RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III 
Jason Lengstorf [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] Robbie Wagner: Whiskey Web and Whatnot is brought to you by.
[00:00:41] Robbie Wagner: What’s up everybody? Welcome to another edition of Men Growing beards. We have one of the most senior members of the Men Growing Beards community here today with us.
[00:00:51] Robbie Wagner: We have Jason. Uh, what’s going on, Jason?
[00:00:54] Jason Lengstorf: Just, you know, over here eating healthy for a healthy coat, shine.
[00:00:59] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. [00:01:00]
[00:01:00] Chuck Carpenter: I’m a, I’m a junior in the growing beards community, but, uh, you know, I’m, I’m excited to be here and learn from the masters.
[00:01:11] Robbie Wagner: But in all seriousness,
[00:01:12] Robbie Wagner: uh, you’ve been on a couple times before Jason, but
[00:01:14] Robbie Wagner: uh, if folks haven’t heard those, I’m gonna give a quick intro into who you are and what you do.
[00:01:19] Jason Lengstorf: Sure. I’m Jason Langsdorf. I have been working in engineering for over 20 years now, and, uh, recently over the last few years I’ve been moving into making, uh, reality TV for devs. I’m not a hundred percent sure what I do anymore, but I’m having a lot of fun.
[00:01:36] Chuck Carpenter: You have found a niche and I, I am enjoying that. It’s like really cool and you’re like focused on more of like the show itself and then like throwing n zingers there using like different technologies and stuff and kind of stepping out of what we see all over the place. People arguing about React or not React or whatever else, and you’re like, ah, fuck it.
[00:01:55] Chuck Carpenter: Let’s use PHP. I don’t know.
[00:01:57] Jason Lengstorf: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the [00:02:00] experience that we all have is that we. We get to have these moments of watching other people do something that they’re good at. And I think we’re all curious about how other people work. We’re curious what tips we could pick up by watching somebody who’s really experienced, but we don’t have, we don’t have access to sit down next to somebody who is really experienced in PHP or.net or Java or whatever and, and look over their shoulder.
[00:02:23] Jason Lengstorf: So getting a chance to sort of get a glimpse in through the window of, of how somebody like that works and. I, I think it’s, you know, there’s a lot of fun in that. And then also creating something that is small and playful so that it’s not high stakes. It doesn’t feel like if you get it wrong, your career is over.
[00:02:40] Jason Lengstorf: You can just sort of enjoy yourself and, and be part of a community and learn something new without it feeling like it’s, you know, gonna have a huge negative impact if you get it wrong. Like there’s, there’s no way to get it wrong, right? We’re just playing around.
[00:02:52] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, exactly like a, uh, hackathon with low stakes and, and high fun. I think that’s probably really neat about it. [00:03:00] Yeah.
[00:03:00] Jason Lengstorf: And, and you know, that’s sort of my, my whole plan is just to keep doing more like this. I’m, I’m working on a, like a trivia show right now that’s gonna have similar kinds of vibes. It’s gonna be playful, it’s gonna be silly. And this one, we’re hopefully gonna, we are gonna have prizes and winners for, but it’s more, more in the like.
[00:03:17] Jason Lengstorf: Just so that there’s a purpose for the show to exist, not because there’s anything big at stake.
[00:03:22] Chuck Carpenter: right? Yeah.
[00:03:23] Robbie Wagner: Nice. Yeah. Speaking of getting things wrong, there is something I feel we’ve gotten a bit wrong with our whiskey today. We’re almost at Columbus Day, indigenous People’s Day, whatever they call it, day. But we have St. Patrick’s Day Whiskey.
[00:03:40] Chuck Carpenter: Part of this is my fault because I have been itching to try this one, and we did have it at the beginning of the year and somehow just like completely missed using it for St. Patrick’s Day. I think we did like an Irish whiskey or something instead.
[00:03:54] Robbie Wagner: I think we like invited someone for St. Patrick’s Day who couldn’t make it, and then we just never[00:04:00]
[00:04:00] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:04:00] Robbie Wagner: But I, I forget honestly.
[00:04:02] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. We can call that person. We don’t wanna reveal who they are, but we’ll just call them Jason for, uh, you know, shits and gig. No, it wasn’t Jason. I’m just kidding. I don’t, I clearly don’t
[00:04:12] Robbie Wagner: recently. Yeah.
[00:04:14] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. So today we’re having the Kentucky Owl St. Patrick’s edition. It is 100 proof, not age stated, but it’s a blend of various four to 11-year-old bourbons, which means there’ll be quite, uh, diverse selection of mixed mash bills in that as well.
[00:04:33] Chuck Carpenter: And aasa, away we go. I don’t think I’ve tried any Kentucky owl quite yet. Yeah.
[00:04:39] Robbie Wagner: You, I think we had it at that, was it Japanese or just a steakhouse or like the place we went out when I came out. Uh,
[00:04:49] Chuck Carpenter: Rocha.
[00:04:49] Robbie Wagner: we sat at the bar, yeah, they, um,
[00:04:52] Chuck Carpenter: it that one?
[00:04:53] Robbie Wagner: we had some there ‘cause they, I saw, saw it up on the shelf.
[00:04:55] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, okay. Well, there you go. I’m a big liar as proven often. Uh, yeah. [00:05:00] Rocha aur, which is delicious. They have multiple locations, but it is one of my favorite places in the Phoenix area. So
[00:05:08] Robbie Wagner: Smells like cherries to me.
[00:05:10] Chuck Carpenter: Damnit. I hate when you do that before I smell it. No, I’m not quite getting that. It’s a little waxy smelling to me.
[00:05:16] Chuck Carpenter: I have kind of a little, uh, a cold if you can’t tell in my voice anyway though, so that could be affecting everything. Ooh, actually, like, but it, if you were to smell like cherry Kool-Aid, I think like it’s more like that. That’s what I’m getting more of an artificial cherry flavor.
[00:05:32] Robbie Wagner: Well, I don’t like cherries, so I couldn’t tell you what real cherries taste like.
[00:05:37] Chuck Carpenter: It’s almost got like a leafy bitterness at first when I try that. Ooh. But it’s pleasant actually, as it sits, goes down a little bit. What do you think Jason?
[00:05:47] Jason Lengstorf: I think it’s good. This has some good, like sweetness to it, which I, I mean, I guess sweetness in, in relation to whiskey. It’s not, this is. No, in by no [00:06:00] means sweet. There’s this thing that I like when you, when you get a whiskey, it has that initial burn on the front of your tongue, and then as you let it go toward the back of your tongue, it feels like it sort of spreads out and coats your tongue. And this has, to me, the same feel as if you were to get like a drop of maple syrup and let it just kind of coat your whole tongue. And I feel like the, the aftertaste on this has that. It’s not syrupy, but it has body, and I like that.
[00:06:28] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Like a thickness without being syrupy. Yeah. I, I like that. I think that definitely well describes kind of what I’m feeling. The salivation kind of occurring there. It has that. It does have a, a little bit of a sweet finish, has a little bit of a hug on the way down. It has some spiciness to it as well.
[00:06:48] Jason Lengstorf: I think, I mean, I think that’s what makes it nice, right? Like if this was 80 proof, I think the sweetness might be too much. But because it’s a hundred proof and it, it kind of starts out hot and then it mellows as it goes back, I think that [00:07:00] makes it, it’s balanced. It feels nice.
[00:07:02] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I agree. R Robbie, are you ready to kick off the ratings? I guess I should tell folks about
[00:07:08] Robbie Wagner: How, how do I rate is, is it one to 420 or
[00:07:12] Robbie Wagner: what?
[00:07:12] Chuck Carpenter: you really like, and why did you pick four 20? Do you have
[00:07:15] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know. I don’t know.
[00:07:18] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, highly technical rating system. Uh, zero to eight tentacles. Zero being I hate this and I’m gonna throw it in the trash.
