RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III 
Aaron Francis 
Bree Hall [00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.
[00:00:27] Intro: I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.
[00:00:36] Chuck Carpenter: Hey, welcome everybody to another edition of Rum React and Ramblings. I’m here today on day two at React Miami with my co-host Aaron Francis.
[00:00:48] Aaron Francis: Hello. Happy to be here.
[00:00:49] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. And our special guest, Brie. Yes. Who just fresh off of her talk
[00:00:55] Aaron Francis: Absolutely. About style.
[00:00:56] Chuck Carpenter: So Brie, for those who don’t know who you are and what you [00:01:00] do, yes.
[00:01:00] Chuck Carpenter: Feel free to introduce yourself and change that.
[00:01:02] Bree Hall: Absolutely. So I’m Brie. I’m a developer advocate and content creator who is passionate about breaking down technological concepts so that anybody can ingest and enjoy them. , and allow people to feel like you don’t have to fit a certain mold in order to become an engineer.
[00:01:19] Aaron Francis: And she won’t tell you this, but she’s also a fantastic mc. No, what? She was the mc at Kent. See DODs Epic Web. I was, did not realize that. And she did a great job. That was so much fun. She, she’s too humble to say it, but I’ll say it for her. Thank you. It sounds
[00:01:33] Chuck Carpenter: like she could run a podcast.
[00:01:34] Chuck Carpenter: Sounds like it. Yeah.
[00:01:36] Bree Hall: Sounds like I’ve been thinking about it. There
[00:01:37] Chuck Carpenter: we go. There you go. We got stuff to talk about. Of Bri, and I want you to bake while you do it because it can be BY or BI. Oh, actually,
[00:01:46] Bree Hall: I used to have a channel that was bi. It was a food influencer kind of thing. Yeah. Because I love exploring new places through food and new cultures and stuff like that.
[00:01:53] Bree Hall: Oh,
[00:01:54] Aaron Francis: interesting. Mm-hmm. I love eating the same foods and not exploring at all. So. Interesting. Yeah. Very, very similar in that way.
[00:01:59] Chuck Carpenter: [00:02:00] So
similar,
[00:02:00] Chuck Carpenter: I love all foods and I, that is basically the only thing I take in on YouTube. Mm-hmm. Is just cooking content is food content. Yeah. I love food content. Yeah. How
[00:02:10] Aaron Francis: interesting.
[00:02:11] Aaron Francis: Yeah.
[00:02:11] Chuck Carpenter: Anyway, you know, good to know. Good to know. While I, uh, flip open some cups, I will tell you in a moment. What we’re gonna start with today because, you know, drinking is what we do. Absolutely. Uh, managed to pick up today’s rum is a, I’ll probably say this really wrong, but, uh, bla Viejo extra anejo, rum from Venezuela.
[00:02:34] Chuck Carpenter: When you say Anejo, that automatically makes me think of tequila. So after off, you’re running out of steam, Chuck, you’re losing your edge. I don’t think I came with any steam and that is half the problem, but, , so it’s an eight. year aged Venezuelan rum and I don’t know anything else about it, so I’m just gonna get to some pouring.
[00:02:50] Aaron Francis: Delicious. Oh, good. Sound effects. Yes.
[00:02:54] Chuck Carpenter: I always wanted to be a Foley artist. I don’t know if you’ve ever, uh, heard me say that before. I haven’t,
[00:02:59] Aaron Francis: but I have. [00:03:00] I somehow actually know what a Foley artist is. The sounds in the movies. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I don’t know why I know that.
[00:03:06] Chuck Carpenter: I did always think that sounds like such a cool job.
[00:03:08] Chuck Carpenter: Now, obviously you could fabricate half that crap, but, uh, Brie, if you don’t mind passing that down to Sir Aaron. Thank you. And then this one is for you. Thank you. Alrighty. So if, , you are not familiar, but I just remind the audience every episode as well. We have a very highly technical rating system.
[00:03:27] Chuck Carpenter: Absolutely. From zero to eight tentacles. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Zero being terrible, four being middle of the road, not bad, eight being amazing. Clear the shelves, which means just buy them all when you see it.
[00:03:37] Chuck Carpenter: you can categorize that in any way you want. I mean, at this point I’m just putting all rums together, but when it comes to whiskey, I tend to separate it by type or style or mash bill, that kind of thing.
[00:03:48] Chuck Carpenter: Bourbons to rye or whatever else, but. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll just say aged drums. Sure. Let yeah, let you don’t wanna compare this to com you know, Bacardi. Exactly. I’m gonna smell it ‘cause I pretend like that’s, I’m just gonna drink it. [00:04:00] Yeah. Go ahead. To Bri. To Bri. Alright. Now I have to drink it. oh, no.
[00:04:05] Chuck Carpenter: Bri’s
[00:04:05] Aaron Francis: dying.
[00:04:09] Aaron Francis: Bri gonna throw out. You know what? No, no, no, no, no. I promise I won’t.
[00:04:12] Bree Hall: Okay. It is better. than Bacardi.
[00:04:14] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. It’s definitely better than Bacardi. Yes. wow. There’s a lot of, like, it’s deserting to me a little bit. Like I almost get like a. Cream cheese frosting kind of taste. This is not very harsh at all.
[00:04:26] Chuck Carpenter: No, no. It tastes
[00:04:26] Bree Hall: woody, almost like
[00:04:28] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. Well it is gonna be aged in in barrels. Yeah, for sure. And get some oakiness. Mm-hmm. You know, something I haven’t been doing, which I usually include is the proof. Mm-hmm. So this is only an 80 proof also, so maybe deal, maybe that’s why it’s a burn as much lower BVV.
[00:04:41] Chuck Carpenter: Only the A BV. Yeah. Oh, come on. 80 is, that is for babies. This is what we give the young childrens. , this almost has, on the finish I get a little bit of cherry cordial to it. Mm-hmm. And then, uh. Slight almond flavor, all very deserting flavors for me. Mm-hmm. So I
[00:04:58] Bree Hall: like that you’re able to [00:05:00] distinguish the flavors.
[00:05:00] Bree Hall: I know.
[00:05:00] Chuck Carpenter: I like that you buy it. No. Do
[00:05:03] Bree Hall: you drink wine at all?
[00:05:05] Chuck Carpenter: Yes.
[00:05:05] Bree Hall: Oh, so you probably can really tell the difference in like different wines and like pick up the different notes as well. Well,
[00:05:11] Chuck Carpenter: I do think it’s all very subjective to a degree, right? Mm-hmm. So wine is known for having that vernacular in terms of like how you define if things are earthy and you know, that kind of stuff.
[00:05:21] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. And many other spirits are actually the same. It’s just so specialized for folks that like get nerdy about it, you know, it’s a similar but different language that you just haven’t heard as much. Right. So all of those were any of these things that I kind of try to pick up from.
[00:05:36] Chuck Carpenter: It’s usually associated with the whiskeys.
Mm-hmm.
[00:05:38] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. So, all right. Hit us. Hit us with a number. Oh, you putting it on me? I’m putting it on you. There you go. This is like. He’s getting, you know, a little big for his britches.
[00:05:48] Aaron Francis: Oh no, we’re, we’re helping the show. Yes. That’s what we’re doing. Great. Alright. I’m gonna give it another little sip.
[00:05:52] Aaron Francis: Give little
[00:05:52] Chuck Carpenter: sip and think about it here. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, flavor wise, like, it’s easy to drink. It’s interesting and [00:06:00] enjoyable. I would say my only criticism is that it’s a little sweet for me. Mm. So like, over time, I don’t feel like I could, oh, I have a couple of these. I would have one of these.
[00:06:10] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. Like after dinner kind of thing or something like that. , so in that sense, but it is good, , compared to the other ones that we have tried. , I think the Florida Kna, , 18 is probably so the more age the better for me because it gets a little stiffer. , I’m gonna give this a five and a half.
[00:06:26] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Like, it’s definitely better than average. It is tasty. Mm-hmm. , so that’s kind of fun. But five and a half. Five and a half. Five and a half. No, no, please.
[00:06:35] Bree Hall: , the only things I have to compare it to are Bacardi and Captain Morgan. Mm-hmm. Right. Just compare it
[00:06:41] Chuck Carpenter: to like liquors or whatever drinks you normally would like.
[00:06:46] Chuck Carpenter: Just go with that. I love a
[00:06:46] Bree Hall: gin and tonic. Nice. Same,
[00:06:48] Chuck Carpenter: same.
[00:06:49] Bree Hall: Love a gin and tonic. I give this. Six may, you know what, maybe six and a half because it doesn’t hurt.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And
[00:06:56] Bree Hall: I can actually taste distinct flavors and not just rubbing [00:07:00] alcohol. So I love that. And I don’t feel like I’m gonna wake up tomorrow and wonder what went on today.
