Whiskey Web and Whatnot: Web Development, Neat

A whiskey fueled fireside chat with your favorite web developers.

131: Chris Coyier on Embracing Technology and the Future of Web Development

Hosts Robbie Wagner and Charles William Carpenter III welcome special guest, Chris Coyier the co-founder of CodePen and an avid web enthusiast, to share his insights on the latest trends and happenings in the tech world. Pondering over the pros and cons of Gi...

Show Notes

Hosts Robbie Wagner and Charles William Carpenter III welcome special guest, Chris Coyier the co-founder of CodePen and an avid web enthusiast, to share his insights on the latest trends and happenings in the tech world.

Pondering over the pros and cons of GitHub desktop, discussing React's influence on teams and efficiency, grappling with the hot topics around CSS and Tailwind, and airing their thoughts on Apple's latest Vision Pro, the conversation bounces around delightfully.

All along, they’re savoring a pour from Barrell Craft Spirits and enjoying the occasional detour into pop culture, fitness, and more. Join them as they navigate through this tech-infused whirlwind with a dash of web nostalgia.

Key Takeaways

  • [00:48] - Discussing Movies and Pop Culture
  • [02:32] - Introducing the Guest: Chris Coyier
  • [03:05] - Chris's Journey with CodePen
  • [03:56] - Chris's Other Projects and Interests
  • [07:13] - Whiskey Tasting Begins
  • [07:57] - Discussing the Whiskey: Barrel Bourbon
  • [09:39] - Diving into Pop Culture: Movies and Celebrities
  • [11:02] - Back to Whiskey: Rating the Barrel Bourbon
  • [11:59] - Discussing Tech and Coding
  • [25:58] - Hot Takes: Tech Debates
  • [32:27] - Discussing the Evolution of Package Managers
  • [33:16] - Exploring the Transition from Node to Bun
  • [34:33] - The Impact of Vite on Development
  • [34:46] - The Quirks of Tech Terminology
  • [36:24] - The Shift from Global to Personalized Package Management
  • [36:41] - The Influence of Microsoft in the Tech World
  • [39:04] - The Evolution of Web Development and the Role of Abstractions
  • [57:12] - The Future of Web Development: AR, VR, and AI
  • [01:03:27] - The Impact of Tech on Everyday Life
  • [01:03:43] - The Future of CodePen and the Tech Industry

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:05] Robbie: ​ What’s going on everybody, welcome to Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With myself, RobbieTheWagner, and my co host as always, Charles William Carpenter III.

[00:00:14] Chuck: Nope, nope I’m Christopher William Coyier the third

[00:00:18] Robbie: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:00:26] Chuck: You know, it’s a 90 10 kind of thing. You can decide who gets the 90. Yeah.

[00:00:31] Chris: in Twins?

[00:00:32] Chuck: God.

Yeah.

[00:00:34] Chris: got the 90? got like 99 in that movie.

[00:00:38] Chuck: You get all, yeah. And Danny gets all the leftover crap. Right. Oh, man. That’s a good reference. I appreciate that.

[00:00:45] Chris: sure, but I came up in the gym the other day. We had to go around in the circle. We do a little bonding. It’s not, it’s not ideal. I’m not going to say I love it because it’s, I go early in the morning, but we all have to do like a, say your name and then there’s a question of the day [00:01:00] and the intention is to like community building, you know, then you, you know, a little something about the next person.

It was name and Arnold movie the other day, so it was fresh,

fresh in mind.

[00:01:11] Chuck: Did you listen to Smart List when he was on or something recently?

[00:01:15] Chris: Yeah, it was that the one with the, there’s the,

[00:01:18] Chuck: Bateman and Will Arnett and Sean Hayes and he was

[00:01:22] Chris: and he had Arnold

[00:01:24] Chuck: Yeah, Arnold was on a recent episode and they actually talk about that. Like, that’s one of the movies that like, really Launched Arnold’s wealth. Not that he was hurting because it was, yeah, because he wanted to do comedy, wanted to do comedy.

No one would like let him go into that. So he took a deal where they basically all these people took are like three people took like low to no salary. And then they just took the backend and it blew up.

[00:01:50] Chris: fascinating. I’ll have to watch that. No, but I was, I was listening to the people I mostly admire as it was called.

It’s another podcast I listened to. [00:02:00] It’s one of the, in the freakonomics, you know, world or whatever. It’s pretty, it’s pretty decently done. And he was on there just kind of doing the life story thing, but he’s a more well spoken guy than you’d think.

I would think any, but then you’re like, I don’t know. He was a. Governor, right?

[00:02:14] Chuck: Right. Yeah.

Well, you can, you can get all kinds of positions of power without showing any true intelligence,

[00:02:22] Robbie: that is true, there are many examples.

[00:02:24] Chris: Yeah.

[00:02:25] Chuck: Yes, there may or may not be examples. Anyway, let’s regress back a little bit. Not everybody knows who you are. So,

[00:02:35] Chris: Probably not anymore.

[00:02:36] Chuck: yeah, tell the people

[00:02:38] Robbie: hahahaha

[00:02:39] Chuck: Tell the people who you are and what you do.

[00:02:42] Chris: Yeah. Chris Coyier. Thanks. Chuck and Robbie. It’s a pleasure to be back on the show. I think, believe it’s my second or third appearance possibly. It’s

always a

[00:02:51] Robbie: hahhahahahhahahah hahahahah hahahahahahahaha [00:03:00] hahahahhahahahhahaha hahahahahahaha

[00:03:04] Chris: the time. I work on a website called CodePen with my co founder Alex Vasquez, and we just, we, it’s like a code editor in the browser.

That’s my main project now. A lot of hours put into that sucker. We’re working on kind of a 2. 0 of CodePen and it’s just It’s just kind of turning out to be my freaking life’s work. You know, sometimes, sometimes projects wouldn’t say get away from you, but have a scope that’s like, man, I don’t, I don’t know how many of these you start thinking about your life a little bit, you know, like how many of these do I have in me?

Cause it’s not, it’s not 10, you know, we’ll say that,

[00:03:39] Chuck: yeah.

[00:03:41] Chris: But it’s exciting and fun and yeah, I’m just, you know, just off a meeting, just, just, you know, going into ridiculous detail on the smallest of features to make sure it’s absolutely awesome. But yeah, CodePanda is my, is my main project in the world.

Some people know me through CSS tricks, although that’s been a couple of [00:04:00] years now, since I’ve been involved with, with that project where I just buy it was like. 10 plus years, I just wrote about front end web stuff on that website.

[00:04:11] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:04:11] Chris: And now still, it turns out I couldn’t really turn it off. So I you know, I still have chriscoyer.

net, my personal website where I still write about web stuff. Although that’s, I can write about anything on any given day on that web. This is my damn website.

I’ll write a while, whatever I want.

[00:04:28] Chuck: Sure. Your online space. Although did you become a front end master shill recently or something? I, there was a cool article you had on there about like quantity queries or something.

[00:04:38] Chris: Yeah, I’ve written a, I’ve written up like a bunch of stuff on their blog recently. Kind of help them put that together over the holidays. Cause it turns, you know, their, you know, their CEO, Mark Grabansky, I’ve known for ages. He’s like a Midwest guy. Like I was in a, he like, you know, he’s been on this like massive health kick the last couple of years.

And like, just like, I don’t know, [00:05:00] just doing more with his life and stuff that I kind of respect. And he’s like, I like hiking. I’m just going to fly out there and we’re going to go for a hike. And I was like, okay, that’s the kind of like baller CEO stuff. I like to see Mark. I got hikes for days here in Bend, Oregon,

beautiful place to live.

So I, I even I, I signed us up for a hike. Some of the, some of the hikes out here, you have to like you have to get like a pass in advance for, you know, the really nice ones that would be too popular otherwise. And we, we spent the whole day walking up to one of the Alpine lakes, they call them here.

And then we, we dove in, in this freezing cold water and just, ah, you know, we just had a hell of a day. It was, it was cool. But of course you can’t, you know, two tech guys walking through the woods, you just get about 10, 000 ideas of things you could do. And one of them, you know, I had him convinced and he was already convinced.

He didn’t take much convincing that a site like that should have a blog or a publication of some kind, you know, he’s like, it’s kind of like, it ends up being kind of cheap marketing in a way

that, you know, you have, [00:06:00] you have to invest time and money into it, but like, man. Of all the things to get SEO value and all that kind of thing.

If you can get people landing on your site and then, and then especially a, you know, a beautiful site with basically one call to action, which is, Hey, maybe you should join, you know,

But that’s just an obvious win. And I was like, all right, I’ll help you. You know, just, just, you know, not being able to help myself through lack of not having CSS tricks anymore.

I was like I like that outlet ended up being pretty good for me. So just taking some of my, like, I want to write stuff about the web energy and throwing it at that

was fine. you know, just a little, just a little side thing. Obviously CodePen is where all my actual energy goes. Yeah, anyway, so yeah, a shill is how you put it, I think, yes.

[00:06:55] Chuck: I shall. Or, as you beautifully put it a friendship [00:07:00] where one helps another friend. I mean, that seems very where’s the upside? That’s what I’m not seeing. I don’t know. Where’s the upside?