[00:07:25] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t, I know why it was given to me for free, uh, for middle of the road. You know. Okay. But wouldn’t pursue it. Eight. Amazing. Clear the shelves and obviously everything in between. We don’t mind halves, quarter stars. Whatever you like. Take it away. I know, but like three and a quarter stars is evoking. Um, yeah.
[00:07:46] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. There you go.
[00:07:47] Robbie Wagner: Anyway.
[00:07:48] Jason Lengstorf: going first.
[00:07:49] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, no,
[00:07:49] Robbie Wagner: don’t have to.
[00:07:50] Chuck Carpenter: no. Robbie can go first if
[00:07:52] Jason Lengstorf: I’ll go first.
[00:07:52] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. You’re
[00:07:53] Jason Lengstorf: I, I would give this,
[00:07:56] Chuck Carpenter: Dramatic pause.
[00:07:57] Jason Lengstorf: would give this a six and a half. Like [00:08:00] this is very good. I would happily reach for it. There are things that I like better, but nothing about this is making me not want to drink it.
[00:08:09] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that’s similar to how I would describe it. I’m not, I’m usually a spicier type of thing, fan, like this is pretty sweet for me. But in terms of bourbons, this is maybe my like second or third favorite I’ve had. So I’d say like a seven. It’s pretty good.
[00:08:27] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Okay. So on that, I do think it’s tasty. I do think it’s kind of pricey for what it is. I believe it was. I
[00:08:37] Robbie Wagner: It’s over a hundred bucks
[00:08:38] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, it’s definitely over a hundred dollars
[00:08:41] Robbie Wagner: the Kentucky Owl brand is all over a hundred bucks though,
[00:08:43] Robbie Wagner: so it’s like an
[00:08:45] Jason Lengstorf: For real.
[00:08:45] Robbie Wagner: brand.
[00:08:46] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They all of their
[00:08:48] Jason Lengstorf: I, I mean, thank you for sending me a hundred dollars bottle of whiskey knowing that it’s that expensive. I actually think I would downgrade it to a six.
[00:08:55] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:08:55] Robbie Wagner: Hmm.
[00:08:55] Jason Lengstorf: it, it is, I wouldn’t say it’s like I, if this was a. [00:09:00] $60 bottle of whiskey, very strong, but like compared to other a hundred dollars bottles I’ve had, I’d say this is pretty weak.
[00:09:05] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. See, and that is why I like to consider pricing in, in
[00:09:09] Robbie Wagner: didn’t even consider price in
[00:09:10] Chuck Carpenter: want to like, uh, you know, I want to be a bit wowed. At certain price points, trying new things in particular, you take a big risk there and for, you know, over a hundred bucks. Am I like blown away? This guy, guys, this is amazing. I need to share this.
[00:09:25] Chuck Carpenter: Like, I definitely will share this with friends. I do think it’s tasty. I, I was kind of feeling like five, five and a half. Based on its price alone. Just because I feel like I can get something as tasty for like 60 bucks sort of as you say. Like I’ll, I’ll swing around to like a old forester, 19, 20, something like that, that’s 60 bucks and I think that kills this.
[00:09:46] Chuck Carpenter: That said, it’s good if, if you have an opportunity Sure. Try it out. I wouldn’t like overly pursue it, so Yeah, I’m gonna go five and a half just ‘cause that’s why I was feeling, yeah. Well that is still better than average. [00:10:00] It is tasty. The price kind of tells me like I would probably go another direction to have regularly though.
[00:10:07] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that’s fair.
[00:10:08] Chuck Carpenter: with that.
[00:10:09] Robbie Wagner: So we did take off some of our normal starting hot takes because I believe we. Already did those with you. ‘cause I think we discussed this last time, if we had done them before and we were like, yeah, I looked up Tailwind in the transcript and couldn’t find it. So I don’t, don’t think we did ‘em before.
[00:10:25] Robbie Wagner: So then we did ‘em the last time. I didn’t look this time, but I’m pretty sure. So we’re gonna skip those. But we have some others that we have since added. So very important. Let or constant.
[00:10:36] Jason Lengstorf: you want. Like, like I, I, I’m gonna be completely honest. Like I, I find that whole argument to be comical ‘cause it like, truly, truly could not matter less. Like I, I honestly, I can’t think of something I care about less.
[00:10:51] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. It’s like saying, pick your favorite color, and then they’re like, oh, fuck you. Blue is terrible. You know, like.
[00:10:58] Jason Lengstorf: sure there are, there are maybe [00:11:00] some reasons to use one or the other. And like, personally, I like to use it as a signal where I set cons if I’m not planning on changing it and I set let, if I’m planning on changing it, that to me is a good heuristic. If I’m working on a team, that’s the way that I would think about it.
[00:11:14] Jason Lengstorf: But I, I have zero opinion about how other people like to use it. It’s, it’s like how somebody styles their hair, like it’s not my hair. Do whatever you want.
[00:11:20] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, like, uh, the preference there is is kind of that alone. I mean, does your code build and end up with the correct business objective or outputs? Okay, great. That’s what matters. Well, then I’m really gonna take it up a notch for you. This next one, sidebar on the left or right in vs. Code.
[00:11:40] Jason Lengstorf: This one actually is objectively correct. It’s on the right. Yeah,
[00:11:43] Robbie Wagner: Oh, okay.
[00:11:46] Chuck Carpenter: unless you’re lazy.
[00:11:47] Jason Lengstorf: if you are working in vs code, if, if you don’t toggle your sidebar, do whatever you want. But I feel like most of us toggle our sidebar because we’re working on, if we’re working on a laptop, you don’t have as much green real estate, so you hide the sidebar. [00:12:00] If you put it on the left, every time you toggle, everything on the screen moves.
[00:12:04] Jason Lengstorf: If you put it on the right, nothing moves. So objectively a sidebar on the right is better.
[00:12:09] Chuck Carpenter: Hmm. But what does it say about me that I, I agree with you and I still don’t do it.
[00:12:14] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, ’
[00:12:14] Chuck Carpenter: cause I totally agree with you.
[00:12:18] Robbie Wagner: the appeal. I’m just never gonna move it over there.
[00:12:20] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I
[00:12:21] Jason Lengstorf: I, I mean, I would say like, I know that I’m supposed to go to the gym three days a week, and I don’t do it. It’s a, you know, we can, we can know that something is right and still be wrong.
[00:12:30] Robbie Wagner: That’s
[00:12:31] Robbie Wagner: very good point.
[00:12:32] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:12:32] Chuck Carpenter: A hundred percent. Totally correct. Agree with that.
[00:12:35] Robbie Wagner: Oh God. Okay. Uh, what do you think about nested turn areas?
[00:12:40] Jason Lengstorf: Avoid them if you can. Like I, I find that the level of cognitive overhead to unwind one of those is not worth the three saved lines.
[00:12:48] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I like if statements
[00:12:50] Jason Lengstorf: Like there may be a couple cases where it might make sense, but generally speaking, if I find myself nesting anything, I’m looking at it like, why did I just do this? Like.
[00:12:57] Jason Lengstorf: Am I doing this because I’m having fun [00:13:00] writing clever code, or am I doing this because it’s actually useful? And generally speaking, when you get into weird nesting, it’s because it’s fun to write clever code and not, it’s like actively making it harder to read that code.
[00:13:09] Chuck Carpenter: That’s how you know you’re a senior engineer is like, you’re not basically like doing code masturbation and showing people how clever you are. You’re past that phase. There you go.
[00:13:19] Jason Lengstorf: it’s also one of those things where it’s sort of like when you, uh, this is gonna be an accidental hot take, but it’s like when you, you see somebody who they’ve just like gotten their first job and they’re, they’re trying to show everybody how cool they are now that they’ve got their own money to spend and they, they do stuff that’s like, so obviously not.
