already existed.
[00:23:52] Why are we solving the same problem in every app every time?
[00:23:56] Michelle Bakels: I couldn’t agree more things that are different about what you are building [00:24:00] it, that’s what’s going to attract people to you. So it, and also those are the fun things to make. Like those are usually the things that motivate you to create. So I love spending more time in that area.
[00:24:15] Chuck Carpenter: I say pick a framework that already has it. I’m, I’m just getting curmudgeonly and whatever else. Also, all of these just come from conversations we see on Twitter. We don’t necessarily think there’s a right answer, but it’s interesting to like bring them up in our context,
[00:24:31] Michelle Bakels: Yeah. Oh no, I’ve heard the show. I know the show very well.
[00:24:36] Robbie Wagner: There is a right answer to this one though.
[00:24:38] Chuck Carpenter: Oh,
[00:24:39] Michelle Bakels: oh. I’m probably not
[00:24:40] Robbie Wagner: on the left or right. NVS code.
[00:24:42] Michelle Bakels: Sidebar on the left or right. There is a right answer and it goes on the left. I have had people like definitely, uh, pique my curiosity on this and I tried switching it to the right and it feels like you’re writing left-handed. All of a sudden, like if you’re right-handed, it feels like you’re all of a sudden left-handed or [00:25:00] vice versa.
[00:25:00] And I’m just like, ah, I can’t, like, I can’t get oriented. It’s just on the other side. And people swear it’s this huge productivity boost. It’s so underrated. And I’m
[00:25:10] Chuck Carpenter: Oh gosh.
[00:25:11] Michelle Bakels: I don’t know. I, I’m not seeing it. I’m not getting it. It was like supposed to be instant gratification and I didn’t get that, so I just went straight back to left hand.
[00:25:19] Chuck Carpenter: Well you all know what it’s like to live in my world now ‘cause I’m a left-hander and everything. Everything is typically backwards. But uh, that said, you know, what’s a productivity boost? Not fucking with your settings all the time, just.
[00:25:32] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:25:32] Chuck Carpenter: open up your app and do something. How about that? How about
[00:25:35] Michelle Bakels: Yeah.
[00:25:35] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:25:36] Chuck Carpenter: don’t spend all your time customizing your tools.
[00:25:40] Just use the tools.
[00:25:42] Michelle Bakels: not to brag, I’ve never changed my VS. Code theme. Not to act like I’m better than anyone here, but,
[00:25:49] Chuck Carpenter: I, I feel like I’ve had some weird like hack that like since Sublime Code or whatever has like carried over my like settings to a degree [00:26:00] for every other thing that I’ve eventually migrated to. So like when I try, when I was using Adam for quite some time and it had like sublime text thing and it just took all your stuff and made it work.
[00:26:11] And then vs. Code had a similar thing, so I don’t really know. I just
[00:26:15] Robbie Wagner: I still use, uh, the JetBrains, uh, EAPs because like, I, I use JetBrains for so long. I just installed that on VS codes. People will be like, oh yeah, like, just press this. I’m like, no, it’s not that on my
[00:26:26] Chuck Carpenter: it’s not gonna work for
[00:26:27] Michelle Bakels: not that in my brain at
[00:26:29] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:26:30] Michelle Bakels: I applaud Cursor because they, I think, have one of the smartest setups where it is vs. Code, right? But they allow you to install, uh, brains Key bindings on install. Immediately you can set up, you don’t have to go back and change it later. So on initial setup, you can set up your JetBrains, key bindings.
[00:26:50] And I was like, damn, that’s rude. Like, you got ‘em. You got me?
[00:26:55] Chuck Carpenter: See, there you go. They found some key things that Pun intended.[00:27:00]
[00:27:00] Robbie Wagner: I was gonna say,
[00:27:01] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. To like zone in. I, I, seriously, everybody’s talking about cursor and I, I swear they’re paying a bunch of people or something. I don’t know what the hell is going on,
[00:27:09] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know.