Anyway.

[00:07:09] Chris: that’s true. You just, it’s mostly karma. I

[00:07:11] Chuck: Hmm. Well, before we go too far down that Robbie, you wanna talk about the whiskey? I mean, we need to

have you had some already, Chris? I’m I just wanna

[00:07:21] Chris: I have, cause I couldn’t, I, you know, I had a friend over the other day and it was just sitting there on the

counter and we’re like, it was also like 9 30 AM, but we’re

[00:07:31] Chuck: whoa,

[00:07:31] Chris: what, let’s do

it. And

we did.

And he, I, I, I enjoyed it, but it was, there’s something about my tongue that wasn’t maybe super ready at 9 30 AM, but for his was. THIS IS SO DELICIOUS!

[00:07:44] Chuck: yeah.

[00:07:45] Chris: it.

[00:07:46] Robbie: I think you just don’t want to read this list here. Chuck is why you kicked it over to me. Cause

[00:07:52] Chuck: sure you’re awake. And trading our segments, you know, can’t always be me.

[00:07:57] Robbie: this, yeah, this is [00:08:00] a, uh, new year, 2024 edition of barrel bourbon. It is 113 proof it is. 72% corn, 22% rye, and 5% malted barley, and 1% wheat for whatever reason. It is from a ton of states.

Somehow It’s from Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Wyoming, New York, Texas, Ohio, and Maryland,

and all of different varying ear years from five to 11.

All kinds of stuff.

[00:08:34] Chuck: there’s two Tennessees that are eight and

fifteen. Yeah, so the mash bill is derived as best they can based on the quantities and the mash bills, the items that they put into the barrel together. That’s their whole thing, they do blends, right? They source and blend and come up

with cool stuff. Yeah, they have some tasty stuff. So it’s a derived mash bill because they’re like, this is the best we can say, given we put like 10 different whiskeys in

[00:08:56] Chris: I like the name is, it feels like cheating. It’s [00:09:00] like, what if you had a, like a bottled water company and somehow you got the name water? You know,

[00:09:05] Chuck: right? Yeah.

[00:09:06] Chris: win. Geez.

[00:09:08] Robbie: Yeah,

[00:09:09] Chuck: because it has two L’s, isn’t it a family name or something? I don’t know.

[00:09:12] Robbie: I assumed it was but I maybe they just added an L I

[00:09:15] Chuck: You just, yeah. And because it’s easy to get that trademark and or a URL and that stuff. Right. Yeah. It’s like taking out vowels for tech companies for a while, you know, just remove some vowels. I can get that URL

[00:09:28] Chris: I think

[00:09:29] Robbie: yeah Yeah, Yeah,

Yeah,

[00:09:37] Chris: what flicker is anymore.

[00:09:39] Chuck: Oh my gosh, yeah, Flickr was great. For a minute.

[00:09:42] Chris: I’ll tell you what I noticed. I mean, not that you want me to start necessarily cause I’m pretty ignorant to all this stuff, but that one 13 proof threw me off. I think of 80 as. The norm, right? Like a bottle of whatever is 80. And then I think of 100 as being like, boy, you’re going to feel it, you know, like a [00:10:00] wild Turkey kind of situation.

Then we see one 13. I’m like, is that’s got, is that, is that normal in your world

[00:10:05] Chuck: Ooh.

[00:10:06] Chris: you know what

[00:10:07] Chuck: Uh, it is, well, in my world of alcoholism, yes. I do like it a hundred or more, because I like to feel the burn. Like, I want to know what’s going on, and it’s just too easy for me to drink, like, 80 proof. 90 is, like, kind of a baseline in a way, but I’ve had a few that surprise me at 80. They have a lot of bite and burn and flavor, but, ooh, this has,

[00:10:33] Robbie: I’m smelling some Like, you know those Starbursts that aren’t the normal Starbursts? Where it’s like, the tropical flavor or whatever?

It, like a, a lime y version of like a, Cause lime is not a normal Starburst flavor, but

[00:10:47] Chuck: Hmm. Yeah, I have a little bit of that like citrus peel in the nose initially and but I smell some butterscotch and I’m tasting butterscotch for me.

[00:10:59] Chris: [00:11:00] So candy is involved.

[00:11:01] Chuck: Mm hmm.

[00:11:03] Robbie: That’s how they make whiskey actually, they just melt candy down. Heh

[00:11:06] Chris: like I like this afternoon version of this beverage

[00:11:10] Chuck: and maybe like, yeah, yeah, it turns out

slightly more appropriate. Although you’re even an hour behind me. So, you know because it’s like three for me. It’s two for you, right? Yeah,

[00:11:21] Chris: Yeah.

[00:11:22] Chuck: because Arizona does its own thing. It’s its own planet in some ways.

[00:11:28] Chris: Gosh, it’s good though.

[00:11:29] Chuck: Yeah, it has a little piney. It has a little piney. In the, in the initial flavor for me, a little, a little bitter, a little piney, like maybe more like, like smelling rosemary tasting it

[00:11:42] Chris: Everything you say just immediately happens.

[00:11:45] Chuck: It does, that does yeah.

Like, and

[00:11:49] Chris: immediately.

[00:11:50] Chuck: Suggestions

work really

well.

[00:11:53] Chris: the

[00:11:54] Robbie: steak quesadilla? You getting that?

[00:11:57] Chris: It.

[00:11:59] Chuck: Taco Bell, [00:12:00] gordita.

[00:12:00] Chris: I just, I’m, I’m I’m reading the book, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you know, like everybody knows the, the old the movie, but it’s a, you know, it’s a Roald Dahl book too, and I just

never, I don’t know, I just, it wasn’t a part of my reading.

I just, Think of the movie only,

but we happened to pick it up from the library and, you know, it’s pretty word for word, you know, not a lot of surprises in there that one of

the things is gum is a full three course meal. You know, it was tomato soup and then, and then a roast beef and a blueberry pie. You know, that’s how

[00:12:36] Robbie: Yeah,

[00:12:38] Chris: Beauregard meets her end

[00:12:40] Chuck: Yeah. Violet, you’re turning violet.

Yeah.

I loved the Gene Wilder movie as a kid because that’s like what I grew up with. I guess the Tim Burton one was more. I mean, not I guess that one’s closer. Word for word too. Yeah, [00:13:00] because like and the Chocolate Factory is the book,

right? And it’s kind of a little more Charlie centric and then Willy Wonka.

I don’t know. I don’t know why they switched the movie But the that initial movie to be Willy

Wonka

[00:13:15] Chris: name. Wonka.

[00:13:17] Chuck: There’s a new one There’s a prequel now with

[00:13:19] Chris: Yeah, I saw it. That’s kind of why it was on our, it was on my radar because of that. We all enjoyed it. The

[00:13:25] Chuck: yeah. Yeah, my kids had a winter break and, you know, I still got a 9 to 9 it, basically. And so I did not get to join them. They did, like, an afternoon film. And I’m like, oh, that sounds nice. But so I’m glad that it gets your thumbs up, though. I definitely would like to see it. A kid doing Willy Wonka doing Dune?

Like, how’s he have any time? SNL?

[00:13:52] Chris: Yeah, yeah, and he sings in it too, and I’ll

say it’s big. It’s a big musical and he’s

[00:13:59] Chuck: [00:14:00] Oh.

[00:14:00] Chris: He’s not a singer, let’s say.

[00:14:02] Chuck: He’s no Zac Efron, is what you’re saying.

[00:14:04] Chris: But these days, who knows what they do? AI? They’d probably just be like, make this song sound like Timothee Chalamet sang it, you know?

[00:14:12] Chuck: Maybe,

[00:14:13] Robbie: it better? Maybe he told them not to.

I don’t know.

[00:14:15] Chuck: true. Yeah, no autotune for me

[00:14:17] Chris: I mean, it’s not awful, but it just, you just, you can picture his face, and you’re like, I, of all the, I don’t, what are you, 12 years old, too? There’s not enough, you didn’t have enough time to become a good singer.

[00:14:27] Chuck: yeah, I don’t know.

Bieber though, I mean come on. Yeah, Bieber, Bieber made it work. Wasn’t he like nine or something when he started his

YouTube stuff?

[00:14:36] Chris: whole thing. He wasn’t like an actor primarily.

[00:14:39] Chuck: Yeah, yeah. I was surprised that, I mean I’m gonna go back. I was surprised that guy, Zac Efron was as good as he was in The Greatest Showman.

[00:14:47] Chris: Oh,

that was,

[00:14:49] Robbie: by Hugh Jackman?

[00:14:50] Chuck: No, because he has a history of doing like, I don’t know if you know much about him, but that’s like his thing. He started out on stage and musicals and all of that. And then had like, [00:15:00] yeah. So he has a history of that just because he was like jacked for Wolverine. He’s

[00:15:04] Robbie: Yeah. Yeah, I was surprised, you know, thinking of him in all of the X Men movies that he was a good singer.

[00:15:12] Chuck: Yeah, I

[00:15:14] Chris: that was an excellent movie. Plus one. Oh, I didn’t mind the X Men, but The Greatest Showman, underrated. It’s

really fun.