[00:13:39] Jason Lengstorf: Useful or like in bad taste because they, they haven’t quite, they like, they don’t know the tools well enough to. To make good decisions. So they’re just kind of trying anything because they’re like, oh, that’s expensive, let me buy that. Uh, so it’s, and then like later as they’ve matured, you see the, the taste sort of chills out and, and you can see that they now have an actual point of view and [00:14:00] they’ve got some experience.
[00:14:00] Jason Lengstorf: And so the things they buy have some reasoning behind them. I think that code is a lot of the same thing, like when you’re, when you’re new to something, a new idea is fun and you try to use it for everything. Thing. And then you realize as you maintain that stuff, that a lot of those new ideas have very specific use cases where they make your life easier and a whole lot of ways they can make your life worse.
[00:14:19] Jason Lengstorf: And so you start to develop taste and, and a sense of restraint to like do the thing that solves the problem, not do the thing that’s like the most exciting thing you learned in the last two weeks.
[00:14:31] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I think that’s a fair take instead of cursor or pair ai, which is more of a joke ‘cause the fork and all that fun stuff. How about cursor or. Co-pilot and BS code.
[00:14:44] Jason Lengstorf: Practically neither. I don’t use either one. I have seen Cursor in Action. I’ve seen Co-pilot in action. I think I like the way that Cursor has approached it with the, the sort of. Chat window and then showing you a diff, I think to me that’s [00:15:00] like the right way to solve this problem. I have not seen $50 a month or whatever it is worth of value out of that to find it for me to, to make the switch.
[00:15:11] Jason Lengstorf: I also cannot stand the tab to auto complete stuff like in my VS. Code. There are six extensions that compete over tab to auto complete and they’re just not. So I, I steadily turn those things off and ‘cause really what I want to auto complete is like, I’m happy to have a command to say, alright, what should happen next? But the, the sort of like flashing of other people’s opinions in front of my eyes, as I’m trying to think, has never really made me feel like I’m being more productive. It feels like I’m fighting my tools. And so both copilot and cursor do that where they, they sort of like throw what their idea is at you before you get a chance to think.
[00:15:53] Jason Lengstorf: And so for that reason, I don’t use either one.
[00:15:56] Chuck Carpenter: Interesting. Are you using, uh, any of those kinds of tools, [00:16:00] Robbie?
[00:16:00] Robbie Wagner: No,
[00:16:01] Robbie Wagner: No.
[00:16:03] Robbie Wagner: I haven’t really even
[00:16:04] Robbie Wagner: tried them. One, because I can’t, so like at
[00:16:07] Robbie Wagner: Amazon, I’d have to use Amazon queue and like, eh. But like Cursor, cursor seems like. A pretty popular one. It seems like it’s done something different and correct because like pretty much everyone tried copilot and it was kind of like, yeah, it’s there.
[00:16:23] Robbie Wagner: Sometimes it works, but like there, it just feels different with cursor, like the consensus online as everyone seems to think it’s better. All that being said though, like I feel like there’s not enough things I’m doing that like AI could help that much with like especially CS Sy things like. I’ve tried a bunch of times to get like chat GPT or anything to help me with CSS, and it’s like, I got you.
[00:16:49] Robbie Wagner: Here’s the solution. And then it’s like, Hey, that, that’s, no, that doesn’t work. And it’s like, okay, well how about this one? This one definitely works. And no, that one doesn’t work either.
[00:16:58] Jason Lengstorf: I, I think a lot of the challenge [00:17:00] of those tools is, you know, you like, we gotta keep in mind that ai, the LLMs that we’re using and stuff like. Chat, GBT and, and cursor and copilot their, their prediction machines based on the body of work that’s out there. And so by necessity, most of what they’re using is stuff that’s outdated in, in the coding terms, right?
[00:17:19] Jason Lengstorf: So they’re, they’re using best practices from whenever the dataset was assembled. And CSS is in a, in a phase right now where it’s moving. Weirdly fast. Like there’s so much cool stuff coming into CSS over the last few years. That stuff isn’t in production code bases. That stuff isn’t being heavily used, so it’s not gonna be part of the, the auto predict that comes from the LLM.
[00:17:42] Jason Lengstorf: So we’re gonna get, you know, like I, I had it try to generate some CSS for me and it was still doing like float left kind of stuff. And that’s fine. Like that all, it all still works. But it’s not recommending the, the state of the art stuff. And I’ve seen the same thing with JavaScript where it, it recommends stuff that is a few years, or, or [00:18:00] many years, in a lot of cases behind the way that I would’ve written something.
[00:18:03] Jason Lengstorf: And it doesn’t take advantage of, of new APIs and new features that are built into browsers now because they just hit baseline like within the last year or so. Right. So they’re just not in the data set yet. And, and so it’s, uh, it’s unlikely that it’ll recommend that because it, it’s not really present.
[00:18:20] Jason Lengstorf: So I, I think if you’re working in like a legacy code base, one of the things that I think is really interesting that I’m, I’m seeing more and more of is that they’re, I think cursor, is it cur, it’s either cursor or like Super Maven. One of ‘em, it uses your code base and your recent commits as its primary source of data.
[00:18:37] Jason Lengstorf: It, it’s like trying to match code styles because it’s using your own code to kind of predict what it should do. And that tends to be a, a lot better than, you know. Here’s everything we found on GitHub. And we just made some wild guesses based on, on what we’ve seen literally everybody do across all of time on GitHub.
[00:18:54] Jason Lengstorf: But it’s still very much like it. It can only do what it’s seen done, and it [00:19:00] uses like consensus. So it’s not, it’s not gonna use like cutting edge stuff because it hasn’t seen enough of it.
[00:19:06] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. It’s not being creative. I mean, that kind of makes sense.
[00:19:09] Robbie Wagner: which is maybe good. Maybe we will never be a hundred percent out of work because it can’t keep up with things as they change
[00:19:16] Robbie Wagner: until they put out something that can keep up.
[00:19:18] Jason Lengstorf: And, and I think like what we, we misunderstand what generative AI means. Like generative doesn’t mean creative. Generative means it is a very good prediction machine. It’s a very good pattern matcher. It doesn’t create new patterns. So like AI won’t have new ideas, it’s not gonna replace creativity.
[00:19:34] Jason Lengstorf: It’s another way of getting ideas onto a page. But we still have to generate those ideas.
[00:19:41] Robbie Wagner: That’s Fair Rails or Laravel.
[00:19:46] Jason Lengstorf: I, whatever you prefer. I don’t, I, I haven’t used either of them enough to have a strong opinion. I just recently, I did a, an episode of the web dev challenge and Josh Siri was on and, and I saw how fast he was able to get something that looked [00:20:00] good out of Laravel. That was super impressive. But I also know that Rails is powering a non-trivial number of like the most useful websites on the internet.
[00:20:09] Jason Lengstorf: So it’s, it’s very hard to count either one of ‘em out, like they’re both killer frameworks. I think it’s just a matter of which language you know, how to use. ‘cause I know PHP better than Rails, so I would probably go Laravel, but that’s only because of my own history, not because of a, like any objective comparison.
[00:20:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it definitely feels like those frameworks are on like a mission to show how like full stack frameworks help you get from like zero to deployed in a very short period of time. You
[00:20:37] Jason Lengstorf: Well, and I think too, like depending on what corner of the internet you hang out in, like if you’re in Indie Hacker, Twitter, Laravel, and Rails and, and that stuff that may be there for you or more likely, they’re definitely not because you are. Trying to do something that’s, that’s sort of off the beaten path.
[00:20:54] Jason Lengstorf: You’re trying to come up with a new idea, you’re doing whatever. And so we tend to value the sort [00:21:00] of artisanal code. I think a lot of JavaScript. Twitter is really into this idea of making stuff that’s, you know, handcrafted and brand new. And so we look at things at like Laravel or looking back further, like bootstrap and material design.