[00:27:10] Chuck Carpenter: like a strange
[00:27:11] Robbie Wagner: I can’t use ai, so it doesn’t matter. I mean, I can use Amazon’s, I can use Amazon’s builtin stuff, but I ain’t
[00:27:16] Michelle Bakels: Mm mm
[00:27:18] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that’s crap. Okay. Uh, last one, although I think I know the answer to this one, I’m gonna ask it anyway. And Robbie changed the wording, so like buck off on that Robbie,
[00:27:27] Robbie Wagner: I didn’t even understand. Like nobody goes that deep anyway. You just ask
[00:27:31] Michelle Bakels: Oh, no, I’m afraid.
[00:27:33] Robbie Wagner: No, it’s it’s not bad.
[00:27:34] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah. Versal or $5 VPS hosting. How about that?
[00:27:40] Michelle Bakels: I talk about versel so much. People swear all the time that I work there and I do not. So I have to go versel again. Like just going back, the theme of this, uh, these hot takes has been whatever is the easiest thing to do. As fast as possible. I love Versal, like I [00:28:00] think it’s starting to sound like an unpopular opinion, but I very much enjoy using their tools and they’re building out the whole developer experience more and more to like be just like this complete encapsulated like development platform, which resonates very deeply with me as somebody who would rather play outside and get their work done and then just go do other things.
[00:28:23] But in all seriousness, I have a lot of stuff that I have to do, and I hate trying to figure out like where something stopped working or where something broke or why something like, so with vl, it’s just everything just goes so much smoother and I don’t have to worry about it.
[00:28:41] Chuck Carpenter: This episode is brought to you by Netlify. No,
[00:28:48] Robbie Wagner: Oh,
[00:28:51] Michelle Bakels: That was great.
[00:28:52] Chuck Carpenter: Just sit with that one for a second. Enjoy. Uh, I put a couple of drops in my whiskey because that’s one of the things I like to do. A long time ago someone told [00:29:00] me a great way to like experience two tastings in a whiskey is you get your two ounce pour and you first try it right outta the bottle.
[00:29:08] Well, don’t drink it from the bottle at a bar. You get arrested for that. But first have a bit of it to have your taste, and then you can take a little dropper with distilled water. And just add a couple of drops in there. And as, uh, you mentioned earlier, Taylor can tell you all the science behind that and why it actually changes the whiskey, but it does.
[00:29:27] And then you have like kind of a, a second tasting, or you can get some similar effects by
[00:29:32] Michelle Bakels: Should IS swish it around? I have some water here. Should I like s swish it.
[00:29:36] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Give it a little swish around. It’s
[00:29:39] Michelle Bakels: you guys seen the videos of that wine taster that does like the really dramatic,
[00:29:43] Chuck Carpenter: Absolutely. Yeah, he’s, he’s pretty funny. Uh, it’s a good shtick though. You know, he shakes the sommelier’s hand and all that. Yeah. If you do, like you, you know, you do like a little swirl like you would for wine or whatever, just to expose it to more oxygen.
[00:29:57] That’s a, that’s a thing too.
[00:29:58] Michelle Bakels: That is different. That’s [00:30:00] actually way more different than I expected it to be. It’s just, just the tiniest bit that I poured in there and I completely changed it.
[00:30:08] Chuck Carpenter: Yep. It actually smooths it out a bit and
[00:30:11] Michelle Bakels: Even more enjoyable right now.
[00:30:13] Chuck Carpenter: you can tell people we are not totally full of shit
[00:30:16] Michelle Bakels: Yeah. I promise guys. They know what they’re talking about on this
[00:30:19] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. If you really want to enjoy whiskey, what you do is you fill your cup up halfway with crushed ice first, and then,
[00:30:28] Chuck Carpenter: And then call
[00:30:28] Michelle Bakels: I heard that episode. I’m not falling for that.
[00:30:31] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. Those are some early ones.
[00:30:34] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I used to do that
[00:30:36] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. On the
[00:30:37] Robbie Wagner: because I was just enjoying the whiskey. I wasn’t trying to be a purist, but Chuck was like, no, no. You’ve gotta like.
[00:30:41] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Can you please taste it first? You can do that after. Can you just please actually taste it? ‘cause he’d just be drinking it that way and be like, I don’t know, I, this all tastes the same to me. I give it a four. You know, like, well, there’s a part of that and that’s, and did you know that Robbie’s normal speaking voice is like Colonel Sanders?
[00:30:59] I don’t [00:31:00] know. I just drink it this way.