[00:15:23] Robbie: It’s very

[00:15:23] Chuck: Kids like it. All of

[00:15:25] Chris: saw Mr. Efron in the new Iron Claw, too. See

that? He’s, he’s like just ultra ripped. Just, he’s

[00:15:31] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:15:32] Chris: zero percent body

fat. And

[00:15:34] Chuck: Baywatch too. He did that, like, in Baywatch. Him and The Rock were like, I mean, I swear I think he was more ripped than The Rock, but obviously not as, like,

muscular.

[00:15:45] Chris: has the volume. Yeah.

[00:15:46] Robbie: hmm.

[00:15:48] Chuck: He’s like a 60 year old man. It’s like insane. Anyway, I don’t know if he’s that old. So we were drinking whiskey. Sounds like we had some things to say about it. [00:16:00] Maybe we have feelings about it as well.

[00:16:02] Chris: You still do that?

[00:16:04] Chuck: Yeah, we still do the ratings. We’ve, you know, further refined it to be more developer centric. So it was zero index based, right? Zero to eight.

So you potentially are giving something a nine, but anyway, don’t,

Don’t don’t think about the semantics too much. So zero to eight, zero, you’re going to throw this away, which you didn’t. So maybe that’s not a thing for it’s like, it’s not bad. I’m going to have this some more. It’s fine. It’s all right.

Eight being like, this is great. I don’t know what else beats this. If I’m grabbing the tastiest thing I see.

[00:16:35] Chris: and I have to go first?

[00:16:38] Chuck: You don’t have to. You want Robbie to go first?

[00:16:41] Chris: Yep.

[00:16:42] Robbie: All right.

[00:16:44] Chuck: Yep.

[00:16:45] Robbie: Yeah, I’m gonna say I forget what we the one we did with Taylor that was like the Was that the infinite barrel or whatever? You know I’m talking about What that one was not pleasing and it was like a four or five This one is pleasing [00:17:00] but not as pleasing as their dovetail. So I’m gonna give it a six and a half I think

[00:17:06] Chris: Wow.

[00:17:07] Chuck: Yeah, it’s not bad. Yeah, we’ve we’ve we’re allowing like quarters and halves and whatever you make up basically, because it’s not that serious.

[00:17:16] Chris: Yeah, it kind of doubles, doubles the scale off that what’d you say was really I’m interested in what like a better one the Dovetail was the one you liked.

[00:17:22] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:17:23] Chris: Yeah, Oh

[00:17:24] Robbie: like aged in Cabernet and a couple other barrels or something.

[00:17:27] Chuck: Yeah. They have a lot of releases. We’ve probably been through half dozen or so.

[00:17:33] Chris: Oh gosh.

[00:17:34] Chuck: And many are, are pretty good. I mean, in general, many are pretty good. The dovetail was like, wow. I would definitely, there was a weird one, like a seagrass or something

[00:17:42] Chris: Ah, yes I see that here at their website is relatively nice here good product shots They have a gold label dovetail if you’re a dovetail lover for 300

Okay,

[00:17:54] Robbie: for

[00:17:55] Chuck: So let’s, let’s talk offline about a [00:18:00] CodePen sponsored episode and then we’ll get that one.

Okay, there we

[00:18:05] Robbie: that, 81 year old McAllen you

sent me.

[00:18:07] Chuck: gosh, what was that, like 50, 000 or

more? I don’t know. 280, 000 Yeah, it’s an 81 year old Macallan, which is Scotch, but it’s actually a pretty good Scotch or whatever. Not that I’ve had an 81, but you got to wonder like how you don’t plan for 81 years aged, right?

Like someone bought a castle and found some barrels in the basement and you know, something happened there

[00:18:33] Chris: So they didn’t then, but do you, they do now. Right. Don’t you think there’s all kinds of people sitting on bottles just as an investment

[00:18:40] Chuck: Well, that’s

sitting on barrels. So you’re aging for 81 years. That’s what that means. 81 years

age. So it’s in the barrel.

[00:18:47] Chris: it’s like it, who cares how

[00:18:49] Chuck: Yeah. So you can, you can, that’s basically the story of Pappy Van Winkle is that there was a bunch of this old Fitzgerald from Stitzelweller [00:19:00] and whiskey wasn’t selling and whatever else.

And like whoever inherited that brand and all that stuff, they’re like, we have to store this. So they’ll steel tank it, like toss it in the steel tank somewhere.

Stops the

[00:19:11] Chris: is not aging.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

[00:19:13] Chuck: And that won’t age. And it just hangs out. Right. Well, it

doesn’t.

[00:19:17] Chris: risky to like, why not just leave it in the barrel? It’s already in.

[00:19:20] Chuck: Well,

because it more evaporates, you have less, who knows, like the, I mean bourbon doesn’t age in the same way that scotch does because it’s brand new barrels when it goes in there. So it’s getting all the wood, all the wood, all the wood. So for me, like pat b 23. is harsh. I don’t like it. I’ve had other like 20 plus year old

bourbons too.

[00:19:43] Chris: it got too much out of

[00:19:44] Chuck: It’s just, it’s way too woody and spicy and just like punch you in the face and it just lacks the flavors from the grains that are good. Now

[00:19:54] Chris: Okay.

[00:19:54] Chuck: much longer because they’re using used barrels to begin with.

[00:19:58] Chris: Yeah. I remember that [00:20:00] going to Scotland and I, in my mind, I thought, Oh, this is a, it’s an older tradition. Cause if you’re in Europe and you’re like, isn’t Europe just older or whatever,

but Yeah.

But

then I took all these. You know, scotch tours and they’re like, Oh, we just get all our barrels from Jack Daniels or Jim beam or whatever.

And we use their, their barrels. I’m like, God, it’s that, what did you do before that existed?

[00:20:21] Chuck: yeah, they would grab port barrels. They would grab all kinds of other barrels. Like they basically would just use whatever was coming about. And that was fine. Yeah. I wonder like, how did it start in the early

[00:20:31] Chris: And then you’d think, doesn’t that I used barrel. Doesn’t that mean that more has been taken from the wood already? But scotch, I find a more intense generally. I mean, maybe I’m just wrong, but I feel like it’s not that scotch is some super chill flavor.

[00:20:46] Chuck: no, but they can also artificially flavor it. So they’re allowed to flavor it in order to meet their profiles of the house. But, and then they’re using like malt, you know, barley that is coming from different regions [00:21:00] throughout. So then that kind of takes up different flavors too. So. Yeah,

[00:21:04] Chris: it’s.

[00:21:04] Chuck: welcome to another edition of

[00:21:07] Chris: Well, I’m,

[00:21:07] Chuck: is

made

[00:21:08] Chris: here for it. That’s part of the show. Let’s do the, let’s do the

thing. I want to learn this stuff.

[00:21:13] Chuck: is well, now you have to rate it because you know

[00:21:15] Chris: I was, I I think there’s plenty of people that are just like scotch was, or, you know, whiskey, scotch. That’s just all, it’s all in the same. They had no mental separation at all, but to you, it couldn’t be more different, I’m

[00:21:25] Chuck: Right. Absolutely. They’re all super different. Like well, there’s an old Kentucky saying, which is all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. Applies to Scotch too,

but,

[00:21:37] Chris: a, it sounds cool, Venn diagram.

[00:21:40] Chuck: exactly. All right, so you’ve had, you, you’ve deferred long enough. You really, you’re going to have to rate this stuff.

[00:21:46] Chris: Oh, I’m so sorry. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t know that I’m as high cause it’s, it is a little intense for me. I’m going to say five and a half.

[00:21:54] Chuck: I think that’s valid. This scale is about how it applies to you, which is why it’s so [00:22:00] random and funny and whatever anyway. Yeah, I’m giving it kind of a solid six. I think Beryl does a good job and I feel like they’ve come. With a nice product here. I don’t remember what the price point is because Robbie orders 40 things and they show up in my door.

And so sometimes I’m not connected to that part of it So, you know, I know their stuff is at least like 70 80 bucks to sort of get in the door and then kind of goes from there

[00:22:25] Chris: Yeah.

[00:22:26] Chuck: Let’s just say at 80 bucks. I think this is tasty. This is different something you talk about with friends. You might have in this to take the heat off a little for you.

You know, you could put one of those big, big ice cubes

in.

[00:22:40] Chris: it. I did just a little

[00:22:41] Chuck: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you do

you. No, no, that, that, that can give it a little softness for you and cooling things off. Even stones might do it. But so yeah, I give it a six because many of their products, I would easily say this tastes good. People are mostly going to like it.

[00:23:00] Like, is this going to knock your socks off? Nah, but the butterscotch, I, you know, you could have this after dinner. You have that little butterscotch feel, it makes you feel warm too. It’s a winter thing. I’m already feeling warm in

[00:23:11] Chris: I like it.

[00:23:12] Chuck: Yeah, I’m rolling with six. So I’m in between

y’all.

[00:23:15] Chris: me want to keep smelling it, which is not, I don’t, that’s not

normal for

me.