[00:07:06] Bree Hall: Mm-hmm. So,
[00:07:06] Aaron Francis: yeah. I’m, I’m with her. I’m giving it a six and a half is the best one. This is your favorite? This is the best one, yeah.
[00:07:12] Chuck Carpenter: Excellent. Well, that’s great. And as I said yesterday, there are no wrong answers here. The best rum is the one you like. Yep. Right. Exactly. So there we go. We got there. Boom, we got there.
[00:07:23] Chuck Carpenter: We did it.
[00:07:24] Bree Hall: Yes. I love it.
[00:07:25] Chuck Carpenter: , I feel like from a hot Takes perspective, here’s a warmup, little easy thing about it. , tailwind or vanilla CSS,
[00:07:33] Bree Hall: that is a hot topic.
[00:07:34] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:35] Bree Hall: I just got on stage and said I love Tailwind. Okay. So, so we
[00:07:38] Chuck Carpenter: know where you’re going.
[00:07:39] Bree Hall: I am. Yeah. I originally. Loved another one that was in the mix called Styled Components or like CSS and js.
[00:07:47] Aaron Francis: Yeah,
[00:07:48] Bree Hall: I really like it.
[00:07:49] Aaron Francis: Okay. There’s a hot take a little bit because Is that dead now or are they done with that?
[00:07:53] Bree Hall: It’s in maintenance and the creator, dead of styled components said that he no longer recommends, , CSS and JS as [00:08:00] a styling solution at all anymore. Really? Yeah. So there are some other contenders like emotion, , vanilla extract, but.
[00:08:08] Bree Hall: With the rise of server components and like RSD first frameworks, like next. I kind of have a feeling we’re going to do a little bit of a 180 and go back to separation
[00:08:18] Chuck Carpenter: of concerns, basically. Yes. You know.
[00:08:20] Aaron Francis: One eighties are in the next playbook. Next loves to do a 180. It’s they don’t have to do an Oopsy doy and turn it back around, don’t they?
[00:08:27] Aaron Francis: Yeah,
[00:08:28] Chuck Carpenter: they do. They will like lean hard in a direction and they’re like, actually this doesn’t serve hard. Next,
[00:08:33] Aaron Francis: actually, the edge, we gotta put the compute close to the database edge is over. Let’s bring it home. Okay. Alright.
[00:08:41] Chuck Carpenter: Alright. Why can’t we just, uh, well, I mean SQL light, we can just put the databases everywhere.
[00:08:45] Chuck Carpenter: Sure. Easy. Right. Easy peasy. And then we
[00:08:47] Aaron Francis: can use Aaron. What’s his name’s thing to do? Syncing. What’s his last name? Goodman. Goodman Badman. We’ll get there. You don’t know what? I don’t know.
[00:08:55] Chuck Carpenter: Come on now. Old. He gave a great talk
[00:08:57] Aaron Francis: earlier about S sinking. Yeah, it’s very heavily, I think [00:09:00] SQL Light based, actually.
[00:09:01] Aaron Francis: I don’t know if it’s exclusively SQL light based, but he’s all about the local first sinking stuff. Mm-hmm. Which is very interesting. Yeah. There find some great
[00:09:08] Chuck Carpenter: libraries that do that and do some like. Offline first. Mm-hmm. Strategies, storing things in index db and then sending to remote when you have a connection or when you manually decide.
[00:09:18] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. I think that’s a smart strategy for a lot of things. Absolutely. Like leverage all the things the browser gives us and don’t do jank work arounds.
[00:09:27] Bree Hall: And I think that’s also part of the reason why we’re seeing that people like native CSS more is because it has more features.
[00:09:34] Bree Hall: Things like tailwind are improving and getting closer to the browser as a platform versus the really complex like JavaScript configurations and things like that, which have you all used Tailwind before?
[00:09:45] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:45] Bree Hall: Okay.
[00:09:46] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I’m very lazy, so I, I used to complain like everyone else did, about like long strings and ugly HTML.
[00:09:52] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. But then I. Got over myself and started using it and being faster, and I was just like, I don’t care. I love, yes. Yep.
[00:09:59] Bree Hall: You know what? I [00:10:00] didn’t like it at first and I’m 99% sure I tweeted, I don’t know how people use tailwind with these really long class names. And then somebody said to me like.
[00:10:08] Bree Hall: Don’t just think about it as you’re just putting all of your styles directly in your markup. Like try to really lean into atomic design mm-hmm. And leverage creating those atomic components in all of your, um, yeah, definitely. Like projects. And that makes it so much easier.
[00:10:22] Aaron Francis: Yeah. It’s interesting. I don’t know that Tailwind would’ve survived if Componentized frameworks mm-hmm.
[00:10:28] Aaron Francis: Hadn’t come along at basically the same time. Yeah. It at least super helps it. I like Tailwind. I love tailwind. In fact, one of the main reasons is. I can look at the markup and visualize in my head what the thing is gonna look like. Mm-hmm. Seriously. And so you can get like 90% to what you have in your head without ever checking the browser.
[00:10:48] Aaron Francis: And then you go check the browser and you’re like, ah, you know, let me push, let me tweak. And then you go back. Exactly. But I, I, I just love being able to look at it and see it in my head.
[00:10:55] Bree Hall: Yeah. I love what you said about it. Like really coming up and like kind of [00:11:00] rising to where it did with componentized.
[00:11:02] Bree Hall: , like projects, I can’t imagine using Bootstrap how I used to.
No, no,
[00:11:06] Chuck Carpenter: no. Which is
[00:11:07] Bree Hall: basically just all of the styles and the markup. Ugly, raw,
[00:11:11] Chuck Carpenter: yep. Yeah, gross. Yep. You know, but you had to be there to appreciate here, I think there is of that. That is correct. Yes. Yeah. You know, and every time some kind of styling system comes along Like one of the risks is that every site starts to look exactly the same. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, and so that’s like kind of don’t give me too many components, or, I mean, and examples are fine if you want to be lazy and like copy paste, you get some components, yes, that’s great. But like, you’re also free to do whatever you like.
[00:11:41] Chuck Carpenter: And this isn’t, you know, components isn’t the problem they’re solving. So just move on. I mean, I don’t know. I just feel like I love that because I feel like I can read now. I like the classes because I can read basically CSS documentation of like what’s happening right there. Right. On my element. I’m like, cool.
[00:11:57] Bree Hall: Absolutely. And especially what you said [00:12:00] about all the sites looking the same. I think that’s why I originally stopped using Bootstrap. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Is because you can kind of look at a site and tell it’s a bootstrap site versus whatever branding you’re actually going for.
[00:12:10] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:12:10] Bree Hall: And
[00:12:10] Chuck Carpenter: material fell into the same problems.
[00:12:12] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. Yep. Again, it was like an easy button for a little while, , people were sick of bootstrap, they jumped to material, and then three years later, every site looks like that now. Mm-hmm. It’s like,
yeah.
[00:12:22] Aaron Francis: And I think Tailwind has fallen into that with Tailwind ui. At the very least, it has. Tailwind itself is hard.
[00:12:30] Aaron Francis: I mean, sure you get consistent spacing. Mm-hmm. But that’s good. Yeah. We want all sites to have consistent spacing, but with Tailwind, You can make it look like anything. Exactly.
So I
[00:12:39] Aaron Francis: can, I can pick out a Tailwind UI site from a mile away. Oh yeah. And that’s fine. They’re beautiful. That’s fine. I cannot pick out a Tailwind site from a mile away because it might be like anything completely different.
[00:12:50] Aaron Francis: Yeah. Which is
[00:12:50] Bree Hall: great. I love
[00:12:51] Aaron Francis: that. I
[00:12:51] Bree Hall: do too. Yeah.
[00:12:52] Aaron Francis: it’s a fun exercise. It is, yeah.
[00:12:54] Aaron Francis: All right, so you gave a talk. I did. tell the people the title of your talk and give us a [00:13:00] pitch. ‘cause I think they’ll be free and available by the time people are listening. So let’s hear it. What? What was your talk?
[00:13:04] Bree Hall: It was called Styled and Sassy. Okay. Choosing the Right React styling solution. And I will say SASS is in all uppercase because. The original version of this talk was also going to include SaaS as a styling solution as well. But
[00:13:17] Aaron Francis: then you didn’t include it, not, but you left it in the title it. It is a, it is
[00:13:21] Chuck Carpenter: an option.
[00:13:22] Chuck Carpenter: You know, it’s not off the table whether you recommend it or not, it exists. You know what?
[00:13:26] Bree Hall: I actually shared the state of CSS 2024, um, survey results and SAS is still there. It’s still like a very big contender. 67% of people who are using pre or post-process are still using or have used SaaS.
