120: Throwback Frameworks, Tailwind Fandom, and CSS with Jhey Tompkins

​[00:00:00] Robbie: What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Whiskey Web and Whatnot with your hosts, RobbieTheWagner and Charles William Carpenter III.

[00:00:15] Chuck: That's right, I'm a proper bloke.

[00:00:18] Robbie: Oh, God. Oh, yes. Chuck likes to start offending people at second one of recording. But we do have a guest today.

[00:00:28] Chuck: no, I just, that's my normal accent. I, I do this American

[00:00:31] Robbie: Oh, you're faking it. Okay. I

[00:00:33] Chuck: Yeah, I mean, how I normally talk.

[00:00:37] Jhey: Stage

accent.

[00:00:38] Chuck: Yeah, something like that.

[00:00:40] Robbie: Uh, our guest today is Jhey Tompkins. What's going on, Jhey?

[00:00:45] Jhey: Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's nice. Nice to be on board. It's taken a while for us to get this one going.

[00:00:51] Robbie: Yeah, we appreciate you, uh, being on, for anyone who hasn't seen your amazing demos and things online. Uh, could you give a quick intro into who you are and what you do?

[00:01:01] Jhey: well, yeah. You've introduced my name. I'm Jhey Tompkins. I've been like an engineer, I guess, for like a decade. But most people that might have seen me online will know me for creating all sorts of animations and sort of whatever comes to my head. Like... The whole, uh, line of bringing ideas to life, right, and what I like to do is I like to build whatever idea I have and then kind of share tips and tricks around how I might have built it with anything that I could use, really.

If it's something new coming to the platform or if it's like some particular tool, or... But then my day to day, I'm a, , senior DX engineer at Vassal. that kind of wraps it up.

[00:01:38] Chuck: Yeah, I'd say that covers it. What position on the pitch do you play?

[00:01:42] Jhey: I play, central defensive midfield.

[00:01:45] Chuck: Oh,

[00:01:46] Jhey: there you go,

[00:01:46] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:01:47] Jhey: a quick shift to a football pronounced soccer depending on what you want.

[00:01:51] Chuck: Right, where you come from. Yeah, uh, our one listener, uh, knows how much of a football fan I am, and, uh, that I call it football because you use your feet, not egg ball game.

[00:02:03] Robbie: Yeah, how American football became called football is just another discussion for another day, I think, but, oh, I don't

[00:02:11] Jhey: I, I'm kind of indifferent about it, I don't mind it, either way. But it's interesting to me that, I don't know like it's kind of a weird tangent story but I meet my wife, she's living in Seattle, and Seattle just happens to be one place where they're really into football.

[00:02:27] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:02:29] Jhey: And yeah, it's kind of, kind of interesting how that all came about.

So yeah, going to Seattle and being downtown there and they have flags for like the team and stuff. It's kind of cool.

[00:02:40] Chuck: Yeah, and they have a long history, at least for, for us in sports, like, uh, the N. A. S. L. team, U. S. L. team, coming into the M. L. S. team, so there's a lot, a lot of heritage there.

[00:02:52] Jhey: but what team was your favorite? That's what the ones you went to. You've, you've got to tell me now. Wow.

[00:02:57] Chuck: Alright, well first let's, I will,

[00:02:59] Whiskey Intro

[00:02:59] Chuck: let's, let's do it while we introduce the whiskey. Okay, so today we're having Eagle Rare, which is a fairly popular Buffalo Trace distilled, 10 year, yes, nice

[00:03:11] Robbie: rare.

[00:03:13] Chuck: It is eagle rare.

I know, it couldn't be more American, I guess. But, uh, alright, so it's 90 proof, age 10 years, the MASH bill is undisclosed, but this is, uh, thought to be one of Buffalo Trace's Low rye. Mashbills, so under 10 percent rye, high corn, all that kind of fun stuff. This was actually one that I used to get all, this used to be like my go to all the time, where I was like, Oh, I'm getting a nicer bottle, hang out with friends. It's like 30 bucks. It's gone up in price quite a bit, but still is I

[00:03:44] Robbie: 30 bucks is like the shipping for this bottle.