[00:31:02] Robbie Wagner: It’s, it is
[00:31:03] Chuck Carpenter: 11 herbs and spices. Uh, anyway.
[00:31:07] 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.
[00:31:40] Robbie Wagner: Let’s, let’s talk React Miami.
[00:31:42] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-Hmm.
[00:31:43] Robbie Wagner: What can you tell us? We’re not streaming so you can tell us all the
[00:31:47] Michelle Bakels: All the details. This is like yeah. Confessional for me. I can like get this all off my
[00:31:52] Chuck Carpenter: it out.
[00:31:53] Michelle Bakels: Uh, ‘cause as we’re recording this, we haven’t released a new website, but it’s going to be April 17th and [00:32:00] 18th in Miami. We’re going downtown. We’re going to be hosting it on our own, not as a part of any other conference standalone at the Hyatt Regency Miami.
[00:32:10] And yeah, super excited. It’s just gonna feel, I think more like a proper 500 person dev conference that we’re like used to seeing in other places. I’ve talked a little bit about this to some people, and most people are excited not to travel over the bridge to South. Speech for the conference. Again, some people are a little heartbroken to not like be a couple blocks away from the beach anymore, but I personally am excited to be like properly in downtown for both days and we don’t have any speakers selected yet, but we do have our MCs and we are going to have Madison Canna and Ken Wheeler.
[00:32:50] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, I’m not going fuck that.
[00:32:52] Robbie Wagner: that’s, yeah.
[00:32:53] Chuck Carpenter: Well,
[00:32:54] Robbie Wagner: We, we can make that more interesting.
[00:32:56] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, I was about to say, I can totally squat in his room, but [00:33:00] I don’t wanna die, so I’m probably not gonna do that. Yeah. ‘cause yeah, that’s a long story. But he owes me. Well, that’s cool. That’s exciting. That’s gonna be a lot of fun. I love that it’s going downtown is in a consistent location.
[00:33:13] The idea of South Beach. South Beach is awesome, but I never saw any water until I was in a car going in or out of, you know, south of the area. There
[00:33:23] Robbie Wagner: I don’t like sand. I don’t like
[00:33:25] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I’d rather have a nice pool. There’s pools downtown like Yeah, that’ll be, that’ll be great. Oh, well that’s exciting.
[00:33:32] Michelle Bakels: I’m excited about it. Yeah. Most people, like, that’s the thing is I was really adamant about being on South Beach because I was like, well, that’s why people fly in, but it’s really not that far if you want to go. And most people just really weren’t going, like, I think even in their mind, they were like, we’re gonna go to South Beach, and then they just didn’t go.
[00:33:48] So, uh, just after three years it, it became clear that it wasn’t like that. Necessary. And like also just from a conference organizer perspective, things just tend [00:34:00] to be like way harder to do on South Beach than downtown or Brickell or wherever else on the island.
[00:34:06] Chuck Carpenter: That’ll be sweet. And so which day is Dax hosting? The after party?
[00:34:11] Michelle Bakels: Dax is hosting the after pray. I think that’s a great idea
[00:34:14] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. So you heard it here. There are the dates. I’ll, I’ll, uh. I will publish his address and
[00:34:22] Michelle Bakels: D’s really is like, it’s so funny because obviously he’s pretty vocally. Against like react next, all these things. Right. But like he’s, I mean, Madison just said it best yesterday on her episode. He’s like somebody that like definitely has a online presence that Dax has supported me and react Miami in ways that like I don’t think I could ever repay is definitely like.
[00:34:49] An unofficial, maybe we should find a way to make it official ambassador for the conference. And he brings so many people and he promotes it. So I think having him host the after party, I think [00:35:00] having Liz do it with him, it only makes sense because she’s really like such a proper host. She’s phenomenal.
[00:35:08] My God. I’m just like, I watch her, I’m in awe. I’m like, you’re, I’m an eldest sister. She’s an eldest sister. So there’s like respect, like we’re like. I got you. I see you. I clock that. She definitely knows how to like, make people feel welcome. But yeah, I think, man, that will be so fun. I actually gotta talk to them about that Great idea.
[00:35:27] Chuck Carpenter: They’ll, they’ll thank me, I’m sure. Uh, okay.