[00:13:40] Bree Hall: So it’s not like it’s going anywhere, but because native CSS is getting better and a lot of those features that SaaS really, , made easier for us, like nested css mm-hmm. That’s being absolved into native css. Yeah. So now maybe there’s not a need to reach for , a new dependency. Mm-hmm. We can do a lot of those things that SAS could do, , in native CSS.[00:14:00]
[00:14:00] Bree Hall: So my talk was really about, , how to pick one of the three big styling solutions. So Tailwind. CSS modules, which is basically just vanilla CSS with scoped and , styled components and trying to figure out which one is gonna be better. React 19 changed a lot of things and it kind of changed how we think about styling.
[00:14:18] Bree Hall: So really understanding what questions do you need to ask when it comes to styling your new projects to understand how to pick what’s best.
[00:14:25] Aaron Francis: Cool. Yeah. Y’all gotta go watch that. Absolutely. Well wait, uh, what are those questions?
[00:14:30] Bree Hall: , number one is, is it going to work with server components? , how scalable is it?
[00:14:35] Bree Hall: are you doing something with a design system where you need to expand your designs often, how many themes do you have? Are you gonna be supporting multiple different themes, not just like light mode and dark mode? What is your team composure right now? Are they engineers who are. Familiar with just native CSS itself, is there going to be a big uptick in needing to get them on something like style components?
[00:14:57] Bree Hall: Because that is not an easy, , process or an easy [00:15:00] philosophy to get to. It’s really questions about what does your team look like right now? What does your app look like and where can you immediately see that you want to go? Yeah. And then making sure that you’re going in the right direction of, , the platforms themselves.
[00:15:14] Bree Hall: So React and like native CSS?
[00:15:16] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. Okay. That actually brings up an additional follow up question for me, because I often think that there’s, you know, a newer wave of developers over the last five year, three to five years for sure, who are only being taught React and how to make sites, but not sort of like, you know, how the sausage is made underneath.
[00:15:38] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. And that’s kind of a detriment. I mean, to the same effect, has Tailwind made CSS. So easy that there are gotchas there that exist within vanilla that like folks may not be learning. , do you think that there’s some similar negativity in making some of these I don’t know, library choices or methodologies and all of that that is [00:16:00] detrimental for understanding how the web works
[00:16:01] Bree Hall: 20000%?
[00:16:03] Bree Hall: I think it’s twofold. Okay. I think, . When we think about how developers are approaching learning how to code, now they might be doing something like I’ve done where, what do I need to learn to become a software engineer and how can I do it quickly?
[00:16:17] Bree Hall: I think a lot of the things that we might have done when we were getting started was having to learn things on our own because there wasn’t as much available technical content out there.
[00:16:26] Bree Hall: We might’ve been looking at a lot more docs or maybe opening up the, , like inspect tool to see like, how is somebody like actually styling this? And now because things are a lot more accessible, documentation is a lot better. We have a lot more video content out there. People might be saying, yeah, I know enough about CSS to get started with Tailwind.
[00:16:47] Bree Hall: Sure. Which is totally valid. and of course people wanna move quickly, they wanna get those apps out, they wanna get the job, they want to get there as fast as they can. And I don’t knock anybody for that. On the other hand, tailwind makes CSS more accessible. I agree. So [00:17:00] if you wouldn’t consider yourself a front end engineer, maybe like you’re a backend engineer, somebody who just doesn’t like deal with front end a lot.
[00:17:06] Bree Hall: Maybe that’s what you’re going to, because you don’t have to know so much about regular CSS, , and like how it works, you know, that you can use the utilities together or one of the, the multiple add-ons and extensions that you can use with Tailwind or maybe even all of the different sites where you can just go grab different components that people have generated, like with Tailwind or even design systems that are built on extending, um, tailwind themselves.
[00:17:29] Bree Hall: And that’s a tool that makes it more accessible for you to move quickly. So I think it’s both, I think. Now that we have so much documentation out there and people kind of like know what they need to know. CSS is more like a step and what they’re going to actually learn is tailwind and it’s more accessible too.
[00:17:47] Bree Hall: So.
[00:17:47] Aaron Francis: All right. I got a hot take for you. Yeah. You ready for this? Absolutely. A lot of people will say like, learn CSS before you learn tailwind. People will say, learn PHP before you learn Laravel. Fundamentally [00:18:00] disagree. I totally disagree. And here’s why. Mm-hmm. Here’s why I think the thing that is in shortest supply is momentum and motivation.
Mm-hmm.
[00:18:09] Aaron Francis: And so if you are a new person trying to like build a thing and somebody comes along and says, no, no, no, no, my friend, you gotta stop and learn everything, six levels deep. Right. Momentum and motivation are gone. Yeah. But if you’re like, Hey, I have this idea. For this app I wanna make, I’m gonna pick up Laravel and Tailwind and React.
[00:18:32] Aaron Francis: I don’t know the first thing about PHP CSS and JavaScript, but I can put together something at A URL and send it to my friends. You better believe that. Like at that point they’re hooked.
[00:18:43] Bree Hall: Absolutely.
[00:18:44] Aaron Francis: And if you want to go back and learn fundamentals. That’s a great, , mechanism or medium to do it in.
[00:18:49] Aaron Francis: Mm-hmm. Which is a thing that you’re interested in. Let me dig in and see how it works. But this whole like, Hey, no, you gotta learn CSS before you learn tailwind. Like what if you learn CSS [00:19:00] by learning tailwind? How does that feel? So that’s, that’s my hot take.
[00:19:04] Bree Hall: That is a hot take.
[00:19:05] Chuck Carpenter: I think the tailwind docs are excellent CSS docs.
[00:19:09] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yes. Unbelievable. Yeah. That’s amazing. And I would counter your statement there. Oh boy. Here we go. Bri, only in this. You ready? Only on this? Are you ready? Let’s only
[00:19:16] Aaron Francis: in this
[00:19:16] Chuck Carpenter: though, it is a hot take because, but that’s not a one size fits all for everybody either. Right? It depends what outcomes are you shooting for.
[00:19:23] Chuck Carpenter: Correct. Are you someone who’s trying to start a business and you feel technically capable enough You want to like start your business? You just need to get the thing going and you need need to get productive. I would also say that even if you’re just getting started and your intention is a career.
[00:19:38] Chuck Carpenter: As a developer engineer. Mm-hmm. Whatever. , we mix those up however we want.
Yeah.
[00:19:43] Chuck Carpenter: then getting an early win is cool ‘cause it’s cool to like spin up a site through whatever framework and make a change and see it refreshed mm-hmm. And get your next thing. And like that is inspiring.
[00:19:55] Chuck Carpenter: and that’s good. That’s still a good step. If your intention is to have a career down this path though, and to [00:20:00] become senior and get the jobs and whatever else I. You need to become a master of your craft and a big part of that because you’re not just trying to start the business, you’re trying to help a business or work in the industry in some capacity and be a master of your craft.
[00:20:15] Chuck Carpenter: And I believe that you need to know the underlying fundamentals as part of, it’s just unavoidable.
[00:20:21] Aaron Francis: Okay. So this feels like a yes. And I’m not sure that that’s a disagreement, Brie. That feels like a yes and I appreciate that. But that, that’s good. There you go. I need extra hands. You, Bree, come on.
[00:20:30] Bree Hall: I think.
[00:20:32] Bree Hall: Okay. I have like four thoughts.
[00:20:34] Aaron Francis: Alright, so let me
[00:20:34] Bree Hall: go ahead and simmer, summarize it down. The first thing that I thought about when you said that. Mm-hmm. , I totally agree and
with
[00:20:43] Bree Hall: ai, and now that there’s a lot more people using ai, me personally, now, this is not a, I did not do a test. I have a better time getting AI to help me with tailwind versus helping me with native CSS.
[00:20:55] Bree Hall: Interesting.
It really
[00:20:56] Bree Hall: struggles when I wanna do things in like native [00:21:00] CSS and to get the styles correct. It could be a meat problem, a little bit of prompting maybe, but I have less of an issue when I’m like, how do I do this in Tailwind? And I’m always able to get there a lot faster. Fascinating. Yes. So I agree.
[00:21:14] Bree Hall: you have to figure out like what your end goal is again, just like Chuck said. Mm-hmm. , but I do think the momentum is really big. , especially when you’re thinking about people who see this whole big list of things that you have to know now for becoming like a web developer. Yeah. And it’s not just.
[00:21:29] Bree Hall: You have to know HTML and some Cs s anymore, and then maybe you can go get a job. Mm-hmm. When you look at this whole big list and you’re like, I really want this, but maybe I’m struggling with CSS, and maybe you don’t struggle so much with JavaScript, it’s so much easier for people to be like, let me go dive into the thing that feels easier for me, that I can like dive into more.
[00:21:48] Bree Hall: ‘cause I know a lot of front end developers that really. Struggle with styling or like native CSS, they really just like don’t like it. But I do think if, , software engineering or development is something you wanna do, you should fundamentally understand [00:22:00] how it works now, the process of how you get there.
[00:22:02] Bree Hall: Mm-hmm. Whether you do one or the other first, I don’t think that matters as much, but making sure that you get the information regardless mm-hmm. Is the thing that’s important.