[00:21:14] Jason Lengstorf: We look at them as being kind of stodgy. But if you’re, if you’re coming from a. Enterprise standpoint, where you, you just need something to work. Rails is kind of undefeated, like Laravel, ISS kind of undefeated. They just, you just get to do the thing and it just functions and you’re done. You don’t have to invent anything, right?
[00:21:31] Jason Lengstorf: So you gotta remember what the purpose of, of different tools is. And, and if you’re out there doing code because you’re, you’re a code artist and you want to do code art, like of course you’re not gonna use a, a heavy framework because it takes all your decisions away and you, you don’t get to play and create.
[00:21:45] Jason Lengstorf: But if your job is to work on a product that is not your product and you know, you, you want to be done by five so that you can go hang out with your friends and family, Laravel and rails are gonna get you way further, way faster. And you know, maybe you’ll actually have some free time.
[00:21:59] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
[00:21:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:22:00] Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s one of the big problems that we have is that everyone loves having fun engineering stuff, but that stuff was solved a long time ago. Like, just use the solved solution. That’s always been my thing, is like just focus on your specific business logic, and then the rest should just be like autogenerated,
[00:22:18] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, but you need to sign up for all of these services in order to make your app work.
[00:22:24] Jason Lengstorf: Not necessarily. I think that’s sort of the, the promise of Rails and Laravel is that it’s also. Baked in that you don’t need any of the third
[00:22:31] Chuck Carpenter: It’s a reminder that remember when you didn’t have to sign up for six SaaS services, and even if they have a self-hosted version, most times that’s a farce. I mean like, I like super base, but like, when am I gonna self-host it? You know, like probably never.
[00:22:46] Jason Lengstorf: It, yeah. And I think, you know, the trade off to that, of course is like, I haven’t had to look at a PHP my admin UI in 15 years. Right. And, and that’s because we moved to, to SaaS Solutions. And so we, you know, the, the [00:23:00] complexity doesn’t go away. It just moves. And when you self-host Laravel or Rails or, or WordPress or any of those, you are the, the admin on that server.
[00:23:08] Jason Lengstorf: And if you’re using Hener or you’re using Digital Ocean or any of those, like you’re SSHing into boxes, you’re setting up firewalls, you’re managing Engine X and that, none of that stuff is particularly hard, but. In comparison to setting up a, a netlify site or, or deploying a pre-configured container on fly.
[00:23:28] Jason Lengstorf: Now the complexity is that you gotta know how those tools bill so that you don’t get yourself into trouble.
[00:23:32] Chuck Carpenter: Right, exactly.
[00:23:33] Jason Lengstorf: you’re not thinking about N Engine X or PHP my admin or how to, you know, set up firewalls or manage scale or hook together all the different AWS services that make your site resilient to DDoS without charging you a million dollars for idle machines.
[00:23:47] Jason Lengstorf: Like all that stuff is, the complexity is always there, just, it sort of shifts around based on which choices you make in your stack.
[00:23:53] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. And how you obfuscate that and whatever else.
[00:23:57] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I do think, uh, if, if you’ve heard any of the [00:24:00] podcasts DHH has been on recently,
[00:24:02] Robbie Wagner: I think his points around. Not Well,
[00:24:05] Robbie Wagner: yes, his points around like your specific choice on whether you want to use a SaaS provider or like self-host or whatever is like, you know, up to you. But you shouldn’t be scared of one or the other.
[00:24:17] Robbie Wagner: You should know. Like, he’s like, his example was like, you know, if you’re, you have a 5-year-old code base and you want to just NPM install stuff and run it, it’s probably not gonna work. You know, the complexity involved in just getting a JavaScript project to run is more than like. SSHing to a box, opening a port and serving a website like so.
[00:24:37] Robbie Wagner: And I think he’s ripe on that. Like I think you should at least experiment with it. Whether you go one way or the other, like having that knowledge is helpful.
[00:24:45] Jason Lengstorf: I mean, I’ve, I’ve never been sad about learning something like, I, I say that a lot. Like I, I
[00:24:50] Robbie Wagner: learn things.
[00:24:51] Jason Lengstorf: well, that’s, I mean, that’s the whole thing, right? Is if you, if you’re just continually gaining new knowledge, you’re continually trying out something new, you’re building a way to [00:25:00] actually reason about trade offs instead of repeating talking points that you heard somewhere else, that gives you agency, right?
[00:25:06] Jason Lengstorf: And so instead of saying, I haven’t tried that because I heard it was hard and scary. You’re saying, I don’t do that because when I did it, these are the things that I spent all my time on and I would rather spend my time on X, Y, Z. And so I made the trade off to, you know, pay more to a platform or to self-host because I didn’t want to pay more to a platform, whatever it is.
[00:25:27] Jason Lengstorf: Having that knowledge, having tried it in a handful of different ways, it just makes you stronger as a dev and, and makes it so that you can, you know, reason about things from a point of. Knowledge as opposed to a point of sound bites.
[00:25:42] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, speaking of learning things. What are some of the coolest things you’ve learned recently on learning with Jason? What are, what are some of your favorites?
[00:25:50] Jason Lengstorf: Hmm, good question. I just learned, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna cheat and I’m gonna pull up my, my site because [00:26:00] I, it’s been a busy little while,
[00:26:02] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:26:03] Jason Lengstorf: so I, I just learned about Vinci. So Vinci is a project that it sits on top of Vet and Nitro. And so vet is basically present in every modern framework except x js.
[00:26:19] Jason Lengstorf: Nitro is beginning to be very prominent. It’s how a lot of modern frameworks make their deployments work across different platforms. And Vinci is like a, an extra abstraction on top of that to allow frameworks to be built. So you can do things like define file-based routing. You can define how different things get processed or parsed or, or how data gets passed around so you can build your own meta framework and you know, feel good about that, right?
[00:26:50] Jason Lengstorf: It’s extremely cool stuff. It’s what’s behind solid start tan stack start. I think a couple others are, are using it and that is I think very [00:27:00] exciting. I also learned about Waku. So Waku is interesting because WAKU, it is a React framework that is specifically built, uh, it’s built by DHI Keto. And what DHI did is he started from the point of, of view of, I want to kind of almost like a, like a reference implementation of React server components that isn’t entirely in the versal ecosystem.
[00:27:29] Jason Lengstorf: Waku is a way to build and ship. React server components in a, in a framework like way. And then from there it’s been evolving into a more full fledged framework so that you can do all the things that you would do with, with next or, or any of the others. I think that one’s interesting because it, it’s much more focused on like the, the simplicity of how things can function and you can look at it and, and actually get a sense of how is React managing React server components where [00:28:00] the next Js.
[00:28:01] Jason Lengstorf: Code base is, is kind of inscrutable, right? So when you look at that as a, as like how would you do React server components? It sort of like disappears into private versus stuff that you can’t see or really understand. And so walkthrough gives you a little more visibility into how that works and, and how you could implement it on your own outside of that.
[00:28:20] Jason Lengstorf: Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I, I’m a big Astro fan. I love Astros, so I got to see the Astro five beta on the show. That was amazing.
[00:28:28] 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 [00:29:00] programming.
[00:29:01] Robbie Wagner: RIP uh, Astro Studio.
[00:29:04] Jason Lengstorf: So one of the bummers about open source in general is that monetizing it is really hard. And so a few companies have found really good approaches to doing this. Like I would say NX is a great example. They have a good monorepo tool, it works everywhere. That’s all MIT license. You can do whatever you want.
[00:29:21] Jason Lengstorf: And also they have NX Cloud where if you plug your NX Monorepo into NX Cloud, it adds extra features for CICD that. Like Caius builds and does better, you know, better ding and, and stuff that like enterprise companies really care about because it saves them build minutes and, and it allows them to have finer grain control over how things are working inside of their, their mono repos across large teams.