[00:35:31] Michelle Bakels: Liz is always really nice and Dax will I, dag is always down. He might, he maybe he might make a comment on Twitter, but he’s usually down.
[00:35:39] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Fair enough. So did you watch the, uh, NLL Star basketball game for Lara Vocon?
[00:35:45] Michelle Bakels: I did. I was just immediately so impressed by the, uh, quality, like the production quality of this basketball game. I was almost more distracted by the production quality that I was like, not necessarily really watching the game, but I was just like. [00:36:00] Wow. They got like Scott and Wes on each side of the screen, like sports commenters.
[00:36:04] They got like all of the overlay graphics, like, this looks like a legitimate league. It’s not just like one standstill camera. Like they had like cameras moving around the court and like videoing the bench. Like during halftime, I watched the whole game. I couldn’t like. It just, I have arc browser, so it just pops up that little like window you can keep
[00:36:26] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah.
[00:36:27] Michelle Bakels: videos.
[00:36:27] It’s perfect. But I was so impressed by like, they had like uniforms, like they had actually like
[00:36:34] Chuck Carpenter: know. I think that was all Sentry, right? Was
[00:36:37] Michelle Bakels: I have no idea who, I mean, Sentry definitely sponsored it. I don’t know who, like, I don’t know if the teens themselves paid for their. No clue, but it was so impressive. The whole thing as a conference organizer, whenever I see stuff at other events, I have this like habit of just starting to tally costs and like, um,
[00:36:56] Chuck Carpenter: And you
[00:36:57] Michelle Bakels: what’s the production effort here?
[00:36:58] Like how many, how many [00:37:00] emails were sent about this? Like, you know, reaching out to companies like who can video this or whatever, like immediately I’m just like, damn, this is like, this kind of started off as like a joke tweet from Dax and then it’s like a full on
[00:37:12] Chuck Carpenter: then it blew up into the real thing. And also they all got to drive the Lambo. I was like, dude does not care. He’s like, sure, keys, take it.
[00:37:21] Michelle Bakels: I was shocked by that. I was like, wait, so everybody gets to film content in this Lambo right now?
[00:37:26] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, they’re like
[00:37:27] Robbie Wagner: They can buy
[00:37:28] Chuck Carpenter: in the F front and all. Yeah. Well, they probably spent Lambo money just to like do that game. I mean,
[00:37:35] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:37:36] Michelle Bakels: sometimes people like they’ll send me and I love seeing ideas, I love seeing what other people are doing and I love, I’m happy to look at ideas. A lot of times people send me ideas that are expensive ideas and I’m like, yeah, that would be. Great. Let’s see how the budget plays out. And so people were sending me some videos of like the stage with like the smoke and like the neon [00:38:00] lights.
[00:38:00] And I was just like this, this huge screen and I’m just like, oh my God. Like do I need to become a PHP developer? Like
[00:38:08] Chuck Carpenter: Right.
[00:38:09] Michelle Bakels: we’re gonna do VHP Miami. I don’t know. Like look at this budget.
[00:38:13] Chuck Carpenter: So many people have been like, whoa, there’s something to it. I mean, I’ve heard for a while that Laravel brings a lot of sanity to the PHP, and to be fair, my experience in it was early dev career WordPress plugins, kind of jarbled garbage. So it was like even jQuery felt more organized than PHP at that time for me.
[00:38:34] But, you
[00:38:35] Robbie Wagner: I loved PHP. It was so like JavaScript but less safe. it’s like this can be anything you want. Just ship it. All right, cool. Like.
[00:38:46] Chuck Carpenter: well it does have the dollar sign for variables right. Or whatever in there,
[00:38:49] Robbie Wagner: that’s, that’s how they make so much money. Every time you type a dollar sign you get a dollar.
[00:38:53] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like, is it like office space where like a, a micro whatever of a cent [00:39:00] gets trans transferred every time somebody
[00:39:02] Robbie Wagner: That’s what Laravel has. It actually, it is that behind the scenes, it runs that program. Yeah.
[00:39:06] Michelle Bakels: Oh, wow.
[00:39:07] Chuck Carpenter: so smart. I’m
[00:39:08] Michelle Bakels: The more you know.