[00:23:19] Chuck: do you, how do you feel about being part of a Chuck sandwich?

[00:23:23] Robbie: What?

[00:23:25] Chuck: I’m in the middle. Robbie said, or wait, Chris said 5. 5, you said 6. 5, I picked six.

[00:23:31] Chris: Oh, I see.

[00:23:32] Robbie: Oh, okay.

[00:23:33] Chris: layout of our

[00:23:34] Robbie: Yeah, I

[00:23:35] Chuck: no,

[00:23:35] Robbie: would need two Chucks to be a Chuck sandwich, right? I was confused,

[00:23:39] Chuck: I’m the

meat. Do you call a hamburger a bun? I’d like to order a

[00:23:44] Robbie: well, that’s true. A ham, a ham sandwich is made of ham. Okay. I saw. Okay.

[00:23:49] Chris: It’s the,

[00:23:49] Robbie: of it the other way. If you’re like, well, okay. I don’t know. I’m wrong.

[00:23:53] Chuck: they

pay you to write code

[00:23:55] Robbie: They do. I don’t write, classes that are sandwich based [00:24:00] usually. So,

[00:24:01] Chuck: Extend add

[00:24:02] Robbie: yeah.

[00:24:03] Chuck: meat is Chuck. Oh gosh. That’s a different show to see well We’re thinking of spin offs on

the fly though

[00:24:08] Robbie: by bagofdicks. com.

[00:24:11] Chuck: fun fact I hit them up on Twitter and asked if they were looking for sponsorship

upper opportunities.

[00:24:16] Robbie: I don’t think they’re applied though.

[00:24:19] Chuck: not very active on Twitter Maybe they

hate

Elon like many people. I don’t know.

I don’t know.

[00:24:27] Robbie: to be sponsored by them? I don’t know.

Okay.

[00:24:30] Chuck: edition sponsored

[00:24:32] Chris: something we lost, I think, with, with Twitter is, you know, it’s still fine. I mean, you know, there’s plenty of people still using it. It’s just certainly feels like not at its heyday anymore. You know, that’s a whole thing to talk about. But that was a, I feel like what else is going to be the thing where you go complain at brands?

You

[00:24:49] Robbie: Oh, I know.

Yeah.

[00:24:51] Chris: one source of that.

[00:24:53] Robbie: When I have a problem with like my Tesla, I’m like, can I even complain on Twitter or can Elon just like take it [00:25:00] down if I do ?

[00:25:01] Chuck: right. Yeah. I mean, I, I’ve used it for like American airlines and someone else like one other time, but I mean, it didn’t get me a good result, but at least they responded. I like the brands with personality though. Like drizzle is it, is it burp is an easy one. Another one is, Wendy’s.

[00:25:22] Chris: yeah, I was going to say fast food is the way to go

and

[00:25:26] Chuck: yeah, they’re snarky.

They do not

give

[00:25:29] Chris: the real one too. It’s not like there’s a nihilist Arby’s too. That’s probably worth a follow. But the

that’s not the real brand, you know,

[00:25:37] Chuck: Yeah. Wendy’s is all like try and Baconator that shit, buddy. You know? Yeah. I love it. I’m here for it. So.

[00:25:46] Robbie: Wendy’s now.

[00:25:46] Chuck: Yes, yeah, that’s true. But again, a baconator. Anyway, I can go down a tangent, but I am going to cover some bases here, some bullet points here and there. So there’s a facet of the show. I mean, as an avid listener, [00:26:00] you’re probably aware, Chris, but like, we do this thing called hot takes, which is also.

Kind of like a funny spinoff of the bullshit that gets any traction and response. I’m looking at you, Robbie, about all the time. It’s like things on tech Twitter that, that get silly. Like milk was one and I don’t know, this is the street where these are the streets I grew up on.

And yeah, I mean, well, that to your

response was today. It’s been like the past couple of days and I’m like. You all losers never hung out in the streets. Anyway, yeah. Well, so, maybe you have a good, maybe you got a good group. Maybe I should get in on that group. But anyway, we sometimes have some funny things, tech centric, that are arguments on Twitter, it’s called Hot Takes, and I’m gonna throw Some hot takes at you.

I’m gonna steal the second one because Robbie does this too much. Anyway, tailwind or vanilla CSS

[00:26:57] Chris: CSS. [00:27:00] I just get to pick and then we don’t talk about it. Yeah. Just rapid fire, right?

[00:27:04] Chuck: Do it whatever you want, I don’t give a

[00:27:05] Robbie: Yeah, you can say

why or not.

[00:27:07] Chuck: Adam will be unsubscribing from your feed But I don’t know if that matters.

[00:27:12] Chris: I don’t care.

[00:27:14] Chuck: Yeah, Jay will, Jay will double on your feed because like yeah Jay wants to revive CSS tricks. You saw his transformer.

[00:27:23] Chris: Oh, Jay, like J H E Y. I

love Jay. He’s so cool. yeah.

go ahead. You know, there’s lots of, you don’t have to revive anything. Do your own thing. Like, he’s, he’s already doing his, he doesn’t need

the, my dumb legacy. Screw it. Moving on, you know.

I don’t, I’m almost bored of the, the Tailwind debate. It’s obviously working just great for some people.

Just rock on with your bad self. I don’t, I could care less. You know what I want to do is make money off of you somehow. That’s what I really want. I want to support it too in my tool, and I want you to love our support of it so that you [00:28:00] upgrade to pro. That would be great.

[00:28:02] Chuck: Yeah.

I thought you were talking to me for a second, and then I realized

this was a call out to

the audience.

Yeah.

[00:28:08] Chris: we, or whatever.

[00:28:09] Chuck: Well, yeah, the, the listener, you know,

[00:28:11] Chris: I know, I, I didn’t use the reference correctly, but, uh, yeah. What’s, what do you got? Come on, what’s a better? We need a, that’s like,

[00:28:21] Robbie: Oh yeah, I don’t know.

[00:28:23] Chuck: Now the pressure’s on, Robbie.

[00:28:25] Robbie: Sidebar on the left or right in VS Code.

[00:28:28] Chris: Oh, is there a right people? Is that a thing that exists? I’m

left.

[00:28:33] Robbie: a big thing on Twitter, yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:36] Chris: is it, I’m just, I, I think somewhere in my head, I knew that it was technically possible cause you know, cause I I’m into dev tooling UI options. Generally, I know that it’s possible. It’s even possible on CodePen to move your code over there as well.

But I find it so strange, especially in BS code. Now I left, I’m like a defaults guy too. I

like to [00:29:00] run the stock,

run the stock machine. yeah, Yeah. So what’s the argument though? What’s the primary would, if you had to argue their, their side,

[00:29:10] Robbie: Like, why they put it on the right? I don’t know.

[00:29:13] Chris: not, it can’t just be aesthetics. They must defend it in

[00:29:17] Chuck: No, there is a reason. And now I’m kind of losing it, off the top of my head, but there is a sort of like, it gives you ABC benefit and whatever else. And I was like, that does make sense, but that does mean spending time to fuck with the configuration of my tooling. And I always kind of think it’s funny when people.

Like add a lot of VS code preferences to their open source repo. And you’re like, well, I’m you, I’m going to use sublime now. Fuck you and do whatever I want. Like you’re trying to enforce something based on specific tooling. I don’t use sublime anymore, but I did love it back in the day

[00:29:52] Chris: Yeah, it’s, you know, I don’t know what to think. VSCode dominance right now is it feels [00:30:00] like something with something we haven’t seen in editors ever.

Like it is pretty thick. Like you can use Sublime, like it’s not like you would be. And on ineffective developer, like if you’re great and you have strong opinions, I’m sure you could get away with it.

But like, it’s also feels like weirdly safe to assume that if you’re talking to another developer, that they’re probably using VS code

[00:30:21] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:30:22] Robbie: or Vim, and telling you that they’re using Vim.

[00:30:24] Chuck: NeoVim.

[00:30:25] Chris: and that because it’s so dominant, it’s sort of snowballs a little bit. For example, you could you, you can have like a file in, in a, in a repo that like. Suggests what plugins are necessary to use this repo.

It’s, I forget what it’s

called exactly, but, and then have that not be weird. Have it be like, Hey, if you’re going to work on this project, you’re going to use these plugins and that’s the, that’s the way it is kind of thing.

Or, and you can have a, I was just messing with these the other day, you know, like a lot of pieces of stuff. There’s like, I think there’s like a dot VS code folder. Right. That you can [00:31:00] just chuck in a project and then it’s got settings in there. So if you open that folder, those settings apply to that project.

That’s probably been around forever, you know, but there’s also another file you can put in there called tasks dot Jason. And that’s like, is like stuff that project can run. So it just becomes a little bit part of the UI. You can be like run task and it will like the little menu at the top will show you the tasks that that particular project can run.

And it’s like stuff that’s in your package dot Jason, but you have to tell the tasks. File that that’s your intention is that there are these tasks and package dot Jason, I want you to look at, but I’ve been using it to do like, you know, I have a little dumb projects that like every single one of them, you have to do NPM run dev when you open the stupid project because it

runs a little server whatever. I

definitely don’t use PNPM. Well, I’m aware how cool it

[00:31:53] Robbie: Ooh.