[00:22:11] Chuck Carpenter: Yep. I agree. We all agree. Yeah. I think we, in the end, we all agree, we all, yeah. I mean, I agree too that like. What it takes to get a job today versus 10 years ago, I can imagine are massively different.
[00:22:22] Chuck Carpenter: 15 years ago, , the skills expected were, oh, you’re front end. So you do the HTML, you do the CSS, you do a little Java script sprinkles with this jQuery thing to make things, you know, fun, but the real work happens back there with those guys writing Java or do net or whatever else. Right. , and so your entry was a lot easier from that.
[00:22:42] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I came from the web design side of things. And was editing tables split up, you know, Photoshop slices and all that fun stuff. And then have the time to sort of layer and okay, learn JavaScript action script and, , just get better with those things. But today it’s like. Just make [00:23:00] sure that you can, uh, handle all the database migrations and get it deployed and you know Kubernetes.
[00:23:05] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. And Oh yeah. Make sure you’re writing tests too, like you have to know so much stuff.
[00:23:12] Bree Hall: Exactly.
[00:23:13] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And
[00:23:13] Bree Hall: sometimes you have to almost pick and be choosy about the parts that you get deep at and when you do, because there’s no possible way to be deep in every single part of the stack that you have to know at the same time.
[00:23:25] Bree Hall: It’s just. Going to happen as you work more, as you learn more, and it’s an iterative process. Mm-hmm. Like you’re not just gonna be immediately an expert at every part.
[00:23:34] Aaron Francis: How in the world do people break into tech these days?
[00:23:37] Bree Hall: It’s hard. How does. how does that even happen?
[00:23:40] Aaron Francis: How did you break in
[00:23:41] Bree Hall: me? I went to school for software engineering.
[00:23:44] Bree Hall: There you go.
[00:23:45] Aaron Francis: That’s a good path. That’s an easy path right there. A good answer. However, oh, it
[00:23:48] Bree Hall: took me three years to get a job right after college. Wow. And I don’t know, I said right after. ‘cause it was not right after, it was, it was three years.
[00:23:54] Aaron Francis: Yeah.
[00:23:55] Bree Hall: , probably
[00:23:55] Aaron Francis: felt like 10.
[00:23:56] Bree Hall: Oh, definitely. When student loans are like, Hey, when are you [00:24:00] gonna pay us?
[00:24:00] Bree Hall: And I’m like, I don’t have job when I
[00:24:01] Aaron Francis: get
[00:24:01] Chuck Carpenter: a job. Do you know
[00:24:04] Bree Hall: you don’t get your money until I see some return on this investment. That’s right. But they did not like that. , basically I did not come out of school with a lot of projects.
[00:24:13] Aaron Francis: Okay.
[00:24:13] Bree Hall: , a lot of the stuff that I did, Java, which was my first language we have since broken up.
[00:24:17] Bree Hall: Um, a lot of the stuff I did was in the console. I didn’t know until my first interview. They were like, oh, well what frameworks are you familiar with for Java? And I was like, what frameworks? What is a framework? What do you do? I don’t know what that is. Yeah. And I feel like So you almost had to like start over
[00:24:31] Chuck Carpenter: education wise?
[00:24:32] Bree Hall: Yes. It was a lot of self-teaching. It was a lot of figuring out where my gaps were and unfortunately I didn’t realize where those gaps were until I started looking at job applications and like really like getting into it. I will say hindsight is always 2020. I was the first one in, , I’m the oldest of two, so the college thing was new for my parents and it was a learning experience and understanding like what the curriculum is.
[00:24:55] Bree Hall: Sure. And understanding that college. Is meant to get me the [00:25:00] education and I have to do the other half, which is the internships, the looking for jobs, understanding what the market needs, all of that other stuff, which is basically a whole nother job, , on the site as well.
[00:25:11] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. But the college should be advising you in these paths and I know when to trigger these things and stuff like
[00:25:15] Aaron Francis: that.
[00:25:15] Aaron Francis: Yeah, that’s crazy. So what was your first role after those three years? What? What did you land?
[00:25:20] Bree Hall: , I was a full stack engineer technically. However, I just took all the front end work. That’s where I was comfortable.
[00:25:26] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, well, a newbie, they’re just gonna be like, what do we not want to do? There you go. And you know
[00:25:30] Bree Hall: what?
[00:25:30] Bree Hall: It was all angular and I was happy to take that. I was happy.
[00:25:34] Chuck Carpenter: Nice. Yeah. You are one of those rare, angular things. Wouldn’t say that. I’m just kidding. It’s way different now. I know from like she doesn’t wanna be branded as an Angular fan. I was unlucky with version one and two at a certain time doing some projects for that.
[00:25:49] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. And so I was like, I can’t wait to be out of here. They are now. To their credit though, they’re responsible for a lot of positives. Yes. CLI stuff. It’s definitely a lot
[00:25:58] Bree Hall: different. Yeah.
[00:25:59] Chuck Carpenter: They were early [00:26:00] advocates for TypeScript versus Flow and yeah.
[00:26:03] Bree Hall: One of my first big projects was converting the entire architecture of an app from Angular one to React, which is how I ended up learning React.
[00:26:11] Chuck Carpenter: Nice.
[00:26:12] CTA: This just in! Whiskey.fund is now open for all your merch needs. That’s right, Robbie. We’re hearing reports of hats, sweaters, and T-shirts, as well as a link to join our Discord server. What’s a Discord server? Just read the prompter, man. Hit subscribe. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and tell your friends about our broadcast. It really does help us reach more people and keeps the show growing. All right, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
[00:26:45] Bree Hall: and I was so happy when that migration was done ‘cause I was like, I don’t have to touch this anymore.
[00:26:49] Aaron Francis: Yeah. So can we brand you as a React fan? Are you comfortable with that?
[00:26:52] Bree Hall: Oh, I am definitely a react develop. Right. There we
[00:26:54] Chuck Carpenter: go. So you don’t agree it was a mistake?
[00:26:56] Bree Hall: React.
[00:26:57] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Just in general? No, just in life or whatever.
[00:26:59] Chuck Carpenter: [00:27:00] I have that t-shirt, you know, react was a mistake and whatever else. I don’t think, oh, lot things are
[00:27:03] Bree Hall: mistakes. I
[00:27:04] Chuck Carpenter: don’t think it was a mistake either anyway, but I do think some ideologies around it are a little strange sometimes here and there now. Like
[00:27:10] Bree Hall: what? I have to know.
[00:27:11] Chuck Carpenter: Well, that it’s more than the view layer that it ever like while, like how.
[00:27:14] Chuck Carpenter: Far , it’s gone from its initial intentions. Yeah. its concerns have just gobbled up more and more and more. Yeah.
And
[00:27:21] Chuck Carpenter: it’s still not really filling all the gaps. Mm-hmm. So, you know, it keeps getting called a framework, which is not, and even next JS is like teetering for me.
[00:27:29] Chuck Carpenter: I was just
[00:27:30] Bree Hall: about to ask how do you feel about the.
[00:27:33] Bree Hall: Blurred lines between Next JS and React now?
[00:27:35] Chuck Carpenter: Well, around next eight, I think it was when I first started working with it, I loved it because at least it made every React project I had been on prior to that was completely different from the previous one. Mm-hmm. Because it was like, choose your own adventure and you know, it was the time where like state management was in, um.
[00:27:54] Chuck Carpenter: Sagas and, it’s when they started doing the Redux thing too, and it was just like every [00:28:00] single app is different. So at least next you can say. They’ve made a choice on routing, they’ve made a choice on certain things, and there’s guardrails here. So I really liked it.
[00:28:09] Chuck Carpenter: Obviously the fact that like things have kind of been this way and that way and it’s like file routing or you know, whatever, app router versus Yeah, pages router and all this stuff. I was like, why are you messing with the stuff I liked? I do not like that. So, yeah. Lukewarm here in there.
[00:28:24] Chuck Carpenter: Lukewarm. Lukewarm.
[00:28:25] Chuck Carpenter: Well, I have the great
[00:28:26] Aaron Francis: benefit of being an outsider. Yeah. Okay.
[00:28:28] Bree Hall: Okay. So
[00:28:28] Aaron Francis: I’ve never used React and I’ve never used next.
Okay. And it
[00:28:31] Aaron Francis: feels awesome. Feels good. It feels great. So, observing from the outside, I agree with Chuck. , it seems like react in its origins was theoretically pure.
[00:28:41] Aaron Francis: Mm-hmm. It seems like, oh, that makes a ton of sense. It does. We’ll react, we’ll just react. To data or state or whatever. Right. next is something I don’t fully understand. , primarily because it does claim to be a full stack framework.
[00:28:54] Bree Hall: It does.
[00:28:54] Aaron Francis: , which I guess is technically true because parts of it run on the back end.