[00:39:09] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:39:10] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Ding ding. Cool. I wanna talk a little bit about developer health os, so that’s another thing that you do and obviously a core function of your job at G two I. I am very interested in this because I feel like with the current like job marketplace and I don’t, I think a lot of people are experiencing like your stress, stress and exhaustion, possibly me as well.
[00:39:32] Michelle Bakels: So the Dev Health OS Developer Health Operating System, it’s this guide, I don’t even know how many pages when I wrote it in Google Docs, I think it was like 70, 80 pages long guide to burnout. Recovery prevention and optimum performance. It’s something that, it’s one of the first projects that I started on when I worked at G two I and the founder of G two I, Gabe Greenberg and I, we started it together just sharing our [00:40:00] experiences and our knowledge with basically like working through burnout for different reasons.
[00:40:05] So I had like a lot of stress that I developed in the workplace that led to this. As far as I understand now, like a permanent heart condition, it’s fine. Like it doesn’t really show itself as long as I’m not really stressed. But if I do get super stressed, then it kind of starts to creep back. And if I’m, if I stay in like chronically stressful situations, then it’s just like.
[00:40:28] Really disrupts my life. So that was my experience being like totally burnt out developer. And then Gabe, he has his own issues that he was working through for years with like chronic illness from I think mold exposure and also mercury poisoning. And he’s, you know, had to deal with that while starting a company, growing a company like being a CEO founder.
[00:40:51] When Gabe and I met, we. I actually met through starting to work on React Miami. I didn’t work at G two I, and we both just live in [00:41:00] South Florida. So we met to talk about React Miami, what this could be. And at the end of our lunch he was like just riffing, like ideas or whatever. And he is like, I want my company to be first company that prioritizes the health of developers.
[00:41:16] And I was like. Fucking do it. Like I was like, do it. Like nobody’s doing it. Nobody cares about this. Like I’m extremely burnt out. And it was like this so, such a foreign thing. Like I was just like, what do you mean like prioritize us? Like, ‘cause everybody always treats us like we’re so spoiled and like, what more could we want?
[00:41:36] And we don’t really have any problems. And that’s just not really the truth. Like yeah, we have a lot to be. Thankful for and grateful for, but that doesn’t mean that everything else just gets pushed down. So anyway, I go to work at G two I and we start working on this huge guide to burnout, recovery prevention, and optimum performance.
[00:41:55] A lot of it is pulled from my experience of like being a burnout developer [00:42:00] and then his like experience of like dealing with chronic illness and learning how to manage that. Through his career. So just pulled together so many lessons. We had experts work on it that, you know, we had a brain health doctor that talked about the neuroplasticity of the brain and like how technology affects the brain.
[00:42:20] And we talked to this woman, Dr. Leah Weiss, who’s like Stanford professor. She wrote a New York Times, uh, selling book about. Essentially like occupational burnout, organizational burnout, and like to work better on your teams. She wrote like a guest section, Gabe’s own therapist, like wrote a section about how to find a good therapist, like green flags, red flags, all of these things.
[00:42:44] So when we worked with an editor who kind of. Organized all of this like huge chunk of text that we had written and worked on, and she created a workbook for it. So you can just start with a workbook if you want, or you can use it [00:43:00] as a companion while you’re working through the operating system. But it’s meant to give you the tools to like learn how to kind of recognize burnout, assess.
[00:43:12] You know where you might be if you’re burning out, if you’re not, like what to do if you are burnt out and how to prevent it later. And then how to work well, like we have this kind of phrase that we use, like finding restful work, which like I think if you’re burnt out, you’ll probably scoff at that and be like, that’s not real, but like it is if you like learn how to like.
[00:43:33] Prioritize like certain things in your life and set boundaries. And it doesn’t mean that every day is like super cushy and easy or whatever, but like you get to kind of have some control over your life and I think that’s really important.
[00:43:47] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, definitely important. A light at the end of the tunnel kind of thing. And I think that’s why folks like Robbie sometimes go down the rabbit hole of open source software. Not that I don’t do some, but, uh,
[00:43:59] Robbie Wagner: Sometimes [00:44:00] you like to build stuff you like instead of whatever you’re forced to build. So
[00:44:04] Chuck Carpenter: And if you wanna mention the RRL real quick,
[00:44:07] Michelle Bakels: Uh, dev health os.com.