[00:29:46] Jason Lengstorf: People will pay for that and it’s. Hosted, it doesn’t really make sense to try to host it yourself. It’s not the sort of thing that you would use unless you’re a big company. So they found a good model where the, the NX Cloud is a [00:30:00] clearly separated piece of technology that is fully dependent on the open source, and therefore, building the open source is critical to the success of the commercial product.
[00:30:09] Jason Lengstorf: The majority of products, though. Are kind of, you know, like next JS is, I think probably my saddest example of how this goes wrong, where you’ve got something that is open source and people like it. But because the, all of the financial incentive is to push people to a cloud, the framework is sort of intentionally made hard to use elsewhere.
[00:30:31] Jason Lengstorf: They intentionally don’t add things that would make it easier to post. Somewhere else, they intentionally don’t expose some of the inner workings that would make some of their more advanced features work because they’re trying to move everybody toward Versal. And that’s not necessarily wrong, but it shows that the incentives are broken.
[00:30:48] Jason Lengstorf: And so I was really excited when I saw Astro Studio because Astro Studio was, okay, well Astro is going to be. Open source can, you know, and it still is. There’s no change there. [00:31:00] But then there was gonna be this sort of like database add-on. We’ve got a database, we will host it for you, we’re gonna give you the ability to manage and, and do whatever you want with data, and you’ll pay us for that.
[00:31:10] Jason Lengstorf: Because a managed database is, you know, that’s a pretty clear path for somebody to pay for. So it sucks that it didn’t, it didn’t catch on. And we could talk all day about why it didn’t catch on. But the, the sun setting of Astro db, or sorry, Astro Studio specifically. Means that that revenue path for Astro is closed.
[00:31:27] Jason Lengstorf: And so how do they monetize? Like what happens now? Right. And the last thing I wanna see is Astro Cloud, where they start making astro shittier unless you host it on Astro Cloud. ‘cause like that’s what killed Gadsby. I think that’s actively strangling next Js right now. Like there’s a lot of pushback
[00:31:46] Chuck Carpenter: Well, I think part of it though is that they refute exactly what you say too, though. What you’re saying there is that in order to appropriately monetize the framework, the best place to use next is within Versel. [00:32:00] I do think they add complexity and and magic there.
[00:32:04] Robbie Wagner: Oh
[00:32:04] Chuck Carpenter: I agree with you. I think that, but. On the internet, they absolutely refute all of that, that they, they lean in hard to saying, that’s not what we’re
[00:32:12] Robbie Wagner: is hard. And they’re
[00:32:13] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. They argue. Yeah. That’s another
[00:32:15] Jason Lengstorf: and I, I think you, you can look at what people say and you can look at what people do. And if you look at what frameworks that are actually open, do they do things like shift to VE and Nitro so that they’re fully open and fully deployable everywhere. And if you look at one that wants to appear open, they keep everything black boxed and they escape their own open source internals to go to, to special undocumented endpoints internally so that they can use their own infrastructure for.
[00:32:40] Jason Lengstorf: Special features that nobody else can use. There are ways to, to do this that are open and there are ways to do it that are, are clearly not anti-competitive, well, kind of anti-competitive. Right. And, and like next Js wants to suck on other platforms because that’s how they build it. If they wanted it to be good on other platforms, they would do things like add and Adapter API For other servers, [00:33:00] they would do things like document the endpoints that Versal uses to make it good on versal.
[00:33:05] Jason Lengstorf: And the fact that they don’t do that, that’s an action that shows they’re not interested in actually being compatible. They want everybody to be forced to use for sell for the best features. They can say whatever they want. The actions are very clear in what
[00:33:16] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. There wouldn’t be an open Next project if what they said was true, essentially that. Right.
[00:33:22] Jason Lengstorf: exactly.
[00:33:22] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. It’s really unfortunate because I actually like Versel. And I used to like next JS until they like did all this shit. And
[00:33:32] Robbie Wagner: I mean, I guess they’ve always done that, but
[00:33:33] Chuck Carpenter: the app router. I don’t, I hate app router.
[00:33:36] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, it, why does everything have to change? This is my, my stance on every framework, and this is maybe stupid because whatever, I’m old and I don’t want to change.
[00:33:46] Robbie Wagner: Why don’t
[00:33:47] Robbie Wagner: we make everything the same? Why don’t we make everything the same and just transpire it? Like if you want to change the way that shit works, my API should be the same. You change, you just trans pilot it to whatever you want behind the scenes. I don’t wanna have to [00:34:00] change the way I do it, like,
[00:34:01] Jason Lengstorf: Robbie, I have bad news for how things are working. It’s, that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s all just JavaScript. My dude.
[00:34:09] Robbie Wagner: yeah,
[00:34:11] Chuck Carpenter: Right, like all of this sugar on top and preferential syntax and everything that comes down the pipe that, uh, you have not enjoyed does end up just vanilla JavaScript in the end. Right?
[00:34:26] Robbie Wagner: I mean, I do, I love Astro because it is mostly what you see is what you get. There’s not a bunch of bullshit, it’s just writing normal HTML and like, you know, even if you write React stuff, like a, a lot of it can go away. And I mean. You can use any framework like Astro’s. Got it. All right. I think it’s like back to the correct way to write web apps where it’s like static by default, little bit of islands as you need it.
[00:34:49] Robbie Wagner: Like we don’t need everything to be dynamic. We don’t need like react to power every single piece of your app. It’s like, it can be HTML,
[00:34:57] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. And
[00:34:58] Jason Lengstorf: and I think that, you know, the major [00:35:00] challenge too is like the March of Progress. Is there. And some of it is because there are problems, and some of it is because we need something to sell because we all took millions of dollars in investment and have to have something to return on. Right? The thing that I worry about is that like what Astro has done is they looked at the platform and they said, well, the platform does almost everything that we need, so let’s just add the pieces that it doesn’t have.
[00:35:23] Jason Lengstorf: And as the platform has added more features, they’ve been removing features. Right? And this is like, I always say, J Cory is my favorite project. Because jQuery did it exactly right. They saw gaps, they standardized JavaScript across browsers. And as browsers saw those standards get adopted, they took the best parts of jQuery in. And jQuery still exists, but it very much bowed out and said, Hey, the things that we were here for, you don’t need us as much for that. Right. And, and they, they allowed the project to sort of fade into, like, of course you can still use it. Of course it’s still maintained. But it’s [00:36:00] no longer like marketed.
[00:36:01] Jason Lengstorf: You don’t say like, oh yeah, you should be using jQuery, because the selector engine got built into the platform. Now, a lot of the, the things that jQuery was really good at are built into the platform now. So reaching for jQuery is because your project is already built on jQuery, or that’s the only way you know how to do JavaScript, which are both completely valid reasons, but it’s no longer like the starting point, like I feel like in, in its heyday.
[00:36:25] Jason Lengstorf: You learn jQuery because it was really the only viable path to writing JavaScript on the web if you had to go cross browser anyway.
[00:36:32] Chuck Carpenter: that was it.
[00:36:33] Jason Lengstorf: And I think that some frameworks are adopting that mindset. I think that, you know, this was the, the approach of Babel, and I loved it because Babel was like, okay, we’re gonna make the specs work ahead of time, and then use that feedback to inform how the specs evolve and when the spec catches on, the Babel plugins disappear.
[00:36:50] Jason Lengstorf: And so Babel is a disappearing framework. Astro, I think, has taken a similar approach where they’re, they’re a disappearing framework. When you ship an Astro site. If you delete the meta tag [00:37:00] that says it’s generated by Astro, there’s no indication that you’re using Astro until you activate an astro feature like an island or the server components or, or something like that.