[00:03:46] Chuck: I know. Seriously, anymore. Whiskey is crazy. So, as we smell and think about this. So the first European match I ever went to in person was actually at the San Siro. It was Inter Milan versus Fiorentina. And it was the year that Mourinho was there. a couple of years, but it was in 2009. Amazing. I've been to, uh, the Camp Nou, also.

It's all messy. I play, uh, I think Thierry Henry was there at that point, still. And they played, uh, the Yellow Submarine. Was it, uh, Villarreal or something like that? And then I've been to Old Trafford twice, now. Because my team is Manchester United. Since the 90s, actually. And, uh, yeah. So that's,

[00:04:31] Jhey: you've hit some good ones.

I imagine the sun's zero to be incredible.

[00:04:37] Chuck: it really was. It was nuts. People were nuts, though, too. Like, the away fans, they have that big plexiglass separating the home and away fans.

[00:04:46] Jhey: To like hold them

back.

[00:04:47] Chuck: yeah. And they still try to, like, climb around and do crazy stuff, too. So it's like, hmm. Alright, I get a little sniff of caramel.

[00:04:57] Robbie: Yeah, it's like a spicy, buttery caramel, like a holiday candy

of

[00:05:01] Jhey: gonna

say, I did that straight from the bottle and that's what I took from it.

[00:05:05] Robbie: Yeah, but

butterscotch, yeah.

[00:05:07] Chuck: ha ha ha ha. Butterscotch, yeah. Mmm, yeah. Oh yeah, tons of butterscotch up front. And a little bit of nutmeg on the finish. Nice burn. I call it the hug, Kentucky hug, when it burns your throat a little bit. Because I'm from Kentucky originally. So, don't hold that against me though. I don't have that funny accent or nothing. See, I'm bad at many accents.

[00:05:34] Jhey: I was gonna say, do you just bring that out at different occasions?

[00:05:37] Chuck: Uh, no, not really. My, it's funny. My wife is, was very disappointed a couple of years into our relationship. She, uh, admitted to me that she was always kind of, she was glad that I didn't speak like that all the time, but also kind of hoped that with a couple of drinks in me, I might, I might slip into it a little bit or something.

And, uh, it never happened unless it was on purpose, of course. But, uh, I was like, sorry.

And,

[00:06:02] Robbie: lot of people where you grew up have accents or like, I feel

like it's just

[00:06:06] Chuck: No, I'm, I'm in Northern Kentucky, so right across the river from Cincinnati, most of the times I would, for, it was just easier to tell people I was from Cincinnati, cause it's kinda the area, it's almost like a suburb of, but it's all very urban, and so no, no one speaks like that.

You go down to like Lexington, and then they have that accent,

[00:06:25] Jhey: don't have that problem. It's just, it's just monotone, just straight through. In fact, I had like the weird thing that I don't know if it's because. Like, well, my partner sla well, my wife now is American, but The conferences I went to last year, when people would meet me, they'd be like Oh, we thought we thought you were from America, and we thought you were American.

[00:06:45] Chuck: Really? Um, no. I mean, you've got kind of a posh accent, if you ask me, so.

[00:06:50] Jhey: Yeah. Blah!

I won't go

that far.

[00:06:52] Chuck: ha

[00:06:53] Robbie: you've just offended

[00:06:54] Chuck: What? I know. See, I was, I kept nudging and I knew I'd get there

eventually.

[00:06:59] Robbie: Pocock told us that British people don't like posh accents. I think you sound too, uh, you

[00:07:05] Chuck: I like, I like British accents. Um, and, uh, I do tend to think that, like, I just trust them more. I don't know what it is. It's like, with a, uh, okay. Scouse accents. Notwithstanding, most British accents make me feel like I, I trust, I don't know, whatever. I, even my, like, directions, um, through whatever, Siri or whatever, uh, I change it over, ways.

I change ways over to use a British accent. I just am like, yeah, you, you know where you're going, just let me know.

[00:07:40] Jhey: That's fair.