[00:44:09] Chuck Carpenter: easy peasy. Like it. Uh, Robbie, do you want to cover any other tech things before I’m, I am itching for non-tech things, but I,
[00:44:18] Robbie Wagner: you can go, go right to non-tech things. I am, uh. I had a little bit more whiskey than I may be meant to. So, uh, I’m not ready to drive a conversation at at this exact point.
[00:44:28] Chuck Carpenter: so yeah, that, that should make you all more like why does react suck, you know? But anyway, that’s okay. We can save that for another time. Cool. So given the kit that you’re wearing today, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Enter Miami. You already have messy, so I don’t know where else you could go with
[00:44:46] Robbie Wagner: Can you also get clean.
[00:44:48] Chuck Carpenter: get, uh, my gosh.
[00:44:52] Anyway. Yeah, yeah. Robbie’s
[00:44:55] Michelle Bakels: you guys, well, you guys each got a dad joke in there now,
[00:44:58] Chuck Carpenter: That’s true. Yeah. [00:45:00] So, yay us. If you could sign any player the market right now, who would it be?
[00:45:06] Michelle Bakels: Oh, man,
[00:45:08] Chuck Carpenter: Deandre Yadlin. Bring him back. Just
[00:45:10] Michelle Bakels: I, I, you know what? That’s a controversial player. I like Lin. I liked him.
[00:45:17] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You have to make cap room though, so.
[00:45:19] Michelle Bakels: Yeah, I thought we had Ariel Lasseter for a little bit who’s been traded around and I just like, I don’t know. There’s something about him where I feel like maybe we didn’t get to see his full potential with us. I don’t know. He was like somebody that, again, like people really were like. I hate to say like negative things like Ariel Lasseter’s gonna listen to this, but like,
[00:45:44] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. There’s a weird like crossroads between professional athletes and this
[00:45:50] Robbie Wagner: if our SEO gets good enough, maybe they’ll find it.
[00:45:53] Michelle Bakels: I am always like, so like, uh, what if Ariel Lasser? He says, I don’t mean to say anything bad, but people were really frustrated with his [00:46:00] performance and I was just like, I feel like he’s so, he’s like so young and early and he is got it. And he goes on the field. He has so much energy and he, he’s rarely ever been a.
[00:46:08] Starter and like, I don’t know that we’ve gotten to see him like really play like, you know, fresh in a game, like a fair shot. So I wish we could get Lasseter back or Yadlin. I really liked Yadlin, but yeah, I mean, I, how could you ask for more like even beyond messy, like of course we have Bussette and we have Jordy Alba, we have like these Juarez, like these legendary players, right?
[00:46:32] Like it’s not even fair, but. We also have like, we have great players that have gotten better in the messy era, kind of unlocked potential like, uh, Robert Taylor, Benjamin Kki, we have just an awesome team right now. Like Messy hasn’t even played like the last six games more probably. And we’ve still been winning.
[00:46:54] Like the team is phenomenal.
[00:46:56] Chuck Carpenter: right? Yeah, there’s some depth there. So you don’t want anyone, [00:47:00] you’re not like, oh, I wish we had, I don’t know, like Virgil Van Dyke or Erling Holland, or.
[00:47:07] Michelle Bakels: Oh yeah. I mean, I guess they’re good.
[00:47:09] Chuck Carpenter: That’s what I said. This was an open-ended question, and you’re like, I don’t know. I want the guy from Cincinnati back. I
[00:47:15] Michelle Bakels: I, yeah, I, I guess I just kind of like kept it to the MLS, but with that said, I don’t really know that much about other leagues either. Like, besides people that get like, put up for the ballor or whatever. Like I don’t really know like, who else is playing out there.
[00:47:30] I’m not like a soccer fan because I like, love, like I, I like the MLS specifically, and I, I kind of got into. Into liking soccer later in life, like kind of accidentally. And so I just, yeah, I don’t really even like the premiered league and all this stuff, like I don’t actually know who all of these great players are ‘cause I don’t really watch these games.