[00:37:10] Jason Lengstorf: To me, that’s the right way to approach it. Like you said, Robbie, they’re, they’re going back to the right defaults where what a user wants is to see something on the internet. They don’t want to. Wait for it to hydrate. They don’t want to load all the data twice or all these things that we tend to do because maybe it’ll make the experience a little bit better.
[00:37:28] Jason Lengstorf: A lot of times I’m trying to go to a restaurant’s website so I can figure out what their address and hours are, and then I’m gonna close that website. I don’t need that to be a React site, like it just doesn’t, it doesn’t do any benefit for me. Like I want it to be the smallest, tiniest thing ever so that when I’m on shitty.
[00:37:42] Jason Lengstorf: Cell phone 3G in the tunnel. I can still load the website because it’s only 15 kilobytes. Right. Like, to me, that’s like, and, and I think we’ve lost sight of that because we want everything to be so flashy. So just, you know, it’s just one of those things that, that, uh, I, I hope we’re not adding features because [00:38:00] making things more complex allows us to charge for them.
[00:38:01] Jason Lengstorf: I hope we’re adding features because they actually solve a problem.
[00:38:05] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, yeah. There’s two triggers for me there, but I’ll let Robbie go first.
[00:38:10] Robbie Wagner: Oh, I was just gonna say, I do think where we’re going back to that, like with everyone loving PHP and Ruby and you know, all the old stuff again, and realizing how good it actually has always been. We’re doing that with JavaScript now too. We’re like, wait, all right, you’re right. We did too much. Let’s take a step back.
[00:38:26] Robbie Wagner: Let’s make it a little easier. Let’s only do the stuff you really need. And I think we’ll get to that point of like, you know, Astro’s kind of got it right now, and I think everything else will. Remove features, like you said, until they get to that point where it’s like less complex and less like craziness. We don’t need all those like things that they were all patches for, like stuff that couldn’t be done in the web, you know, as it was coming out, but like now you can do most of the things. So.
[00:38:53] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And compute has become cheaper. Like that’s a thing is we were deferring compute to the client because. [00:39:00] That helped things be faster and cheaper. And now server compute, you know, within your own cloud or data center, whatever, all of that has become cheaper. So now we can do more on the server again.
[00:39:12] Chuck Carpenter: So we come back to server tools that we’re kind of doing everything for us and, and look at that again. I think that’s like one aspect of it. So yeah, a couple of things there. It’s funny, like we were talking about different libraries going to the path of like. Working themself into elimination over time, and I think that’s the ideology behind HTMX.
[00:39:35] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know if you have any like experience or feelings about HTMX, but HTMX like looks at hypermedia controls, which only apply to an anchor or a form element. It’s basically islands. Architecture is simplified, which is like we can apply hypermedia controls to more things in order to like fetch true rest, which would be returned to HTML in a state and then [00:40:00] replace as needed.
[00:40:00] Chuck Carpenter: Right. And then pushing that into a spec. There you go. It’s the same thing. And then, then as the spec would catch up to that, you would no longer need HDMX because, you know, it’s, it’s eventually replaced over time. I don’t know if you have any like, experience with HDMX or opinions about that.
[00:40:17] Jason Lengstorf: I have exactly one episode of Learn with Jason’s worth of experience on HTMX. So I think it’s cool. I don’t use it, but not for any real reason other than it just, it’s not the tool I chose.
[00:40:29] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, exactly. Like there’s nothing wrong with that. Or using it or not using it. It is like, but if you do choose to go down that path and think about it, then, you know, so I think that’s like one thing. And then the other thing is like. Not everything is a web app. I think we’ve started to like think about that again is, oh yeah, I learned React in a bootcamp, or I just like it and I wanna apply that, that tool everywhere and it doesn’t necessarily apply.
[00:40:53] Chuck Carpenter: It is like regress back to websites where websites make sense. You don’t always need a CMS. Remember we used to have [00:41:00] those conversations and sort of just like push HDML up and Astro does that really well.
[00:41:05] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, which is the beauty of Estro. Like if you want to use React syntax, but you wanna say this is static and it realizes like, hey, this doesn’t need any React. It’ll just be H tm L like, ‘cause we, we love the convenience of these frameworks and the tooling around them. That’s like come out and we’re never gonna go back from that like developer experience perspective, but what you’re shipping. Should go back to like the fundamentals. I should get the nice experience as a developer, but then you should get the nice experience having a static website because I didn’t realize these like 50 React components could just be HTML, so like it should just ship that.
[00:41:45] Chuck Carpenter: And there we go. And there you have it. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a little time for whatnot. I think we should take advantage of that.
[00:41:52] Robbie Wagner: All right, so Jason, if you send me an email, should I read all of it?
[00:41:58] Jason Lengstorf: Yes,[00:42:00]
[00:42:01] Chuck Carpenter: I mean, it is a yes or
[00:42:02] Robbie Wagner: It seemed like you had opinions around this. You
[00:42:05] Robbie Wagner: had a tweet around like, what you should do if you, if you send me an email.
[00:42:10] Jason Lengstorf: well, I think, I mean, it depends on what we’re doing, right? Like if I am cold outreach to you, do whatever you want, right? But if we’ve agreed that we’re gonna do something and I send an email. And their next steps in the email. Rarely, not often. Somebody will respond to me and it’s very clear that they read the first sentence and then replied to that first sentence, and then they’ll ask something like, what are next steps to which I have to like go copy, paste the next steps out of the email.
[00:42:36] Jason Lengstorf: Into the response and it, and that makes me feel like I’m being passive aggressive. So it sort of like taints the whole conversation where now it’s, you know, I’m, I’m suddenly going per my last email. And it just makes things complicated, right? And so I think that one of the big challenges of, of doing business right, is that we’re all so busy and if we’re trying to multitask, we miss details.
[00:42:58] Jason Lengstorf: We miss something that’s [00:43:00] going on. And, and you know, I’m, I’m looking now at my, like my inbox. I’m doing the same thing. I’ve got emails that have been sitting for days that I really need to respond to, but I haven’t had time to like sit down and look at ‘em. And if I just opened them and ripped off a response, I’d probably miss context.
[00:43:16] Jason Lengstorf: Right? And so I don’t know that not responding to an email is better than partially responding to an email. We can debate that, but like legitimately, I, I think that like it is one of those things that when I work with somebody. Who very clearly, they’re just on top of things. Like if, if you ask for something, you know what’s gonna get done.
[00:43:34] Jason Lengstorf: You know, they read it. Like if you ask ‘em to fill out some details and you need, you know, you need information so that you can take next steps and they give you all of that information on the first try with no follow ups. If they need to book a trip, they book the trip. If, if they need to, you know, set something up for you, it just gets done.
[00:43:50] Jason Lengstorf: You don’t have to ask. Those sorts of things just make me feel more confident in the, the partnership and make me more excited to work with a company or a [00:44:00] person again. Whereas if I feel like I’m constantly chasing somebody or you know, trying to get somebody to explain what they meant because I got half an answer that wasn’t clearly related to what was asked in the email before, then I, it just kinda makes me like, I don’t know.
[00:44:12] Jason Lengstorf: That was a lot of work last time. Like, maybe this isn’t a project I want to take on. There is a ton of leverage in how. How good you make it feel to work with you. And a lot of that is not about how good you are at the job, it’s about how good you are at managing the job. It’s how you set expectations, how you, how thorough you are with the things that you get asked for, how, how quickly you deliver.
[00:44:35] Jason Lengstorf: And you know, I, I get this right sometimes and I get this wrong sometimes, and I can definitely see the results. Like the people that I am on top of it with, they come back and they wanna work with me over and over again. And if I, if I get buried and I’m slow. I can feel the reluctance in the folks that I’m talking to where they’re kinda like, ah, you’re kind of a pain in the ass.