[00:28:58] Aaron Francis: Mm-hmm. Okay. That’s fine. [00:29:00] But it is not, a batteries included framework. Yeah. And so I’m a little lost on the story of like, how do you build a real web app with like. Crown jobs and queues and emails and authentication and ORM. How do you do that in next? And the answer that traditionally comes back is like, oh, we’ve got packages for that.
[00:29:18] Aaron Francis: Just pull one in, build your own framework. It’s gonna be a blast. And I’m like, I’m sorry. I’m too old and too tired, and you to be building my own framework just for giggles. And you’re like,
[00:29:27] Chuck Carpenter: configuration hell forever. Yes. Um, what are your thoughts on it, Brie? That’s what we’re here
[00:29:32] Aaron Francis: for. Yes. You can advocate
[00:29:33] Chuck Carpenter: as a fan. You don’t have to. Sure.
[00:29:36] Bree Hall: I wasn’t using Next JS for a while. I had gone to Astro, um, I, I’m Astro Me Do
[00:29:41] Chuck Carpenter: Astro. I love,
[00:29:42] Bree Hall: I really do like Astro. It’s so easy. It’s, , framework agnostic and you don’t have to use the React stuff if you don’t want to or if you want to use something else, then you can.
[00:29:51] Bree Hall: And I absolutely love that. . It’s really fast. It’s really easy to get started with. Yeah. So not that this is an Astro podcast, but hey, this is, this
[00:29:59] Aaron Francis: is a [00:30:00] Brie podcast. You talk about whatever you wanna talk about.
[00:30:02] Bree Hall: , I just recently got back to next js. Okay. I will say their API routes have been, uh, really handy, but I haven’t dove too, too far yet into the whole, , it being a full stack framework now.
[00:30:14] Bree Hall: I think the first time that I started using it, I’m positive that that wasn’t. The main feature of it yet?
[00:30:20] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, API routes got added around 11, maybe 10 or 11, I’m not sure. Mm-hmm. And they were welcome at that time it was like creating good API middleware or doing some exactly internal stuff with your ORM and then That’s great.
[00:30:33] Chuck Carpenter: So again, it made it more full stack, but it’s not a full web application framework. But yeah, the server action stuff now and the
mm-hmm. You know,
[00:30:42] Chuck Carpenter: the used client used server strings feel very like open to mistakes. Boy, those, those magic strings, those are wild. Yeah. Yeah. I feel
[00:30:52] Bree Hall: myself using the used client to make my client components.
[00:30:57] Bree Hall: More than what they would like. I [00:31:00] don’t know. For some reason, I feel like there is a, all of your components should be able to be server components basically, with the exception of a couple. But I feel like, and it could be again, me problem, I feel like a lot of my components are client components. , it is one of the only ways that I am able to use, um, styled components though.
[00:31:16] Bree Hall: So like the CSS and js, you can’t use that with Astro or anything like that. Right,
[00:31:20] Chuck Carpenter: right. And maybe there’s a reason. Yeah.
[00:31:23] Bree Hall: Yeah, I think so.
[00:31:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Astro is really cool because yes, a out of the box, you’re just like static site generator. Mm-hmm. Great. I can just do this easy thing, get a little bit of dynamic magic, a small amount of configuration, and then it’s just kind of fun and easy.
[00:31:38] Chuck Carpenter: But it also can be like this really interesting, like multi framework linker. Mm-hmm. Essentially. So you could have Astros, your entryway and you could have a part of your site. In, vi. Yes. And then this part in Ember and this part in whatever, and it’ll just naturally all tran like link wild together.
[00:31:57] Chuck Carpenter: Wild and trans. That’s wild. Yeah. It’s a really like, wild possibility. Yeah. Of [00:32:00] what you could do with this thing that was initially considered just a static site generator thing. Mm-hmm. But it actually can, like with the island’s architecture, your island can be an entire app if you want. Mm-hmm. Separate app.
[00:32:11] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, that’s wild. And it’s like completely sandboxed.
Yeah.
[00:32:15] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. It’s really cool. Didn’t, didn’t Astra do a database? Yes. Offering. Is that still alive or is that dead? Yes. , so Astro DB kind of died and they do a thing with like Neon now or something. Okay. They’ve got, so they still have a database component to it.
[00:32:28] Chuck Carpenter: This show is an Astro site with Astro DB or whatever the new version is with, but with Robbie not here and he does all the work. Mm-hmm.
[00:32:37] Aaron Francis: You know what? I, I don’t, I’m finding, I’m finding out Robbie handles a lot of the logistics and really let Mr. Chuck down here really drop the ball a little bit. Robbie has all the answers.
[00:32:47] Aaron Francis: He does brave. He does. He has all the answers.
[00:32:49] Chuck Carpenter: He handles all the, all we are questions. All I have is questions. I just show up and smile and, and the talent and walk away. And that good. He
[00:32:59] Aaron Francis: pulled it off though. [00:33:00] We’re here we are. We’ve got all the gear, we’ve got the room, we’ve got the guests. Off. I was in
[00:33:04] Bree Hall: awe of Robbie when we were on web dev challenge together.
[00:33:08] Bree Hall: He was able to, , build a whole like Spades card app really quickly in the same time that I built I think two pages.
[00:33:16] Chuck Carpenter: Yep. Yeah. ‘cause he uses the tool that works for him. He’s been Ember js Amber, right? Yes. Mm-hmm. Forever. Still uses it, still has a paying job using it.
Mm-hmm.
[00:33:25] Chuck Carpenter: And that is what he’s most productive in.
[00:33:27] Chuck Carpenter: So if you want Robbie to come do a good, fast job for you. Let him use Ember. Yep. Just like that would be like bringing in Aaron and saying, I need this in Ruby on Rails. Go and be like, good luck, have fun. Yeah.
[00:33:40] Aaron Francis: When I was on web dev challenge, I felt like I had superpowers ‘cause I was using Laravel and it was like.
[00:33:46] Aaron Francis: I’m, I’m done. Yeah. So I, I was able to walk around and give Kent c DODs a hard time and be like, Hey Kent, why are you not done yet? It was perfect. I’m using this. It was so fun. Epic. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. I think it says
[00:33:56] Bree Hall: with something special also about the fact that like, [00:34:00] people framework comp these days, I will say, and there’s something good about just getting good, like at the tool that you’re gonna use, you’re gonna be like, okay, right.
[00:34:07] Bree Hall: This is gonna be my main tool. Sure. I may dabble, but like, this is what I’m gonna use and I’m gonna get it. So going back
[00:34:11] Aaron Francis: to food and exploration. Mm-hmm. You said you love to explore the world for food. I do. I love to eat the same thing. I love to use the same framework. Yeah. I love to use just the same tools that I’ve always used.
[00:34:23] Aaron Francis: And you know what? I’m happy you are,
[00:34:26] Chuck Carpenter: you’re, you’re probably like one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. I don’t, I appreciate And you have twice the amount of kids I have. Yes. So I can’t even blame that. See? And I’m like, why aren’t you more upset? It? Because I’m so mad all the time. It’s because when
[00:34:38] Aaron Francis: a new framework comes out, I look at it and I smile and I never think about it again.
[00:34:42] Aaron Francis: And you just keep doing it. I love cash in check that. Great. It’s a good way to live. I used to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I No fomo. No fomo. Zero. I have Jomo. I’m so joyous that I, I’m missing out. It is wonderful.
[00:34:55] Chuck Carpenter: It’s great. I think that’s a very great way to go about it, because there’s something to be [00:35:00] said.
[00:35:00] Chuck Carpenter: I mean, I have rethought a lot of things. What I have done over my career the last 10 years, and it’s been fine, but there have been times where there’s just been re-platforming projects and all this kind of stuff. When you really think about it, like why? Why? Yep. Because the other thing worked why did we stop doing it?
[00:35:16] Chuck Carpenter: Because we just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. We’re pissed off and we don’t have unit tests, so we’re gonna rewrite everything and blah, blah. I mean, that’s how I got into React is we had written a backbone marionette application. And went through things. And then next time around we had to build something.
[00:35:31] Chuck Carpenter: We were just like, we just don’t wanna touch that. I don’t know. So instead
[00:35:34] Aaron Francis: of touch it, you just ripped it out?
[00:35:35] Chuck Carpenter: , no. That, so that particular project got buried for other reasons. Mm-hmm. But the next time I needed to reach for something, I was just like, I don’t want to touch that technology. And so I opened up to React.
[00:35:46] Chuck Carpenter: But as a consultancy, I have had a ton of projects that would just replatform, just, we don’t like the old thing anymore. we heard next is great. So can you do a next project for us? Okay. Yeah, sure. I will take your money.
[00:35:59] Aaron Francis: [00:36:00] Yeah, but. that’s a position of luxury I’m in, is I’m not in a consultancy.
[00:36:03] Aaron Francis: Mm-hmm. So I don’t have to be up to date on like Yeah. What the clients are asking me to use. Yeah. Which is really nice. Yeah. You need your software to work. Exactly. And that’s it.