[00:47:52] Chuck Carpenter: I see that’s pretty much all I watch is the Premier League and a little bit of Italian League and Yeah,
[00:47:59] Michelle Bakels: [00:48:00] Yeah, most people like have their like Premier League team and then they like watch MLS ‘cause it’s the local thing and it’s like, well I don’t really know what’s going on in the Premier League, but I watch the Euros and the World Cup and Copa America.
[00:48:16] Chuck Carpenter: you’re primed for the World Cup in two years less than now.
[00:48:20] Michelle Bakels: wait. I can’t wait.
[00:48:22] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And you and Robbie both, you’re gonna be like so excited.
[00:48:25] Robbie Wagner: Listen, what I,
[00:48:26] Michelle Bakels: so broke. So broke.
[00:48:29] Robbie Wagner: yeah, what I wanna see. Having watched like 20 minutes of rugby at the Olympics, why don’t we watch more rugby? Like
[00:48:37] Chuck Carpenter: Because it’s hard to understand the rules. Yeah, I don’t understand the rules. I respect
[00:48:41] Robbie Wagner: I don’t need to understand the rules. It’s just fun to watch
[00:48:44] Michelle Bakels: The rules are so simple.
[00:48:46] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. But we’ll have to,
[00:48:49] Michelle Bakels: like if you can follow soccer and if you can follow American football, which is what I really grew up with, was like NFL. There’s so many things that are like that. Just feel like, [00:49:00] what?
[00:49:00] Chuck Carpenter: Stop again. Stop. We gotta talk about this again. Let’s figure it. Hold on. Stop. I know you just tried to kill each other. Hold on. Let’s stop again. Let’s talk about it for three minutes and figure out the next thing. Yeah, I mean, I grew up in the Midwest, so I’m a familiar, I, I can’t say I’ve ever had any passion for egg ball game, but I do like going to live sports.
[00:49:18] It almost doesn’t matter, like.
[00:49:19] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I would go to any live sport except for golf. I think like
[00:49:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Although, no, no. The Phoenix Open is supposed to be like the most fun. I mean, I’ve been to like
[00:49:30] Robbie Wagner: I, having not been to golf live, I don’t know how it works, but I’m just like.
[00:49:38] Michelle Bakels: Can I
[00:49:38] Robbie Wagner: What do you move to each? Like whole? I don’t know. Yeah, go ahead, please.
[00:49:42] Michelle Bakels: Remind me where you guys, remind me where you live.
[00:49:44] Chuck Carpenter: in Phoenix and he’s in, yeah.
[00:49:47] Michelle Bakels: you guys aren’t, okay, so there’s a new league, a new golf league coming that’s gonna be way more accessible to general fans called TGL. I don’t know if that stands for the Golf
[00:49:56] Robbie Wagner: the golf league?
[00:49:57] Chuck Carpenter: That’s what I’m
[00:49:58] Michelle Bakels: I, I actually know [00:50:00] somebody that works for TGL and they were like, it doesn’t stand for the golf league and we don’t really know what it stands for, but it’s called TGL and it was. Started by Tiger Woods. And so it’s meant to
[00:50:12] Robbie Wagner: Tiger Golf League.
[00:50:13] Michelle Bakels: like classic 90 minute ish like team A verse, team B stadium sport experience for golf.
[00:50:23] Robbie Wagner: Hmm.
[00:50:24] Michelle Bakels: like it’s three verse three of like world famous players there to like. All on different teams. South Florida has a team called Jupiter Links, and there’s like gonna be a team in Boston and La, San Francisco all over. Like there’s gonna be like six teams to start and like, yeah, it’s basically a stadium experience and you watch them like do these different golf challenges and part of it is kind of like on a little tiny, like not a tiny, like it’s.
[00:50:52] About the size of a stadium, so like some bit of green. But then the rest is like, if they do like really long shots, like it goes and hits [00:51:00] like a net that like I think is some sort of mesh technology or whatever that captures like the speed and position or whatever and can like basically project where it would have gone the ball and so they can like compete on like short game, long game, all these different things.
[00:51:13] But it’s gonna be like a more friendly, you don’t have to go for three days or whatever to like watch a whole thing. Or travel to like some golf course, like across the nation. Like, ‘cause it’ll be touring sport.
[00:51:25] Chuck Carpenter: All right.
[00:51:26] Robbie Wagner: Interesting. It’s like watching people play Topgolf.