[00:44:53] Jason Lengstorf: I don’t really wanna keep doing this. Email is one of those things. It’s, it’s terrible and there’s too much of it, and it’s, it’s a hydro, like every time [00:45:00] you respond to an email, it spas two more, but it’s so critical to the way that we work and, and being good at it is, I think, kind of an unsung skill.
[00:45:11] Jason Lengstorf: Like if, if you’re very good at email, it’s honestly it’s gonna get you further than being. In a remote world, like it’ll get you further than a lot of things.
[00:45:18] Chuck Carpenter: yeah,
[00:45:19] Robbie Wagner: yeah. I
[00:45:19] Chuck Carpenter: good on camera. It, it won’t get you as far as being good on email. I will say as, as someone who sent you an email two days ago, you’re drinking whiskey and being on fucking random podcast doesn’t bode well. You know, I’m just saying. No, I’m just kidding. Sorry, Robbie, go ahead. I.
[00:45:36] Robbie Wagner: I was just gonna say, I, I think like we’ve spent all this time on AI and like it’s gonna replace coding, fix fucking emails. Somebody like, I want an AI that I could actually trust to say, look, you got 490 emails today. You care about five. Here’s why you care about these five and like, this is what you should respond to.
[00:45:58] Robbie Wagner: The rest is either spam or [00:46:00] like, we’re not sure. Maybe review these 10
[00:46:02] Robbie Wagner: something that can like get that a hundred percent right. I’ll pay whatever you want because I get like, I can’t sit here for like a second without getting an email. Like it’s so fucking insane. I can never, so like, yeah, just fix that.
[00:46:15] Robbie Wagner: Like stop, stop building other shit that we don’t need. Let’s build that.
[00:46:19] Jason Lengstorf: I don’t know what you did, Robbie, but you need to unsubscribe from some things.
[00:46:22] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
[00:46:23] Robbie Wagner: Well, I do every time I get it. I think like people, I have a conspiracy that when you unsubscribe from certain things, they go, that’s a real email, and they sign you up for like 50 other things.
[00:46:34] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. I do think that is kind of, because when you get some random stuff, if you click anything at all, sometimes I feel like this just tells them it’s a real email and I don’t like where this is going,
[00:46:44] Robbie Wagner: I also get like a hundred calls and texts a day. I just ignore everything
[00:46:48] Robbie Wagner: because
[00:46:49] Chuck Carpenter: want your vote. They want your vote, and
[00:46:51] Robbie Wagner: No. They’re like, would you like $700,000? And I’m like, well, yeah, but I’m not gonna take it from a random text message like.
[00:46:59] Chuck Carpenter: You were chosen by [00:47:00] the Prince of Nairobi? Uh, yeah.
[00:47:02] Robbie Wagner: No, they’re, they’re all loan based, and I’m like, Hey, where’d you get my info from? Can I get your home number so I can call you there?
[00:47:10] Chuck Carpenter: That’s an old Seinfeld thing. So here’s another thing, fellows in tech, uh, I saw you had some tweets around like your personal style and like adapting that to you, you know, moving forward and having kind of like a vision of what you wanna look at, look like. And I dig that and don’t, don’t judge me based on like right now, but although I do kind of have the Hawaiian shirt thing going on.
[00:47:31] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I’m. At various times in my life, I’m like, I, I have those thoughts about like my personal style and how I want to be perceived and like evolving, you know, as a man, aging and all that kind of stuff. So I thought that was like worth bringing up and just talking about a little bit.
[00:47:48] Jason Lengstorf: That’s been a, a whole adventure. ‘cause I have spent, I, I’ve gone through a handful of phases. Like when I was younger I was in a band and so fashion was very forefront, but it was band fashion. You know, I was, I [00:48:00] had like the makeup and the dyed hair and the swoopy
[00:48:02] Chuck Carpenter: would love to see pictures of this.
[00:48:04] Jason Lengstorf: I can find him if you look around.
[00:48:06] Jason Lengstorf: Um, but I then I, I got into tech. I decided I was gonna be a uniform guy, right? I watched a couple things where people talked about like how Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day, and there were a couple other folks, it was like same outfit every day. And I was like, okay, maybe this is, or like Barack Obama’s another one where Barack Obama wears the exact same suit every day as of his presidency.
[00:48:25] Jason Lengstorf: And I was like, okay, maybe this is, maybe this is the right way to go. Like keep it simple. So I bought a bunch of the same black T-shirt, bunch of the same pairs of jeans, and I just like wore the same outfit all the time. And then. Those started wearing out and companies started, like I, I got more visible as a, a Devereux, and so suddenly I was getting like boxes of swag.
[00:48:45] Jason Lengstorf: I didn’t even know it was coming. Sometimes, like sometimes they would get my address from somebody else and I would just get a box of like t-shirts and hoodies and, and stuff like that. And so there was a, a solid couple years there where I only wore free stuff. Like everything that I wore was [00:49:00] like a free t-shirt, a free hat or whatever it was.
[00:49:02] Jason Lengstorf: And then I, um, started getting more into this video stuff. So as I’ve gotten into the video stuff, I started looking at what I looked like on camera versus what somebody like, you know, and obviously, you know, we all have our own opinions about how we look and, and what we wish we looked like. But even compared to somebody who I, like, I, I was like, what does Maddie Matheson dress like?
[00:49:25] Jason Lengstorf: What does, how does, uh, like there’s this guy named Big Fit who is, um,
[00:49:30] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, that
[00:49:31] Jason Lengstorf: he’s great on Instagram. He is like big fits one I
[00:49:34] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. The, the Derrick uh, the style
[00:49:37] Jason Lengstorf: men’s wear guy?
[00:49:38] Chuck Carpenter: him. Yes.
[00:49:39] Jason Lengstorf: So he posts his outfit every day on Instagram and he’s, you know, he’s like a big, I think he and I are fairly similar build. And, and so I look at his outfits and I’m like, man, this guy actually looks like put together, he’s not just wearing like the tech logo, t-shirt with the tech logo hoodie and the tech logo hat.
[00:49:55] Jason Lengstorf: And, and I was like, you know, maybe I should try harder. Right. And then this was [00:50:00] where I got radicalized. I watched the bird cage.
[00:50:03] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, okay.
[00:50:04] Jason Lengstorf: And I watched it, like there was a moment where, I think it was Robin Williams, like would’ve been his birthday, like a hand a little while back. And so somebody circulated these photos of, of his style in the bird cage.
[00:50:15] Jason Lengstorf: And I was like, alright, let me watch this movie. So I watched that movie and I was like, you know, I know how to dress like this. I could just dress better. And then I learned about eBay. And so a lot of things sort of all happened at the same time where I, I realized that I didn’t need to have thousands of dollars to go and fully replace my wardrobe, which was a blocker.
[00:50:34] Jason Lengstorf: ‘cause I was like, I, like, I, it’s just I didn’t care enough. Right. I’m not gonna put myself in financial hardship to go and do all that. Um,
[00:50:41] Chuck Carpenter: chase trends or something.
[00:50:42] Jason Lengstorf: right. And, and I didn’t want to go buy like, trendy stuff because it always goes in and out. So then I was looking at the, the menswear guy on Twitter. I was looking at.
[00:50:51] Jason Lengstorf: Some of the, like, I started going down these rabbit holes of people who have been icons of style and, and how they’ve dressed. And I look back and I notice that there’s actually like a lot of stuff [00:51:00] that hasn’t changed over the years. And if you can avoid the, like the Kanye West style fashion where it’s very like Balenciaga, you know, wearing trash bags and, and stuff like that.
[00:51:09] Jason Lengstorf: And you just look at what everybody’s actually wearing, like in their interviews when they go on red carpets and stuff, it’s like, wait, they all wear the same 15 pieces of clothing. So if I just get those staples, like they’re, I’m not gonna age outta these, right? So like this, for example, this is a cable knit Irish wool sweater.