[00:31:54] Chris: of

It’s

[00:31:56] Robbie: It’s not, on the list.

[00:31:58] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:31:59] Robbie: There’s a big [00:32:00] thing happening right now where everyone on Twitter is upset that people are still using Yarn v1. Because it, like, fucks up everything, and they’re like, Hey, just don’t use that. We’re gonna stop supporting it. If you have a bug from using it, we don’t care.

[00:32:14] Chris: really?

[00:32:15] Chuck: Yep. That’s become

[00:32:16] Chris: I really hate to say it and I, I, I don’t like this either. I would love to get us off of it, but we’re on yard one, a

[00:32:23] Chuck: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:25] Robbie: great for a long

time.

[00:32:27] Chuck: has

[00:32:27] Chris: great now.

It’s

[00:32:28] Chuck: jump to three or wasn’t it three or something? I don’t know. The

[00:32:31] Robbie: Well, two totally made it different to where you had to have like it installed for everything you were working on instead of globally. And like, it was just weird. And it was like, people weren’t ready for that. So PNPM is like the in between it does some of those things where it has like a global cache and stuff.

[00:32:48] Chris: Hmm.

[00:32:48] Robbie: like,

[00:32:49] Chuck: a more drop in replacement,

which is nice because like you can just switch to that and your shit just works. BUN has a degree of that. It does like drop [00:33:00] in and work, but then it’s really good as a package manager. It’s really good. Yeah, actually, it’s definitely good for that. Runtime depends.

There’s some edge cases there. Oh yeah.

[00:33:14] Chris: I couldn’t. Yeah. I, I at one point I did like a, like a, almost like a little friction journal just for myself to be like, I’m going to take a site that runs like Astro and I’m going to do the little steps to make it button powered instead of node powered, just to see what I would just, what is it? What does it feel like, you know, and it was like kind of fine, but there was like a little problem with it.

And I’m like, but I don’t really know. I don’t, I can’t put my finger on what I get out of this. Like I did all this stuff and like, what did I earn?

[00:33:43] Robbie: You didn’t notice the five milliseconds. Faster

[00:33:48] Chuck: So yeah, the bun install feels faster to me on some projects that I’ve moved over. So that was kind of nice. Bun test was kind of nice until your [00:34:00] tests get complicated. So then invite test is awesome because that’s a drop in replacement

[00:34:06] Chris: Right. But you know, yeah, but just as 95 percent of the market, right? Isn’t it? It feels like just as pretty

[00:34:14] Chuck: Well, it was like dead and people, yeah, it was, yeah, it’s now maintained

again?

I think, I believe it is, yeah, so that was the whole thing is like, oh shit, they haven’t done anything in like two years, people are freaking out, and Vite test is, I mean, just Vite does a lot of nice things, I think it’s,

[00:34:30] Chris: Big fan. They deserve all the credit

[00:34:32] Chuck: I, I, exactly, there you go, I think Vite is the place to like lean into

for all kinds of stuff. Oh, Vite. Yes, I know. I was using normal vernacular instead of being that asshole that, you know, corrects

[00:34:45] Chris: Yeah.

[00:34:46] Chuck: the, French way is Vite.

[00:34:49] Chris: They all suck. Remember when WebKit was really emphatic about how you should never capitalize the W

in Webpack? And you’re like, I can’t.

[00:34:59] Chuck: Were they [00:35:00] like that

[00:35:00] Chris: I’m just too I’m too tired!

[00:35:02] Chuck: it was a guy that, you know, tell Ken Wheeler to

go just,

[00:35:07] Chris: was the same way there. You never, you never capitalize it, but

[00:35:11] Chuck: yeah. Even though it’s an acronym, right?

[00:35:15] Robbie: And proper nouns

[00:35:16] Chris: acronym. There’s all this stuff you have to

remember.

[00:35:18] Chuck: Package Manager. No?

[00:35:21] Chris: you’d

think,

wouldn’t you? They, they, it or whatever. They, they canceled that acronym. It’s

No

it’s not

that.

[00:35:30] Robbie: Every time you load their page it’s like a different thing. Like it has a new

[00:35:36] Chris: Yeah. Which is, that was just cheeky, but it, it didn’t, it didn’t just tell you, this is not a node package manager anymore. Like what, what is so wrong with that now? Like, what if they went back? What if they, there’s a blog post tomorrow that said, you know what? We’re node patch package manager again.

We’d all be like, cool.

That sounds good.

[00:35:56] Chuck: We, we just turned 40 and we decided not to be assholes. It’s [00:36:00] just node package manager now. So

[00:36:02] Robbie: I

[00:36:03] Chris: thing of like

this, the high school? Good, like published a package that had every package as a dependency.

That’s a great

[00:36:09] Chuck: heard about that. Yeah. Isn’t

[00:36:12] Robbie: Doesn’t every package already have every package as a dependency? Yeah.

[00:36:21] Chuck: other. You could have just

Well, see

[00:36:24] Robbie: deleting npm and using, like, github packages instead. It’s all Microsoft, like, why do we have two things?

[00:36:32] Chris: Oh, you think they’d kill

NPM

before they killed GitHub? Yeah, I could see it. Yeah. Why does why? Oh, I kind of forgot that. So Microsoft owns NPM. That just doesn’t enter my brain very

much.

[00:36:44] Robbie: own everything that I touch, like, I use VS Code, if I’m

[00:36:49] Chris: Yeah.

[00:36:49] Robbie: I play Xbox, or use a PC, like,

it’s everything.

[00:36:53] Chuck: if you’d have told yourself 10 years ago you’re gonna primarily use Microsoft products to do your

job.

[00:36:58] Robbie: would’ve [00:37:00] laughed so much at

myself and like, no, no, way.

[00:37:02] Chris: I haven’t switched over to their, GitHub desktop, their their GUI tool for

[00:37:08] Chuck: Right.

[00:37:09] Chris: It’s pretty good.

[00:37:10] Chuck: I keep resisting. I feel like it’s the thing that makes me an actual developer, so I just can’t let go.

[00:37:16] Robbie: It

[00:37:16] Chris: Oh,

[00:37:17] Robbie: if you rebase it knows and it’ll like force push for you and stuff, like it’s pretty good. What is your

[00:37:23] Chris: I like, it has this one little thing that I’ve decided I like where in other Git tools I’ve used, you like stage some files and then you see. on the right or wherever you see like, Oh crap, I left a console. log in there or whatever. First, you can, you can just kind of right click and discard line without discarding all the changes of the file.

That’s kind of nice. Or, you know, you take a minute, you go back over to the file, you clean it up a little bit and you save it. Now you go back to the get tool and in most ones I’ve used, it’s now not checked anymore. It’s like. Oh, you know, you staged it, but it’s, but you changed it now. So we’re not going to leave it [00:38:00] staged.

We’re going to leave it in this tweener stage, whatever.

[00:38:05] Chuck: Discard line. That would

have been so helpful to me. So many times.

[00:38:12] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:38:13] Chuck: yeah,

like,

un staging.

[00:38:15] Robbie: something

[00:38:15] Chris: Yeah.

[00:38:17] Chuck: I

[00:38:17] Chris: In the Git, in the GitHub desktop that it doesn’t play games with you. It’s like, you’ve already staged this freaking file. It’s just going to stay staged.

[00:38:24] Chuck: You know what?

[00:38:25] Chris: with it. And I love it.

[00:38:26] Chuck: I fucked around and found out. That’s just what, what just

happened. My mind, I’m sold. I’m immediately

sold. I’ll, I remember Tower back in the day. I used that, like, early days git. And then it was like, well people told me, like, read the fucking manual, learn how to do things on the command line.

So, you know, I would, I’m in the generation that every gate was closed. On the basis of knowledge and figuring it out yourself. Don’t ask stupid questions. Go figure out how to get answers. Oh, you’re using [00:39:00] some GUI tool. Do you want to know how to do this stuff? Here’s a website, read the documentation.

There’s

[00:39:07] Robbie: Well, it all goes back to like, my whole argument about why people love React and small things that they can over engineer the shit out of. It’s like, They just want it to be hard so that they can tell you that like, Oh, you don’t know. And I know, and like, go read the manual and I’m

so smart. And like, yeah, like it’s, there is no shame in taking an abstraction of a tool.

That’s like, you know, it’s, you don’t have to care about the insides and just use, press the buttons that gives you like, who cares? You’re still doing

[00:39:36] Chris: Hmm. I take it so far. I’m anti the other way. Like you’re stupid not to use the abstraction. The

abstraction is better.

[00:39:44] Chuck: Yeah.

Don’t you want to make,

[00:39:45] Chris: are dummy.

[00:39:46] Chuck: do you want to make stuff or sound smart at a conference? Like which thing, which thing gets you somewhere? That’s true. I think that like, there’s probably. 80 plus percent of things you need to do on the web [00:40:00] that really doesn’t require you to know crazy algorithms. It doesn’t require you to know the in depth workings of react or of Django or WordPress or anything else.