[00:07:41] Chuck: Yeah, yeah. I mean, does my accent, uh, give off trust? Probably not.

[00:07:46] Robbie: No.

[00:07:48] Jhey: I don't think I've ever changed the accent on Waze. And now I want to.

[00:07:54] Robbie: Oh,

they have some fun

[00:07:55] Chuck: there's some fun ones on there. They did like C 3PO for a little while was on there. Wasn't like Samuel Jackson or something on there. There's some weird ones too, though.

[00:08:04] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:08:04] Jhey: gonna have to have a

look,

[00:08:05] Chuck: Yeah, it's good fun. It gets, and then after a while it gets old. You go back to the British lady telling me where I should go.

Um,

[00:08:14] Jhey: funny that you, well, random things to talk about

Waze, but when they did like, uh, did like, you could use like, things from Halo, like the video game, as like your car, which is kind of cool. But it's just like, just little touches like that I really appreciate.

[00:08:31] Chuck: Yeah, trying to like gamify it a little or something. Yeah, driving is boring, do this.

[00:08:37] Jhey: I only realized how heavily influenced I am by like video games and random things that are like on TV and stuff, uh, in the last, yeah, the last, the last conference talk I gave. I think I made a point of saying like, hey, it was only when I did this deck, like I realized how much influence I get from like old Arnold Schwarzenegger films or like,

Transformers, or, like,

[00:08:59] Robbie: Hmm.

[00:09:00] Chuck: Yes, yes,

[00:09:01] Jhey: and then it just filters into my, into my, like, creations.

And it's like, oh, okay,

[00:09:06] Chuck: Oh,

that's interesting. So are you, are you Gen X?

[00:09:10] Jhey: Um, I don't, I, you know, I don't even know what brackets they fall into.

[00:09:15] Chuck: I, so, I think Gen X is basically, so I was born in 77. And I think Gen X is somewhere around like 82 or, I don't know. So

[00:09:25] Jhey: Yeah. A little bit later than that.

A little bit later than

[00:09:29] Chuck: that's

fair.

[00:09:29] Jhey: Where, basically, my earliest, like, So I brought this one up, um, just to get on this tangent now, but I brought this one up, uh, because there was a demo I did at the last conference at CSS Day, and um, basically like a fond childhood memory of mine, it's, and I don't know why, um, my grandparents had it, but they had like a VHS tape of the original Transformers movie, and a lot of my and a wave of destructions. childhood memory is just watching that on repeat pretty much.

[00:09:59] Chuck: Oh yeah, Ultra

[00:10:01] Jhey: it's one of my, like, yeah, it's just a really fond film for me. So, like, even though it's before, before I was around, I don't know. I just love that. Just love those cartoons. So,

[00:10:12] Chuck: I may or may not have seen that in the theater.

[00:10:15] Jhey: yeah,

[00:10:15] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:10:16] Jhey: it's cool. Didn't they have, like, Orson Welles as, like, the...

[00:10:20] Chuck: As, um, Unicron, exactly. So, we, though, should, before, again, before going off the rails too much, we do a rating system for the whiskeys that we try. it's very specific and scientific. It is from 0 to 8 tentacles. Uh, 0 being horrible, basically spit this out and throw it down the toilet.

4, middle, middle of the road, good stuff. Not terrible, not amazing. 8, obviously, being like... If I'm going to have alcohol, it will always be this. I mean, that might be excessive, but, uh, I like to keep pushing the boundaries on that. So, Robbie, do you think you're ready to give it a rating?

[00:11:00] Robbie: it's hard to say since we don't know the exact mash bill, but I like it. I think, in the category of normal bourbons, it's a little better than some I've had. Uh, so I'm gonna give it a five and a half, I think.

[00:11:14] Chuck: That's fair. Jay, do you have any thoughts or feelings about this?

[00:11:19] Jhey: So it's kinda hard for me to base it or compare it to anything. Um,

ha

ha

ha

[00:11:24] Chuck: it to just, like, any whiskey you've ever had,

[00:11:27] Jhey: Yeah.