[00:36:12] Bree Hall: I will say that can be a tricky thing about being a developer advocate sometimes is always needing to be sometimes ahead, but at least up to date with what is currently going on, is always some context switching, figuring out what are people using right now.
[00:36:27] Bree Hall: , even if. It might not be around to stay for a long time, but still understanding what it is, how people are using it, and then figuring out ways to adopt it or like what your product is going to do and how it’s going to affect it.
[00:36:38] Chuck Carpenter: You know, there might be a good point there too, considering current employer HubSpot’s a Ruby Act, right?
[00:36:44] Bree Hall: No,
[00:36:44] Chuck Carpenter: no,
[00:36:45] Bree Hall: no. We are all React.
[00:36:47] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah, everything. And what’s on the back end? What’s
[00:36:48] Bree Hall: on the back end? Java. Huh?
[00:36:51] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know why I thought it was, , a Ruby app. But anyway, there’s a bunch that are that, you know, GitHub still is yada yada yada thing actually. So you’re Java on the back end, so you still probably [00:37:00] Spring bot or something.
[00:37:00] Bree Hall: Spring. Spring boot. Spring Boot. That’s what it is. Yeah.
[00:37:03] Chuck Carpenter: So it’s enough. It’s just one letter. Different robots. Yeah, that’s, I don’t know.
[00:37:07] Bree Hall: I love it. so the one thing I love about architecture at HubSpot is like. For most of the roles we hire front end specific or like backend specific. Yeah. Versus, , like doing full stack.
[00:37:17] Bree Hall: And the stack is the same throughout all of our teams. So like on front end everybody is react. We use styled components. It’s, you know, the same. Yeah. This is
[00:37:25] Chuck Carpenter: how we work. Yes. That’s it. Yeah. Love it.
[00:37:27] Bree Hall: Try to do a little bit on the back end to help out one time in Java. And I immediately closed that PR and was like, you know what, I’m gonna let somebody who knows what they’re doing.
[00:37:34] Aaron Francis: That’s fair
[00:37:35] Bree Hall: step. Right.
[00:37:36] Aaron Francis: Wrong. What, what is for, what does advocacy at HubSpot look like? So what are you reaching out to developers for?
[00:37:42] Bree Hall: Yeah, so. Part of it is, , are you aware of the ways you can extend HubSpot without sound like that? Yeah.
[00:37:48] Chuck Carpenter: There’s a lot of integrations I know, right? Yes. Yeah.
[00:37:50] Bree Hall: And one of the main ones is being able to extend your CRM. So like maybe you’re a small business and you have a couple of different workflows that you use, or like external tools.
[00:38:00] Okay.
[00:38:00] Bree Hall: , sometimes it can get to be a little bit of a hassle to context switch between all of those different tools you have.
[00:38:05] Bree Hall: Or maybe you are not privy and don’t have access to all of those different tools, but you still need some of the data that comes along with them. There are a plethora of different ways that you can get that data into HubSpot to create your own like customized workflow and have the HubSpot data interact with your external data and vice, vice versa.
[00:38:24] Bree Hall: I, and then one of the other big ways is our CMS and building websites. , like email generation and things like that as well.
Yeah.
[00:38:30] Bree Hall: So what that looks like for us is. I wouldn’t say we just work with developers because a lot of the people that we help wouldn’t give themselves the label of developer, but they know they wanna get from A to B, so helping them programmatically figure out how to do that.
[00:38:45] Bree Hall: Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s cool.
[00:38:47] Aaron Francis: Yeah. Yeah. I am familiar with HubSpot, but not familiar with the, like, ways you can extend it or like make your workflows bring in external data. That’s very interesting. Yeah. Do you
[00:38:55] Chuck Carpenter: use a CRM Aaron?
[00:38:57] Aaron Francis: no, we don’t use spreadsheets or something. Yeah, we don’t use [00:39:00] any CRM right now.
[00:39:01] Aaron Francis: , I don’t know how
[00:39:02] Chuck Carpenter: much outbound sales you necessarily do. It’s more like marketing, not, not enough. Yeah. And then it’s. You know, choose your own adventure once they land.
[00:39:08] Aaron Francis: Yeah, exactly. If, if we have anything that approximates the CRM, actually we don’t. So I’m just, no, we don’t, we, we don’t, we have our email tool, but that’s it.
[00:39:18] Bree Hall: Yeah. Yeah. HubSpot has quite a few different offerings. , and it can be really, really robust I’ve been there for almost two years and there’s some parts that I have not touched yet, just because it’s a
[00:39:27] Chuck Carpenter: ginormous. Yeah, it’s huge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My current employer uses HubSpot. HubSpot, yeah.
[00:39:32] Chuck Carpenter: And when I had the consultancy, we used it, the free version for a little while mm-hmm. To kind of track stuff into. I turns out I’m not good at sales. No. Yeah. Well that’s why I have a current employer and uh, there you go. Nothing wrong with that.
There’s not,
I want
[00:39:46] Chuck Carpenter: to get on the whole experience, the world through food.
[00:39:49] Chuck Carpenter: , because I too love to travel places in order to eat at different places. Yeah. Yeah. And, So what are your favorite food destinations?
Ooh.
[00:39:59] Bree Hall: So I will [00:40:00] say I just started traveling internationally, so I don’t have a lot of, , external ones, but I’m trying to think what are my favorite places that I’ve gone.
[00:40:08] Bree Hall: And I’m just like, I have to eat everything. I love food here in Florida. I lived in Tampa for a couple of years. Oh, nice. My brother lives there. Yeah. St.
Pete.
[00:40:16] Bree Hall: I moved there right outta college and it was always fun to take whatever I had scraped up for my paychecks for the week and like going to try like different food around.
[00:40:28] Bree Hall: Yeah, there was a ramen place called Itchy Coro and I love ramen. Like that is like one of my favorite foods. There was a week where I went three times in a row and I definitely shouldn’t because my paycheck was not happy about it, but it was so good. So I definitely love, , food here in Miami, food in Tampa.
[00:40:45] Bree Hall: , I’m from like the DC area. I think there’s a lot of good food. Oh, I lived in DC for
[00:40:47] Chuck Carpenter: seven years.
[00:40:48] Bree Hall: Yeah.
[00:40:49] Chuck Carpenter: Yep.
[00:40:49] Bree Hall: I’m from like southern, Southern Maryland, so Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Basically not Maryland anymore. Right, right. Yeah.
[00:40:54] Chuck Carpenter: But like Bethesda area kind of thing?
[00:40:57] Bree Hall: Mm-hmm. Southern
[00:40:57] Chuck Carpenter: Southern. Oh, okay. Like
[00:40:59] Bree Hall: Charles County.[00:41:00]
[00:41:00] Bree Hall: Oh, yeah, yeah. Like down, down,
[00:41:01] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Yeah. Down, down, down, down, down. Keep going. Down, down.
[00:41:05] Bree Hall: , I recently went to London for the first time, and that trip I planned on food. Like, I was like, here’s what I want to eat, so here’s what my itinerary’s gonna look like. So,
[00:41:14] Chuck Carpenter: bangers and mash? Yeah.
[00:41:15] Bree Hall: I had some bangers and mash full
[00:41:17] Chuck Carpenter: fry up for breakfast.
[00:41:18] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, I did not
[00:41:18] Bree Hall: have that. No. Oh
[00:41:19] Aaron Francis: no. Yeah. Isn’t isn’t
[00:41:21] Chuck Carpenter: British food supposed to be famously bad? It’s good. I, it’s, that’s bullshit. I, I like it. Yeah. Really? You didn’t, you didn’t like it?
[00:41:27] Bree Hall: I did not get a full fry up because I knew that I wasn’t gonna eat the beans and I. It was a little iffy about the black pudding.
[00:41:34] Chuck Carpenter: Gross. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve had straight up Haus, so, you know, whatever. Oh, okay. So yeah, I, I like blood sausage too, so, for different things. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Y’all are crazy.
[00:41:43] Bree Hall: I did have a Sunday roast. I was excited about that one Sunday.
[00:41:48] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, it was a little
[00:41:49] Bree Hall: different than I expected. I was expecting like slow roasted beef.
[00:41:54] Chuck Carpenter: No, they don’t know how to make tender meat necessarily. I think that’s That’s true.
[00:41:59] Bree Hall: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:42:00] That’s why every,
[00:42:00] Chuck Carpenter: a lot of things end up in like sausage form or with like a little puff pastry around it or some shit like that. Yeah, yeah, when British people experience American barbecue and how it’s like fall off the bone and whatever else their minds are blown.
[00:42:13] Bree Hall: Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:42:14] Chuck Carpenter: So that’s true. But I like a good fish and chips. Mm-hmm. A little chippy. I like bangers and mash, like, it’s like really just, I like gravy of all kinds. Yeah. Do you know where I
[00:42:24] Bree Hall: really like to eat? Where Disney World. What actually
[00:42:27] Chuck Carpenter: that shit is for True. That’s true. What?