What you need to do is know how to do things or know how to find those answers. And that’s, you know, we’re all webmasters. It turns out

it was just our tooling got crazy.

[00:40:23] Chris: you should name this episode, we’re all webmasters.

[00:40:28] Chuck: we’ll wait till you see the crazy image that Robbie has, chat GPT do for you. So we’ve been like

[00:40:35] Robbie: Did you see the last one? Chuck,

[00:40:37] Chuck: Um,

[00:40:39] Robbie: from the malarkey that I published

last week.

[00:40:41] Chuck: I haven’t. No,

[00:40:42] Robbie: It’s, so it’s the one where I talked about the Stanley Steamer cat pee thing. So I have this cat, like, with this huge stream of pee. And like, this like French guy, cause you were talking about French food and stuff.

[00:40:54] Chuck: Okay.

[00:40:55] Robbie: it’s insane.

[00:40:56] Chuck: I don’t know how

you come up with these things, but okay, fair enough. [00:41:00] So, see, we’ve got a bunch of hot takes here, and I do feel like we went off the reservation. Oh, that’s, that’s probably not. Anyway, we went off

the list, and I don’t care.

Yeah.

[00:41:10] Robbie: whole, you should use the abstractions is a,

[00:41:12] Chuck: What’s old is new again, too. I feel like there’s a burgeoning.

Group of folks on tech Twitter that are just talking about like you guys have been nuts for a while and I’ve been back here building sites with rails or Django and just fucking crushing it, getting people businesses quietly. And you guys talk about like putting all of that through a browser and then making it fast and, and now react does server side rendering in its latest iteration, by the way, it’s been doing that in various ways for like five plus years.

Isomorphic has been a thing for a while, but now we’ve got to call it something else because we put a little brand around it and it has to be our thing. But it, it’s the same concept, [00:42:00] right? Like whatever we’re doing now is basically PHP came back to the front end. I don’t know

[00:42:04] Chris: I feel you though. That’s, it’s just, it’s just kind of true. But at its core, it’s like some code is smart to run on servers. Some code is smart to run on browsers. The

job is to know when the

difference is.

[00:42:21] Chuck: exactly the right tool for the right

[00:42:24] Chris: So we can.

invent little different ways to abstract that, but that’s not abstracting anything new.

It’s just like, it’s that same old thing. You know, I, I, I, it, it, it occurred to me when, you know what’s it, who’s the react guy, Dan, Dan Abramov or whatever. He’s,

I feel like just an extremely well spoken guy. Super nice. His blog is great. Overreacted, I think, or something like

that. It’s called, he’s got a recent. Yeah. One recent post about, about, that. It’s about he, he, he, in it, he argues code should run on the, on your browser and then makes an eloquent argument [00:43:00] for it. And then he’s like, wait, wait, wait, now I’m going to argue that code should run on the server. It makes an eloquent argument for it. Then at the bottom, he’s like, and then, you know, like, how would we write, you know, knowing that.

There’s clear arguments for both. What are we going to do about that? And it feels like this very obvious setup for his next post, which is going to talk about react server components. It’s a great article. It’s like cool. Clap, clap. Good job. Except for that. I want people to understand that that’s been true for.

Since computers or since the internet or whatever, like you, you, you don’t sit around waiting on your hands for react server components to solve this problem for you. It’s just been, it’s been a thing forever. And it was a weird cause I read that post on the same day. I go to this. to the university here in town and speak with their like program coordinator woman.

It was very interesting. And we talked about all kinds of things where they went over their curriculum, they have an advanced web course. And one of the things that they do is they build a website multiple ways. They, one time they build it server [00:44:00] side rendered one time they build it. All single page app and then they do it a third time with both.

And I’m like, that’s so clever. they’re just using PHP for this server side. When I’m like, fine, good. You

[00:44:11] Chuck: Yeah,

right.

[00:44:12] Chris: good.

[00:44:13] Chuck: Solve, solves

the

problem.

[00:44:15] Robbie: of the web.

[00:44:16] Chris: yeah.

[00:44:16] Chuck: think it’s, honestly, I think it’s a workforce problem, right? Like it’s, otherwise it’s syntax. You’re just talking about, okay, render a website on the web or on the server, reb, render a website in the browser. And traditionally it would be like, well, you have to choose JavaScript for the server one, or you have to choose, you know, the 10 languages more traditionally for the website and never shall the two mix.

And then obviously we spent a decade sort of breaking down that wall for various reasons. And one of it is that, hiring got crazy, developers became super valuable and the ideology [00:45:00] of how we have a productive developer was. Learn how to write react apps as long as you know, that doesn’t matter to the rest, right?

You can come in, you can be productive. You can do the thing they’ve asked you from a job a bunch of times. Now the ask starts to get bigger, bigger, bigger. That’s been the last few years. The market drops out and now they want you to have this skill. If you’re a senior engineer with five years or less years of experience, and I’m kind of questioning that to a degree and there’s superstars, there’s outliers or whatever else, but like senior in five years was like salary arbitrage, let’s be honest.

And now you have a workforce that you need to figure out how to apply, right? Like, and if you’re selling A service to developers who have this skill set, you want to make them empower them to build applications across and they know JavaScript and they mostly know React. How do you, how do you [00:46:00] make that a reality? That’s just my two cents. I have no data behind this. This is just my feeling of the sentiment in the marketplace.

[00:46:09] Chris: I do think, yeah, looking back on this time, it’ll be, it’ll be interesting to See that the impact of react had technological waves through our industry, but almost bigger waves of like, what did it do to teams? And what did it do to like efficiency of those teams and things like that, that don’t have anything to do with bits and bytes they had to do with salaries and staffing and stuff like that all had just as big of waves that way in the same way that responsive web design had ripples of like how we build websites, but it also had ripples of what teams are doing.

What? Who’s sitting next to who and crap, you know, it was interesting. Like we don’t, Oh, we don’t need an M dot team anymore on floor three.

[00:46:53] Chuck: Right.

[00:46:54] Chris: design did that, you

know, it had,

[00:46:57] Robbie: Yeah.

Yeah, I think,

[00:46:59] Chuck: all [00:47:00] of a sudden was expected to write native apps or something.

[00:47:03] Chris: yeah,

[00:47:04] Robbie: I think the biggest thing that we lost with like react and the 10 years after it came out was like being able to have opinionated frameworks, like the whole idea of like a SDK or something that just tells you how to do everything versus like React is like install our little rendering library and then install whatever you want to do the rest.

And like, there’s, that’s fine. And it’s cool. And you can spend two years building your own bespoke thing that you’re going to ultimately delete. And then spend two more years building another thing, or you could use something that has like very strong opinions. Like Rails has been around forever. People still love it.

It has opinions. It works. Ember, same thing. Like people lost a lot there where if you switch jobs, you could be productive. You could ship code to production day one. If you’re using an opinionated framework, if there’s a bespoke framework, you’re going to spend a couple months [00:48:00] learning what they’re doing before you can do anything.

And that’s a big benefit nobody thinks about.

[00:48:05] Chris: I think that’s, yeah. I mean, hopefully they think about it or if you’re senior enough, you should be thinking about it because that’s a really big deal, but I think it’s. It’s sometimes true that having really strong opinions in a framework makes it successful, and it’s sometimes true that not having opinions makes it successful.

I don’t think there’s one true answer to that.

REC probably did well because of its unopinionatedness, or at least retroactively we can look and Assign that maybe there’s also that what like Redwood JS. Have you seen that one

[00:48:36] Chuck: We have.

[00:48:37] Chris: wicked opinionated, right? And not hitting, like, I don’t

think

maybe it’ll be great, but nobody cares.

I’m afraid, sorry, you didn’t win this one,

[00:48:46] Robbie: Well, it’s because it’s React based. Like, I think the opinionated framework thing is fine, but the people that like opinionated maybe not anti React, but like, they gravitate away from React, so they’re not even going to look at that, because it’s like, [00:49:00] React based.

[00:49:00] Chuck: they made some choices that may or may not be correct, right? Like, cause I’ve looked at it a couple of different times and consider it for projects and it is super opinionated. And if you don’t like a piece of that opinion, maybe like, okay, the API is GraphQL.

[00:49:14] Robbie: But GraphQL’s dead.

[00:49:17] Chuck: yeah, I think people are saying, oh gosh, this actually doesn’t solve all my problems just like REST and whatever before is because. It has standards, but then lacks standards and then basically lets front end applications throttle, possibly like throttle your response times and stuff. Because if you start, if you’re able to like drop things, you know, drop fields that have crazy resolvers into your one response, you can very much change things quickly.

So, you know, like yes and no. Maybe Jason API was the right answer,

[00:49:59] Robbie: [00:50:00] Oh, I mean

[00:50:03] Chris: I heard somebody make a great full throated you know, defensive of rest. And I was like, you know what? You’re probably not wrong. You know, like if a rest shipped today, like as a philosophy, people would be like, this is so

cool.

[00:50:16] Chuck: I’ve seen a couple of articles about like rest isn’t what you think it is. And here’s true rest and crud applications aren’t necessarily

[00:50:23] Robbie: does it stand for?

[00:50:24] Chuck: Right. I don’t know. I did know at one point, but I don’t remember.