[00:11:27] Chuck: or just spirits in

[00:11:29] Robbie: Yeah,

[00:11:29] Jhey: No, I was gonna, I was along the same lines actually. I was gonna say, probably around, I was gonna go six. That was gonna be my number. Because, I like it. I, I think it's really nice. But I, maybe a little less on the uh, on the burn. And I'd be like, just right.

[00:11:49] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:11:50] Jhey: But I do like it. I like the taste of it. It's nice.

[00:11:52] Chuck: I think if you let it hang out in those ice cubes for

a few

[00:11:55] Jhey: Yeah, that's why, like, it's, it's, it's working it's way in. It's getting nicer with each one, so.

[00:12:01] Chuck: Yeah, and so I was saying, I think, off air, that this was one of my go tos back in the day when I started getting into nicer whiskeys. availability, uh, it was like an easy one to pick up. Most folks would like it.

Sort of like... An elevated maker's mark kind of thing this isn't weeded though like that so for regular bourbons Even though it's harder to to get now. I don't think the price is crazy. Typically, it's usually between 60 and 80 bucks It's still age stated 10 years. Love that. So it's like a nicer Buffalo trace.

I might give it a 7 for me I think this is like still still hits

for

me.

[00:12:39] Jhey: do like it, I have to say. It is nice.

And I'm like,

I'm

tearing up. Cause it's like, it's melted a little. It's kinda like,

[00:12:48] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:12:49] Jhey: it's working it's

magic.

[00:12:50] Robbie: Mm

[00:12:50] Chuck: we were able to pick one that, that you like, because sometimes, you know, sometimes we pick ones that we've never tried and, uh, that neither of us have ever tried and it doesn't work out,

you know, and it's like, luckily we're sending this to you and you're not like, we're not like, hey, go buy this whiskey and it sucks. Um, you know, but you take that

risk

[00:13:12] Jhey: have mixed it or something,

you know,

[00:13:13] Chuck: yeah,

yeah.

[00:13:14] Jhey: heavy heavy on the

Pepsi.

[00:13:16] Robbie: Yeah...

[00:13:16] Chuck: Right. We didn't say, uh, I don't know if they even have it there, but, uh, there's like a peanut butter whiskey that is

disgusting.

[00:13:23] Jhey: Yes. So I have seen this and, um, I questioned this because I was like, well, do you know, I feel like, I feel like we might've seen it in Costco or something

like

that. And I was like, what is that

[00:13:37] Robbie: Mm

[00:13:37] Jhey: Like I

had

to, yeah, I've got one

like

20

minutes from me.

[00:13:42] Chuck: I can move there.

[00:13:43] Robbie: Mm hmm... Hahaha...

[00:13:44] Jhey: This Costco is the best. so it's the tentacle system based on behind you.

[00:13:52] Chuck: it is. Yes.

[00:13:54] Jhey: Cause I, I see there's like a tentacle creature peering out behind you.

[00:13:59] Chuck: Yeah, yeah, so for the podcast, it's part of the logo for the podcast, and then it's also for our agency.

[00:14:07] Jhey: Oh, cool.

[00:14:08] Chuck: Yeah, it's a mythical creature. yeah, you know, octopi are fun. Not related to whiskey, really, but

[00:14:15] Robbie: Haha.

[00:14:15] Jhey: Well, that was why I, yeah, questioned the, the tentacle rating system and then being like, well, it's got to be to do with the logo behind you. Um,

[00:14:23] Robbie: Yeah, this one's something different.

[00:14:24] Jhey: Well, that's the best way. I mean, I in no shape or form look like a bear, but you know. Well, I don't think I do, but well.

[00:14:32] Robbie: Haha...

[00:14:33] Chuck: I don't know. That's up for debate.

[00:14:36] Robbie: we will... Let's just go out of order here. Because I did have a question for later about what's up with the bear. So, like, where did that start? And...

[00:14:43] Jhey: yeah, it's kind of a weird one,

like, socials and stuff I hadn't really got into at that point, and when I, I used to, like, dabble in, it's a long story, so my back end is, like, logic and middleware engineering.