[00:42:29] Bree Hall: There are whole concept, some crazy restaurants, platforms dedicated to Disney food for a reason.
[00:42:35] Aaron Francis: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Each park has a,
[00:42:37] Chuck Carpenter: a couple of
[00:42:38] Aaron Francis: just amazing places in it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s a great place.
No Disney food? No. I
[00:42:42] Aaron Francis: have nothing to add to this. I don’t like, I don’t like Disney. I mean, Disney as a company is fine. Disney World or Disneyland? No. Oh God. You don’t want nobody to love you. I do. I buy, which is why I’m not gonna take them to suffer in line Disney World, you’re gonna do all lightning stuff.
[00:42:58] Bree Hall: You’re going to pay for the [00:43:00] lightning lanes and for, and you just show up for it. I’m not paying for it. Well, I’m lucky. Do you How many kids I have?
[00:43:05] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I have friends who work for Disney, so we. Got in for free. We got the lightning stuff for free. Mm-hmm. We got 40% off of everything, including our hotel stay.
[00:43:14] Chuck Carpenter: That
[00:43:14] Aaron Francis: seems fine. I would like that. Yeah,
[00:43:16] Chuck Carpenter: it was amazing. Well, I’ll introduce you if you can make friends. Yeah. Can’t hurt. Uh, so I’ll say
[00:43:20] Bree Hall: it. It’s pricey. It’s, you know how like some people have that one thing they’ll spend money on or like something that they’ll do regardless of how much it Yeah,
[00:43:28] Chuck Carpenter: like what they value.
[00:43:28] Chuck Carpenter: I think like, you know, Disney, some people like cars. Disney. Is that for you? Disney. Wow. Yeah. Okay.
[00:43:33] Aaron Francis: That’s fair.
[00:43:34] Chuck Carpenter: It is. There you go. I
[00:43:35] Aaron Francis: know. I knew that Disney adults existed. They do. And here, here’s one in my presence. Here’s one. In real life. No,
[00:43:40] Bree Hall: I will say there’s a distinction. There’s the Disney adults and the Disney adults.
[00:43:45] Bree Hall: Okay. Yes, there is. I’m just a. I’m an adult who happens to love Disney.
[00:43:50] Aaron Francis: Okay.
[00:43:51] Bree Hall: Now I’m not obnoxious about it.
[00:43:54] Aaron Francis: I’m not telling not, you’re not wearing any Disney stuff. I’m not obnoxious at all. That’s so you’re doing a great job. Thank you. It’s not obnoxious. [00:44:00]
[00:44:00] Bree Hall: Okay. Yeah. Sometimes they are a little obnoxious in the parks.
[00:44:02] Bree Hall: Not sometimes. Yes. Now you’re not gonna find me live streaming.
[00:44:06] Chuck Carpenter: No.
[00:44:07] Bree Hall: When I’m there or like walking with you on all of the rides. Mm-hmm. And everything like that. Yeah. You’re not an
[00:44:12] Chuck Carpenter: influencer in that way. No. Or trying to be or whatever else. No. Um,
[00:44:17] Bree Hall: I, I do like seeing what people eat though, like. I have a feeling you may end up there because you do have kids.
[00:44:22] Bree Hall: I prob I probably
[00:44:22] Aaron Francis: will at some point. And then you’re gonna wanna know
[00:44:25] Bree Hall: what food you should buy because there’s so many options. Yeah.
[00:44:28] Aaron Francis: Like I’ll, I’ll
[00:44:28] Chuck Carpenter: ask somebody. You can get, ask Chat to put a list together for me. You can get a $14 hot dog, or you can get some like amazing food also. So, and some of the rides are like incredible.
[00:44:38] Chuck Carpenter: Mm-hmm. Like the Guardians of the Galaxy Ride. Yeah. That blew my mind. The avatar ride is like four D where, oh my gosh. That was so fun of that was a couple of my favorites, one of my secret
[00:44:48] Bree Hall: aspirations. Eventually, I would love to be an Imagineer. I can watch theme park engineering videos about like how they use technology make.
[00:44:57] Bree Hall: That
[00:44:57] Chuck Carpenter: would be a fun job. That would be a fun job. That’s like working [00:45:00] for Lego stuff too. Yeah. Again, those all seem like real fun, fun gigs. I love it.
[00:45:04] Bree Hall: Are you aware? Imagine engineers. Epic universe and the new universal park that’s opened?
[00:45:09] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, no, I’m not. Okay. I could find out. Like I said, I have, , friends who work for Disney live in Orlando.
[00:45:14] Chuck Carpenter: They also go to the other park. Yes. Because that’s what you do when you live in Orlando. Absolutely. So, um, but no, I’m not,
[00:45:19] Bree Hall: it’s been interesting to see, I’m 99% sure that they were able to get some cool stuff done with some of those Boston dynamics. , little doggy looking robots. Yeah. And I’m.
Huh?
[00:45:30] Bree Hall: I’m 99% positive. They put like a really cute, like dragon skin over one of them, and it just roams around the park autonomously, like on its own, and it smell cute. Oh, it’s pretty cool. Smell pretty cool. It’s kind of cool. Okay. I like theme park technology. Yes. I watched
[00:45:43] Aaron Francis: a video one time of, maybe bb eight Star Wars.
[00:45:46] Aaron Francis: A Little Star Wars, yeah. Yeah. But I watched the video of the Macon, one of those. Mm-hmm. And it was really cool. Mm-hmm. Not a, I’m not a big Star Wars fan, but that video was just. It was just delightful. Yeah. The way that they engineered it and how like expressive it was. Mm-hmm. [00:46:00] So fun. That would be a great job.
[00:46:01] Aaron Francis: I agree. That’s cool.
[00:46:02] Chuck Carpenter: That’d be kind of a fun job when the web doesn’t work out. We could just kind of pivot a little bit. Exactly. You know, get, I mean, we write code, we just put it on hardware instead.
Exactly. Yeah.
[00:46:10] Chuck Carpenter: It’s not easy pivot. I do at
[00:46:12] Aaron Francis: some point when I’m rich and I’m like, all right, I’m outta the game.
[00:46:16] Aaron Francis: Win win. You gotta put it out there. Gotta put it out there. I you, when I’m rich and I get out of the game, I’m going to like hobby electronics, hobby robotics, like that kind of stuff. Yeah. Same. I like to tinker into things. Oh man. It’s gonna be so much fun. It’s, I can’t wait.
[00:46:31] Bree Hall: Are your kiddos interested in technology at all yet?
[00:46:33] Bree Hall: Oh. Or have you exposed them to it?
[00:46:35] Aaron Francis: We haven’t exposed them to any technology, really. Mm-hmm. , the oldest are three, so they’re still like,
[00:46:42] Bree Hall: okay. Yeah.
[00:46:42] Aaron Francis: They’re still not quite to that stage yet. Yeah. . But yeah, it’s an interesting question of like, what are we gonna do? Right? Because I don’t want them to be leadites.
[00:46:49] Aaron Francis: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And be left behind. Right. I also don’t want them to be, you know, screen brain rut. And so it’s like how do we, what’s the balance of like preparing them for the world? Mm-hmm. [00:47:00] That they will enter. But also hopefully giving them an edge, which is the ability to think and focus. So like I, I don’t know how we’ll do that, but it’s very much on our minds.
[00:47:10] Bree Hall: Yeah. Do you think you might end up do I’m always interested ‘cause I don’t have kids. , I always think about like how we grew up mm-hmm. Versus like how kids grew up. Now, Uhhuh, I got home, you go play outside for a little bit and then you have dinner and then you can watch tv, right? Yes. Or then you can like do whatever versus.
[00:47:25] Bree Hall: Technology’s in the classroom everywhere. Like, , kids have Chromebooks that they do their homework on my son, or like, if they can’t go to school,
[00:47:32] Chuck Carpenter: they issued , my son, , in first grade, I wanna say they had access in kindergarten. Mm-hmm. And they issued him a Chromebook in first grade. I was like, oh my God, already.
Yeah, yeah,
[00:47:41] Aaron Francis: yeah. When we hear our parents say stuff like, we weren’t raised with the internet, and then we had to raise you with the internet and figure out like, yeah. I’m like, oh, that couldn’t have been that hard. And now I’m a parent and I’m like. Oh yeah. Oh, it is hard to raise a kid in a changing world, in a world that you didn’t grow up in.
[00:47:57] Aaron Francis: Like that actually is kind of difficult to figure it out. Yeah. [00:48:00] Especially
[00:48:00] Bree Hall: when your kids are a little bit more savvy than you. Sorry, mom. , my parents told me I could not have a MySpace. I think I was in the sixth grade now then I did not conceptually understand why you would wanna shield a sixth grader, the sixth grade
[00:48:13] Aaron Francis: girl off the wide open internet off of everything
[00:48:15] Bree Hall: on the internet.