[00:50:28] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:50:29] Chris: Stateful.

[00:50:30] Chuck: answer and you brought it up?

[00:50:31] Robbie: No. I thought, I assumed one of you guys would know.

[00:50:34] Chuck: No, I don’t remember.

So I’ve been on a

[00:50:37] Chris: stateful

[00:50:38] Chuck: Yeah. I

like where you’re going with that. So, I haven’t even had very much of this, but I’ve been on a weird diet for now four days, and so my one pour, really hits. It’s

[00:50:52] Robbie: You haven’t been

[00:50:53] Chris: Empty

[00:50:54] Robbie: Wet January?

[00:50:57] Chuck: No, well, yeah, I started [00:51:00] January because I’m like, I don’t give a shit. I’m dry January. You’re idiots. Everybody like

any

[00:51:05] Robbie: January. Dry January is fake.

[00:51:06] Chuck: Yeah, because, like, it’s like saying January’s when I start my workout, like, it’s as

[00:51:11] Robbie: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:51:13] Chuck: busier and harder at that

point to, like, go to a gym and whatever

else.

[00:51:17] Chris: that so much. Be like, the holidays are

over. It is time to crank up the drinking.

[00:51:23] Chuck: I mean, I don’t know how your holidays have gone, but mine have definitely been like, this isn’t relaxing at all. Yeah, maybe I ate a bunch, but I also had to deal with a bunch of assholes. So,

[00:51:36] Chris: They don’t listen to this podcast, I take it.

[00:51:38] Chuck: yeah, I mean, nobody listens to me, but it’s fine. I’m also one of those assholes. So I’m not you know, I’m not out of that group.

And then we had like deaths and everything else. It’s like all fucking depressing. The only thing that’s not depressing to me is like. Christmas morning, kids get up, they’re so excited, and they’re tearing, it’s like six in [00:52:00] the morning, and they’re tearing open presents, and like, we’re in our jammies, and like, that, I love that, I’m connected, I’m with my family, I’m with, like, That all part and then like, okay, well, now we’re done.

It’s 9 a. m. Let’s get started for people to show up at noon. Like we do a bunch of work. We’ve been doing work for days. They, everybody comes and I mean, they shower the kids and gifts, so they’re still happy, but like, we’re like cooking and serving and whatever else. And then people leave four hours later and we’re like, Oh, now everything’s destroyed.

I’m glad we did all this up to this point and we have to clean it all again.

So why wouldn’t I love that?

[00:52:39] Chris: you know, that’s really the, it was Thanksgiving before that and

[00:52:43] Chuck: Exactly. No

[00:52:45] Chris: Are sponsored by Barrel Bourbon.

[00:52:48] Chuck: Exactly. You know what? We, we’ve actually kind of said, like, I think this is our last one. And we’re gonna go to Hawaii. Next year or this year

now.

[00:52:58] Robbie: live in Italy, you don’t have [00:53:00] to host anymore. Yeah,

[00:53:07] Chris: to get there?

Okay.

[00:53:08] Chuck: trying to shit, Chris. I

[00:53:10] Chris: You’re doing it

Oh, good for you. That world needs more bravado like that.

I was just, I was like, I was weird. It was a snow day here and where the kids were out sledding and there’s a bunch of other dads too. And there’s this other dad and he was, I don’t know why I was sensitive at the moment, but it was, he was the most, he just had a, like a little meekness to him.

You know, he’s like, don’t your sisters. No, don’t, I think it might be time to go inside soon. You know, this kind of thing. And I’m not trying to be like, Oh, what a weak pussy or anything like that. But I like a little bit though, you know, I was like, what? You, you got a thought here, man. Let like, do, do your thought.

Like you want your kids to come inside, then it’s time for the kids to come

inside, you know? Yeah.

[00:53:49] Chuck: in the room. It’s not a suggestion. It’s like, I know better than you

[00:53:53] Chris: Yeah.

[00:53:54] Chuck: Hypothermia sucks. Let me

just, let me just fix this for you.

I just.

[00:53:58] Chris: I can be like him too, but I’m not going to [00:54:00] be like, I want to, I want to make that my resolution be like, I’m not going to suggest that my kids come inside

[00:54:06] Chuck: I am going to suggest, if anybody would like a real podcast, here it is, Syntax. fm. This episode is sponsored by Syntax. fm. I know, you’re such a yeah.

[00:54:16] Chris: fanboy. That’s

[00:54:18] Chuck: the swag they put out was incredible.

And the prices were good. Even if you just want a Yeti cup, like,

it’s

[00:54:26] Chris: big century money?

[00:54:27] Chuck: Exactly,

yeah.

absolutely. That’s, that’s all Sentry stuff.

I, yeah, David said that they’re taking a loss on other stuff, but like, just trying to put cool shit out. And this was like 28, which is cheaper than going to like Ace Hardware and buying a Yeti Cup. So even if

[00:54:42] Chris: Oh my gosh.

[00:54:43] Chuck: Cup, just get the yellow one.

[00:54:45] Chris: Yeah I’d like to see somebody who just is a little like a little down on their luck at the moment go to a tech conference With just garbage bags, you know, just fill it up

fill it up

[00:54:58] Chuck: Ideas, Probably

[00:54:59] Chris: Yeah,

[00:54:59] Chuck: one that [00:55:00] we’re supposed to

[00:55:00] Chris: and then just

[00:55:01] Chuck: I don’t know. Yeah, yeah, just roll in with like Walmart shit and garbage

[00:55:06] Chris: yeah, I’ll tell you where you should go It’s the trampoline zone at in Bend, Oregon. You could go to a kid’s birthday party and Just roll in there and eat cupcakes uninvited every day of the week.

[00:55:19] Robbie: You do that a lot?

[00:55:21] Chuck: was gonna say,

[00:55:22] Chris: throw party at that spot. You, anybody come in here and eat these cupcakes. I’m

not

taking them home. Four

[00:55:29] Chuck: Next time we’re in Portland, I’m just driving out to Bend. Uncle

outside of Benton, too.

[00:55:37] Chris: ish hours.

[00:55:39] Chuck: Oh,

[00:55:40] Chris: Not, not close.

[00:55:41] Robbie: Okay.

[00:55:42] Chris: It’s

very beautiful though.

It’s worth the drive. We

[00:55:45] Chuck: Yeah. And it’s not all, like, weird, like, Portland. Where, like, there’s strip clubs and vegan restaurants everywhere and shit.

[00:55:52] Chris: You, like, you named, like, the two good

things.

[00:55:54] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:55:56] Chuck: re Are you vegan now? No way.

[00:55:58] Chris: No, I just mean that [00:56:00] that’s, could be construed as a positive. You didn’t bring up what everybody brings up, which is like, oh, it’s full of homeless people and

[00:56:06] Chuck: Every big city is full of homeless people, though, at this point. I feel like, I

don’t know, you go

[00:56:11] Robbie: ish, it’s full of homeless people.

[00:56:13] Chuck: San Francisco is a little crazy. Last time I was there, I literally was, like In a taxi driving through somewhere and I saw someone like, with a meth pipe, just go, And I was like, well, okay, I mean,

[00:56:28] Chris: he’s probably having a better day than you are having.

[00:56:31] Robbie: yeah. No responsibilities.

[00:56:34] Chuck: Right, yeah, that’s true. Low, very low pressure situation, not even jails, like,

you know,

[00:56:40] Chris: is

probably less good.

[00:56:42] Chuck: yeah.

[00:56:42] Robbie: jail in San Francisco.

Unless you kill someone, that’s like the only thing you go to jail for.

[00:56:48] Chuck: they closed Alcatraz a long time ago, what do you want them to do? That’s a, that’s

[00:56:54] Robbie: This went on a very weird turn.

[00:56:58] Chuck: [00:57:00] subjective. This is what our listener wants.

[00:57:02] Robbie: Yeah. I do wanna Bring

[00:57:05] Chris: a

[00:57:05] Robbie: to something somewhat topical for the next, well I don’t know when this is going to air because we’re editing these ourselves now, so we’ll see. But Apple Vision Pro, are you going to get one Chris?

[00:57:15] Chris: Oh, I do think it looks really cool. I don’t know. I don’t know anything other than what everybody else saw, which is some real demo videos where people strap it on and you’re in the world and all your apps are there and stuff, it seemed to make more immediate sense to me than, than. The, I have the other one, the Oculus or whatever,

where you strap it on and it’s, you know, you’re, you can kind of see the environment.

I don’t know. It didn’t click with me. I did it a few times and I wanted it to, too, because I was like, Oh, like a fantasy game where I like swing a fucking broadsword at some dragons or whatever the hell. That sounds

[00:57:51] Chuck: Did you fight Darth Vader or not? Did you fight Darth

Vader or no? You get.

[00:57:56] Chris: available now.

[00:57:57] Chuck: That, it’s amazing. [00:58:00] If you’re a Star Wars fan, that’s a must. That’s like. Even if you never touch it again, that’s incredible. Like, there’s three parts to it, and the first one, your ship gets boarded by Darth Vader and Stormtroopers, and he approaches you, and he’s like eight feet tall, and it’s incredible.