[00:51:26] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You can wear that the rest of your life.
[00:51:28] Jason Lengstorf: the, yeah, this has been around since probably the sixties or seventies. And these are always in style. And I got this on eBay for like 70 bucks. So instead of going to the designer store where the cable knit wool sweaters are gonna be $500, right? I went on eBay, I found one that fit me and I’m probably gonna be able to go get two, three more before I even start to approach what the cost of one of these new would be.
[00:51:52] Jason Lengstorf: These are used Carhartt work jeans, right? And they, they fit great and they look great. They’re, you know, they’re old kind of beat up, but like,[00:52:00]
[00:52:00] Chuck Carpenter: That’s,
[00:52:00] Jason Lengstorf: I got ‘em for $35 on eBay, right? And so.
[00:52:04] Chuck Carpenter: Do you like talk about Poshmark? Because I’ve gotten some stuff on Poshmark too,
[00:52:08] Jason Lengstorf: I, I haven’t looked at Poshmark. That’s maybe a, a good idea. But you know, the same thing, like I’ve, I’ve got a, in the summer I was wearing a lot of linen and a lot of Hawaiian shirts, and I found like Rain Spooner is a, a Hawaiian company from the sixties. And those sell for 35 bucks. And so I got a bunch of really cool old vintage Hawaiian shirts for not that much money.
[00:52:28] Jason Lengstorf: I went and got some, uh, linen button down, some linen pants, all like between 30 and 60 bucks on eBay. And they’re, you know, they’re baggy, which is in style. They’re, they’re really comfortable. It was like 95 degrees. It went over a hundred degrees a few times in Portland. And I was able to walk around without sweating my ass off, which like, that’s been a problem for me.
[00:52:46] Jason Lengstorf: My whole life is all I was wearing like a T-shirt and shorts. But it’s a cotton T-shirt that doesn’t breathe because it’s cheap crap that I got for free at a conference. And I’m like fully sweating through it, right? And so I switched over to a like a linen button down on a tank top [00:53:00] thinking, yeah, I’m still gonna be sweaty, but at least there’s some airflow.
[00:53:02] Jason Lengstorf: And I wasn’t sweating through my clothes anymore and I was like, oh my God, forgotten so much about how to dress.
[00:53:09] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:53:10] Robbie Wagner: We’ve gone with convenience. It’s the same with everything. It’s
[00:53:13] Robbie Wagner: like we went away from records for CDs because they were smaller and you could put it in your car not
[00:53:19] Robbie Wagner: ‘cause it was better. Like
[00:53:21] Chuck Carpenter: And, now we don’t own anything. Right. Also, so it’s like every, everything I stream I don’t actually own. So I might have to, you know, or if I changed devices and I purchased it, it might be gone forever. I can’t resell it.
[00:53:36] Robbie Wagner: I feel like I had so many things to say,
[00:53:38] Chuck Carpenter: I cut you off, and I’m so sorry about that. I’ve been trying to be better about this in our dynamic is, uh, cutting Robbie off and,
[00:53:44] Robbie Wagner: I know, but it’s,
[00:53:45] Chuck Carpenter: thoughts.
[00:53:46] Chuck Carpenter: You know, he’s old, he’s like 31
[00:53:48] Robbie Wagner: of the time, so I’m
[00:53:49] Chuck Carpenter: and so he forgets everything. And
[00:53:51] Robbie Wagner: what? How I’m 33. I’ll be 34 next
[00:53:54] Robbie Wagner: month.
[00:53:55] Chuck Carpenter: I barely give you 30 most of the time. You know, it’s like, it’s a hard pool for me. [00:54:00] So, but uh, anyway.
[00:54:02] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I was talking to Caitlin yesterday about, uh, her dad was the age like we are now when we first started dating, and I was like, that doesn’t seem right. Like, it seemed like he was an adult then, and I don’t feel like an adult now.
[00:54:17] Jason Lengstorf: I, I have a distinct memory of being 16 and there was this guy that, he owned the store across the street and he was 34 years old. Which in retrospect, this guy was a badass. He had a, a really cool shop and a, you know, it was, anyways, but I remember him, he would come over and he’d, he’d eat at the restaurant that I worked in and we’d talk to him and he, when he would leave, I remember distinctly turning to my friend who was 16 saying, you know, he’s pretty cool for an old guy. And, and now I’m, I’m almost 40. I don’t know if anybody ever starts to feel old. But like I, I’m simultaneously, like, I feel too old for a lot of things. And [00:55:00] also I still feel way too young for all of this. I’m like, who’s trusting me with any responsibility? I don’t know anything. And also, you know, I’m like, ah, the youths, so I.
[00:55:09] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, the youths.
[00:55:11] Robbie Wagner: feel like it’s such a cons, like conspiracy is not the right word, I guess, but it’s like, you know, growing up you’re like, adults have their shit together. They know what they’re doing. Like you’re teachers in school, you’re like, wow, they’re an adult. They know everything. They’re like, so like Stu, well studied and know everything.
[00:55:26] Robbie Wagner: And then it’s like, I think everyone’s just kind of faking it all the time.
[00:55:30] Robbie Wagner: Like we’re doing the best we can.
[00:55:32] Jason Lengstorf: right? Like we all, we, when we’re kids, we’re not very good at improv. So everything is an emergency, everything is a crisis. And then you get older and you realize there’s always an emergency. And you just kind of realize that it, it’s fine. Like this emergency isn’t gonna end us.
[00:55:46] Jason Lengstorf: So you just learn how to improv and, and it makes you appear to have your things together, but you, you don’t.
[00:55:52] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.
[00:55:54] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten any better at anything, like as my responsibilities have increased [00:56:00] and I still feel like the same as, you know, I was when I was like 21 ish, give or take,
[00:56:05] Robbie Wagner: but
[00:56:06] Chuck Carpenter: maybe that’s why stress rises as you get older. You know, like as a kid, like, I don’t know. Even though I had like all kinds of fucked up things going around me, I feel like my
[00:56:14] Robbie Wagner: You’re blissfully unaware though. Yeah.
[00:56:16] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. That’s a good, uh, segue into a two-wheeled touring device. Segues. Yeah, segues.
[00:56:25] Jason Lengstorf: Oh my God.
[00:56:28] Chuck Carpenter: Anyway,
[00:56:29] Robbie Wagner: oh, I
[00:56:29] Robbie Wagner: thought you
[00:56:30] Chuck Carpenter: make the bad dad
[00:56:31] Robbie Wagner: we talking about motorcycles or something? I don’t know what, uh, anyway,
[00:56:34] Chuck Carpenter: There’s no Segway motorcycle but.
[00:56:36] Robbie Wagner: but yeah, we, we are over time. So is there anything you want to plug or mention that we didn’t get to before we end?
[00:56:42] Jason Lengstorf: Yeah, just, you know, just go watch the silly stuff I’m making and hopefully you enjoy it and wanna share it with your friends. The, let’s see, the Learn with Jason. YouTube is a good place to go, or, uh, learn with Jason. Dot Dev has good links to things. Yeah, just, uh, hang out, be a friend.
[00:56:59] Robbie Wagner: Do you wanna play us out [00:57:00] with some music, Chuck?
[00:57:02] Chuck Carpenter: I’m not sure I’m in a place to beatbox. Totally. My
[00:57:06] Robbie Wagner: Well, you, you don’t have to. We just, we already have a. Okay.
[00:57:12] Chuck Carpenter: No, I don’t know. It’s very
[00:57:13] Robbie Wagner: We we’re done.
[00:57:14] Chuck Carpenter: Thank you, Jason.
[00:57:15] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:57:16] Jason Lengstorf: Thanks for having me.
[00:57:17] 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.