[00:48:16] Bree Hall: So I got the MySpace and I was always, I think I was just clearing my browser cash and cookies every single time. I like got on and I thought I was so like sneaky and smooth until eventually they caught on to like what was happening. But I was like, why would you wanna, if I had a sixth grader and I found out that they were sneaking onto MySpace or something similar to it, I would have a panic attack.
[00:48:36] Bree Hall: Yes.
[00:48:36] Chuck Carpenter: I mean, yeah. And some parents let their kids do whatever. My son is in third grade. Mm-hmm. And he has friends that have. TikTok. Mm-hmm. They have access to TikTok like, no, sir. Their own thing, and they can go out. Not a chance was like, I, I gotta tell you, and I’m sorry, I don’t want you to be behind your friends to a degree, but I don’t have a TikTok.
[00:48:56] Chuck Carpenter: There’s no chance under this roof you’re, you’re having, I mean, I don’t care if [00:49:00] you ever have one, as far as I’m concerned, but if you make that choice down the line, I guess we’ll deal with it, but Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I’m with you. Yeah. As somebody
[00:49:06] Bree Hall: who’s on TikTok regularly. Maybe my screen time says a couple of hours a day.
[00:49:11] Bree Hall: Maybe a little bit more than that. I definitely Who can be Sure, yeah.
Who could be. Sure.
[00:49:16] Bree Hall: I have a little one hour reminder that I snooze every single day. Mm-hmm. So,
[00:49:20] Chuck Carpenter: yeah,
[00:49:21] Bree Hall: it’s at least an hour.
[00:49:22] Chuck Carpenter: Nice. But I totally agree. There’s, there’s a lot of stuff. You set your own personal limits and if you enjoy it, like go for it.
[00:49:28] Chuck Carpenter: You know, to each their own, you know, but I, I like, listen, if
[00:49:31] Aaron Francis: the adults don’t stand a chance, I know of logging off a TikTok. Don’t even let the kids on it. Yeah,
[00:49:35] Chuck Carpenter: not at all. What do you, what do you stand to gain from this? Like, no, you can play Minecraft and you can do this like kids chat thing with your friends that we approve.
[00:49:44] Chuck Carpenter: I’m okay with things. Things like that. he like watches, people build YouTube, , Lego stuff, you know,
[00:49:50] Aaron Francis: these are all kind of fine things. I think that is one like. guiding principle I think that I’ll go with is like, let’s focus more on using technology tools, things to [00:50:00] build.
[00:50:00] Aaron Francis: Mm-hmm. Like to make games or artwork or projects or whatever. And less on let’s just consuming consume.
[00:50:07] Chuck Carpenter: That’s a good principal. So I’m gonna try
[00:50:08] Aaron Francis: to figure out how to, how to get them up to speed on technology in a way that makes them like a more creative person. Yeah.
[00:50:15] Chuck Carpenter: Let me throw this out there. Tell me when you figure that out or figure out a system or you know, just kind of a framework around that mm-hmm.
[00:50:21] Chuck Carpenter: That you think. works screencasting.com. Share that to other parents in tech. Oh, that’s a nice idea. I think people would, that would resonate with folks. Yeah. That is very interesting. ‘cause we’re all trying to find that answer and that balance. Yeah.
[00:50:35] Aaron Francis: Food. Thought there. Anyway. That’s a good idea.
[00:50:37] Aaron Francis: I’ll just take 10%. Yeah. Okay. You heard it here first? Yeah. 20%. We’ll split it. Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You didn’t even say a word. You never opened your mouth. I was the conversation That’s, I’m validating. She just registered the
[00:50:49] Chuck Carpenter: trademark on it and you guys are
[00:50:50] Aaron Francis: trying to Winkle vibe me. You’re trying to steal me outta my company.
[00:50:53] Aaron Francis: I can do
[00:50:53] Bree Hall: marketing on TikTok for you.
[00:50:55] Aaron Francis: Sure. Yeah. That’s not Absolutely, that’s. The course that teaches you to [00:51:00] not use TikTok? Yes. Market it here on TikTok. Wanna get off
[00:51:03] Chuck Carpenter: of this? Want your kids to never see it. Honestly, it’s not a bad idea. It’s not the worst. It’s pretty. This podcast has, we apparently share clips on TikTok and stuff like that.
[00:51:12] Chuck Carpenter: You do? Yes. I’ve never seen them. I, is that Robbie
[00:51:14] Bree Hall: also?
[00:51:15] Chuck Carpenter: Probably, yeah. Not me. , we have editors that we pay mm-hmm. To do that. And I think they create the clips and stuff, so I don’t know if they actually publish them as well. Mm-hmm. Or if Robbie hits some buttons. I don’t care if it was on me, I would just not put ‘em there.
[00:51:30] Chuck Carpenter: But, you know, audience building or something. Yeah. You know
[00:51:33] Bree Hall: what, one thing I have learned is. You find different people on every platform you do. TikTok is my main platform. Then I have people on Instagram who don’t do TikTok for a variety of different reasons. Mm-hmm. ‘cause it’s so addictive.
And then
[00:51:44] Bree Hall: there’s people who are on YouTube shorts that follow that content.
[00:51:47] Bree Hall: And then the people on LinkedIn are different. Like it’s, yeah, LinkedIn, different people on every single one.
[00:51:50] Chuck Carpenter: We do also publish , clips on LinkedIn, which is very funny. When I ever log in on there once every couple months. Mm-hmm. And I see some, I’m like, oh yeah. Mm-hmm.
That’s me. [00:52:00]
[00:52:00] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. There you go. Oh, I am on there.
[00:52:01] Chuck Carpenter: I did say that. I do drink on this podcast. I’m sorry. Anyway, ,
[00:52:06] Chuck Carpenter: cool. Well, we’re at the most important question I think of them all, which is, if you weren’t in tech, what job or career or whatever, what, other passion would you pursue? And it doesn’t have to be something that you currently have a skill at.
[00:52:22] Chuck Carpenter: Or are limited by any other way. It’s just sort of like dream line it. What would you do? You can’t be an
[00:52:26] Aaron Francis: Imagineer. ‘cause you already said that. I did. Oh, that
[00:52:28] Chuck Carpenter: would’ve been, would that would’ve been your luck?
[00:52:30] Aaron Francis: Would’ve? Well, lesson learned. B Brie. Yeah,
[00:52:32] Bree Hall: probably baking. When I was in high school, I had a little cupcake, , bakery, and I was so good at it.
[00:52:38] Bree Hall: I went to entrepreneurship competitions. Like it was good. I was convinced I could do baking and coding. And I unfortunately let somebody get into my head and tell me that I could not pursue both. And I believed them. So I was like, if I have to pick which 1:00 AM I gonna do right? And I was like. The one that’s probably gonna be more secure in money.
[00:52:57] Bree Hall: Yeah. But that turned out to be a joke anyway. ‘cause I couldn’t get a job for three years after [00:53:00] college.
[00:53:01] Chuck Carpenter: Lessons learned all over. I had a
[00:53:02] Bree Hall: whole idea, and I’m sure somebody’s already done it now, so I don’t care about saying it. I wanted to do like a cupcake subway where you come into the shop and then you pick whatever flavor of cake you want and then whatever flavor of icing because I hate when that still might have legs.
[00:53:15] Bree Hall: That’s a great idea. Yeah. Like I hate chocolate on chocolate cupcakes. Like I can’t have a chocolate cupcake And chocolate icing. But maybe I will do a chocolate cupcake or chocolate icing. And at a regular cupcake bakery, you just have to do whatever combination they have there. Yeah. So it was gonna be like a subway, build your own, and then also we’ll have our own specialty cupcakes.
[00:53:33] Bree Hall: But I was like, oh, that’ll be fun.
[00:53:35] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You’ve got your prebi one. This is great. Yeah, I think that has legs. Consider, I forget tech.
[00:53:40] Aaron Francis: You should go do
[00:53:40] Bree Hall: that.
[00:53:41] Chuck Carpenter: Or just do both, you know?
[00:53:43] Bree Hall: Yeah. You know what you can do? You can do the thing. You can just do. You can do things. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:53:47] Aaron Francis: And you should, ‘cause I’ll be your first customer.
[00:53:51] Aaron Francis: Yeah. Seriously.
[00:53:52] Chuck Carpenter: That sounds awesome. I’ll swing bye.
[00:53:52] Chuck Carpenter: , cool. Well then, uh, as we wrap up, is there anything you wanna plug or let people know where they can find you?
[00:53:58] Bree Hall: you can find me everywhere [00:54:00] at bites of break, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, really anywhere, blue sky. So, yeah. Thank you guys so much for having me.
[00:54:06] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Thanks for doing this. This was great. In All right. , do the beatbox outro, please. I don’t do that. Oh, well. Well, yep. Sorry.
[00:54:14] 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.