[00:51:31] Michelle Bakels: Uh, well, when you say it like that, I mean.
[00:51:35] Chuck Carpenter: Top
[00:51:35] Robbie Wagner: No, I think that would be fun. Like I, I’d watch Tiger Woods do some angry bird shit. Like I love the Angry Birds game.
[00:51:41] Chuck Carpenter: true.
[00:51:42] Michelle Bakels: It’s like top players like, and, and it’s like they have like good Alexis Hanney and Serena Williams, pheno Williams. They have like all of these like huge investors like in it, where that to me is like, you know, okay, this is promising, this got some legs. They’ve got something going here.
[00:51:59] So I’m [00:52:00] super excited. They’re gonna start in January 25, I think. Make golf a cooler sport.
[00:52:05] Chuck Carpenter: So maybe that will be the extra React Miami outing
[00:52:09] Michelle Bakels: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll just take the Bright Line train up to, uh, long Beach
[00:52:13] Chuck Carpenter: Fort Lauderdale.
[00:52:14] Michelle Bakels: Yeah. Oh my gosh. If I, if we always have an inner Miami game with React Miami, I’ll be happy. I
[00:52:20] Chuck Carpenter: the schedule’s out.
[00:52:21] Michelle Bakels: not for next year.
[00:52:22] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah, that, I forget that they’re off. Uh, sorry. I have the European schedule in mind, and we don’t end until May and then start back in August, so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I forget it’s off. WW,
[00:52:36] Michelle Bakels: yeah, I gotta wait till like November-ish to get that.
[00:52:40] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. TBD.
[00:52:43] Michelle Bakels: That was fun though.
[00:52:44] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Very. Okay. I, I want to know, if you weren’t in tech, what career would you choose?
[00:52:49] Michelle Bakels: So like other guests have said, tech is definitely a great career. Offers like a. The incredible opportunity to work on cool things and also have like a [00:53:00] great work life balance and salary, whatever. So if I can suspend reality for a minute and act like I could also have a great life in any other field and just do the thing that I think is cool, I very legitimately might join the circus or do acrobatics.
[00:53:16] The last couple of years I’ve done aerial silks. I don’t know if you guys have heard of that.
[00:53:21] Chuck Carpenter: I, yeah, I, I’ve seen that before.
[00:53:23] Michelle Bakels: so yeah, my friend, the one that likes whiskey and I’ll be sharing this bottle with, she also showed me that there are like these classes, uh, in our area for like aerial silks and like performing and whatever.
[00:53:36] And the instructor used to like perform in the circus. Like she’s super legit. And so we’ve been taking her classes for years and it’s so awesome. Like every week it’s so fun. It’s just creative and. Gets you moving and it’s like scary and fun at the same time. So, and there’s so much, there’s like that you can do with acrobatics, like lira [00:54:00] and trapeze and million things and it’s all fun.
[00:54:02] Like you feel like you’re a kid again and you’re just playing. Yeah. If it was like a viable career path, like I would probably do acrobatics if I could.
[00:54:13] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I’m, I’m gonna imagine that, uh, that interview process is a little harder than leak code,
[00:54:19] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:54:20] Chuck Carpenter: so it’s just
[00:54:22] Michelle Bakels: it depends,
[00:54:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. As with most things.
[00:54:25] Michelle Bakels: right, exactly.
[00:54:27] Robbie Wagner: Well, I was gonna say we’re about at time. Is there anything you wanna plug? Anything we missed before we end?
[00:54:33] Michelle Bakels: I don’t think you guys missed anything. If I can plug something, I guess I’ll reiterate React Miami is going to be in April, 2025, and we’d love to have you there.
[00:54:44] Chuck Carpenter: Boo.
[00:54:44] Robbie Wagner: Come hang out for rum, react and ramblings at some
[00:54:47] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. It’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen.
[00:54:51] Robbie Wagner: Cool. Well, I don’t have to do an outro, so Chuck, you wanna do some kind of musical number?
[00:54:57] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah, I’m not, well, [00:55:00] I got, I got
[00:55:01] Robbie Wagner: You don’t have
[00:55:02] Chuck Carpenter: now. No, I don’t. Uh, better.
[00:55:03] Robbie Wagner: the spot all.
[00:55:07] 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 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.