Cause you’re like, oh fuck, now I know why I’m scared of this guy. He’s a monster. Robot monsters. So that’s

[00:58:22] Chris: that’s kind of cool.

[00:58:23] Chuck: get to fight later too. And that’s really fun. So that, and then basically it’s an overpriced VR mini golf thing

for myself and

[00:58:32] Chris: Yeah. And, and there’s like a fatigue to it too. Like you, you, you strap it on and you’re kind of like, I wonder when I get to take this off, that’s

going to be cool. Yeah.

[00:58:40] Chuck: Right. Well, when the battery dies,

[00:58:43] Chris: And then it, but like is games going to be the thing then? Cause it kind of seemed like it. You’re like, obviously that’s a whole new paradigm.

It could be amazing for games. And

it was interesting to see Apple just be like, eh. You know, maybe that’s in there. Just like, maybe that’s a thing that’s on iPhone too.

We’ll have a, if you want to use [00:59:00] a controller with your Apple TV, cool. But it’s, they’re clearly not like hard, hard, hard leaning into it,

which is cool. And then, so then what is it then? I don’t know. It’s just chilling, right? Like TV, maybe movies, maybe looking at your photos, maybe, maybe

even just a really big ass monitor for your

VS code.

[00:59:17] Chuck: exactly

that, and I think that could be a thing, but then there’s a non Apple version that’s already out, and I’ve seen people like, they’re like, oh, I’m on a flight, and I don’t want to stare down at my tiny phone, I put on these like AR goggles, and then just look up and watch like a

[00:59:32] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:59:32] Chuck: I’m at the theater,

[00:59:34] Robbie: Yeah. I think AR is going to be better than VR because like you can still see a little bit. It opens up a lot of possibilities of like Let’s just project a board game on this like table that I’m looking at and like play with my friend who also has it And he’s looking at the same thing and whatever and like I think that is more interactive and more like In tune with the real world than like the vr stuff that they’ve tried to put out so far.

[00:59:59] Chris: [01:00:00] Totally agreed. So it kind of remains to be seen, you know, and it’s expensive as hell.

[01:00:04] Robbie: Yeah

[01:00:05] Chris: was probably a time in my life where I would have not even questioned it, you know, I’ve been like, yeah, I’m going to try it out. I almost feel like it’s my duty to, you know, as a

journalist

or whatever, even, um,

[01:00:18] Chuck: we have that like kind of gray area of tech. I’m exploring new tech. Yeah.

[01:00:23] Chris: I didn’t do it. I didn’t, I didn’t pre order. I don’t, it’s just a little too big of a bite for a, maybe for me, but I, I color me interested though, you know,

[01:00:33] Chuck: Hmm.

[01:00:34] Robbie: yeah, i’m not gonna be one of the first adopters but I do think it’s gonna change everything about like What developers do one day, like you’re never going to have the same websites. A lot of it’s going to be like, they were talking about this on syntax, sponsored by syntax, that there was like the old RL CSS spec of like how things should be read to you.

And [01:01:00] you could say like these things in like a strong tag should be like louder or whatever. And I think you’re going to have a lot more of those things we haven’t even thought about that’s going to happen with like all these new devices coming out.

[01:01:12] Chris: I thought of, you know, you’ve seen this graph probably of like how websites get bigger over time. They just have, you know, there’s like data on that and they go up and up and up and up and up, you know? And you’re like, I wonder what’s going to, is that graph going to like slow down a little bit? Are we going to, maybe it’ll even start going down or what will it be that makes the line go up so far?

It’s gone up kind of mostly cause like JPEGs. Because screens get more dense and we need to see like really nice picture of barrel bourbon before we buy it like

I want it’s got can’t look like crap or I’m not gonna buy it.

I literally won’t buy a pixelated bottle of whiskey. It’s not

happening. But can’t you imagine a day where like, I’m not gonna buy something online unless I like I’m not gonna buy it.

I’m not gonna buy it. It’s like, have like a 3d [01:02:00] model of it, like exactly what it’s like in real life. I need that to make my decision if I’m going to buy it or not. And that has to come across the wire. And that 3d model is four megabytes or something. Like I could see that being the thing that over a long period of time, not like next year becomes the thing where like most. Is the heaviest across the wire thing, is just constant 3D models of stuff.

[01:02:26] Robbie: Yeah, or will we get to no websites and it’s all AI that we just ask questions and it does stuff for us?

[01:02:34] Chuck: Including like a render the website that solves your problem or whatever real time. That would be crazy,

[01:02:41] Robbie: Well, I mean, like you won’t need the website, like, like if you want to ride from Uber, there’s nothing that says I can’t just speak words into my phone that says I want to ride from Uber and it happens. You don’t need a GUI for that.

Like,

[01:02:54] Chuck: things to an API and it yeah, that’s true. We’re an API driven future[01:03:00]

[01:03:00] Robbie: Possibly.

[01:03:01] Chris: Yeah. And then how do you be entrepreneurial in a space like that?

[01:03:05] Robbie: Well, hopefully we’re all just paid to do nothing at that point.

[01:03:08] Chuck: then Universal basic income that’s how that Yeah.

[01:03:12] Robbie: Yeah.

[01:03:17] Chuck: I’m going to go to Europe before that happens. And then I’ll come back

[01:03:21] Chris: Oh, yeah.

[01:03:22] Chuck: kicks in to my favor.

[01:03:25] Chris: Nice.

[01:03:27] Robbie: are

[01:03:28] Chris: about it. You should do it. Oh,

[01:03:29] Chuck: I am moving. Oh yeah. A hundred percent.

[01:03:31] Chris: wow. That’s

great.

[01:03:34] Robbie: overtime here. Bounced around a lot, but totally fine. Is there anything you want to plug or mention before we end?

[01:03:42] Chris: Eh. CodePenPro. Buy it. It’s mandatory, actually.

[01:03:48] Chuck: Yeah.

[01:03:49] Chris: You

there.

[01:03:50] Robbie: Anyone that listens must buy it.

[01:03:51] Chuck: Yeah. And then when version two comes out, the benefits will be incredible.

[01:03:57] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And I didn’t, you know, [01:04:00] there’s a very high chance that prices go up, you know, I don’t know if it will be on day one, but there is no point at which we’re going to make CodePen cheaper than it is. And we’re really good at grandfathering, which is different than like, that’s just how we always, how we’ve rolled. Which is different, you know, like when Netflix changes their prices or whatever, like they change it for you

user, you know, like right now that’s happening and I don’t, I don’t know, I guess I can’t promise on web whiskey and whatnot that that’s not how we’re going to roll. But we traditionally haven’t.

Like if you’re on a plan, you just get to have that plan and the plans cost more for new users.

[01:04:38] Chuck: Right.

[01:04:38] Chris: I tend to think that’s how we’re going to go. No promises. But you know, in case we do go that way, wouldn’t it be prudent to be on a cheaper plan now?

[01:04:48] Robbie: Yeah. Can you include some time where Jade teaches me to make cool shit? Cause I would pay for that.

[01:04:56] Chris: he is on another level, you know,

[01:04:58] Robbie: Yeah.

[01:04:59] Chris: certain [01:05:00] people’s creativity is just cranked up and you’re like, I

can’t, my brain doesn’t work as fast as that.

[01:05:06] Robbie: Yeah. He’s gotta have like a backlog of stuff that he’s just waiting to post about. Cause it’s like daily.

[01:05:11] Chris: Yeah.

[01:05:12] Robbie: new

thing.

[01:05:13] Chuck: been messing with this, this, this. He like, yeah, he’s definitely like tweaking all kinds of

stuff.

[01:05:18] Chris: He’s bounced around a little bit too. You know, like he needs to land at a role that just lets him fly like that. And apparently it wasn’t Google, right? Or was he at, wasn’t he at Google now?

I

[01:05:28] Chuck: Yeah.

[01:05:29] Robbie: Yeah, I know he’s at

Vercel now.

[01:05:30] Chuck: isn’t even that like, job is like JS based.

Here he is doing all this crazy stuff. Yeah. All right. Okay.

[01:05:39] Chris: do what Jay wants to do. I don’t

[01:05:41] Robbie: Yeah.

[01:05:41] Chris: know,

I’d love to, I’d love to pay him for it. We just don’t have that as a role at the moment. We

don’t have the

[01:05:46] Chuck: you need to go get some VC money.

[01:05:49] Chris: Yeah.

[01:05:50] Chuck: And then you can do a

lot more of this.

Yeah.

[01:05:53] Chris: Right.

[01:05:54] Chuck: Pluses and

[01:05:55] Chris: we made our

[01:05:56] Robbie: Yeah.

[01:05:57] Chris: God dang it.

[01:05:58] Chuck: that’s right. Bootstrap is where it’s at [01:06:00] now.

[01:06:00] Robbie: Not the framework.

[01:06:02] Chuck: No, I might come back. Who knows? Everything old is new again. Enjoy.

[01:06:06] Robbie: That’s true. All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe, leave us some ratings and reviews. We appreciate it and we will catch you next time.

[01:06:15] Chuck: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.