I didn't start with any sort of visual skills, shall we say? And then I kind of moved, gradually as time's gone on, I picked up like animation skills and design skills and things and And at the point in time, I was Starting my own limited, and I didn't have much money, and I need a logo, so I've decided now's the time to learn how to create SVGs, and go down, like, the Inkscape hole, and learn how to do all this stuff, and I pretty much always, well, I'm pretty much renowned for wearing hats.

Eric Rasmussen always comments that I always have this, this hat on with the red thing and he made a comment when we met in Miami earlier this year, he was like, oh, he looked just like it, he had the hat on. And, uh, I have a load of them behind me, the red ones up there, but, do you know what, I'll just put the red one

[00:15:50] Robbie: Yeah, I was gonna say, I didn't recognize you without the red one.

[00:15:52] Jhey: There we go,

now we're

on

brand. Might need to sort it out. Until I just go out of the show. So, there's the red one that I would normally wear.

I had made an avatar that was a cat. Like, with some shades on. Like some Ray Bans and a snapback. And I just made it as like a random thing. I was like, yeah, that'd be cool as an avatar.

Because I didn't really want a photo of my face.

I don't know where the love for bears came from, but I've always kind of had them, uh, had it. And then I was like, ah, this cat sucks. So I kind of like went down this route of, I'm gonna learn how to draw these bears. And then for a while, because I didn't like having my face anywhere, I just used the bear as an avatar. And then I started posting more online when like the pandemic hit. Like that January was when I started like posting demos and things and like, oh, let's give this x thing a go

And Then people were like, do you have a face because I just used my avatar for so long and then it was like, oh wait I'll actually Like bring out my face.

So the bear just kind of evolved and then because I've learned logo design is more of a necessity Because I didn't want to pay a designer for it. Um, I Revisited it earlier like well pretty year or so ago now and I was like it kind it was kind of like one of Those nice skills to pick up because I was like the original Was terrible, like I couldn't use it in other places, it wouldn't work on a t Like, I had t shirts and hoodies done, people, like, bought them, but it doesn't work, you know, in compa like, I learned stuff about So I learned stuff about, like, you know, how to design, because that

can't just be, like, dropped on anything, whereas that

you can, Make it one tone, and you can just drop it anywhere, right? Like, it'll work on any background. You can change that to all red, and it's still gonna work.

Whereas when you start going with, like, all these colours...

So I, I learn a lot of things, and that's kind of one thing that I'm kind of driven by. I love, like, learning different stuff. So I'd just be like, oh, this was sweet, like I learned all about SVG, and then I was inspired by things I saw on CodePen, and I was like, right, I'm gonna learn how to animate, and it snowballs, and then you're like, right, now I want to learn about FreeJS, and now I want to learn about this framework, and that framework, and, yeah, it's funny, like, people, I don't know,

it's the people that kind of know me, or have worked with me, know that I cover a lot of different things, but then if you've only seen me, From an online perspective, you'd think that, oh, he just, he just makes CSS demos all day long, but

[00:18:41] Chuck: right, well that's interesting,

[00:18:43] Jhey: my hobby. yeah, it was

[00:18:44] Robbie: are amazing,

[00:18:45] Jhey: you know, I was doing react from like v0. 1

[00:18:51] Chuck: hmm, so you

[00:18:52] Jhey: I went through

[00:18:52] Chuck: the taint?

[00:18:54] Jhey: the, I've seen this. But I went through all that stage, you know, when that was the teething problems, I did AngularJS. I did backbone,

like.

[00:19:03] Chuck: yep, yep. I

[00:19:04] Jhey: All through those periods, and like, that's, that's kind of like where my um, my real like, uh, curiosity and like, the, I don't like saying passion, because it just feels like, cliche, but that's where I enjoy being, like, stuck in a node file, or like some, like, cranking logic and things,

the animation stuff is like, all just, it's just fun, like it's fun stuff to

[00:19:30] Chuck: It's

also a lot sexier than, like, look at this function that, I don't know, whatever,

[00:19:36] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:19:36] Jhey: And this is what I always tell people, I'm like, look, I could post that like I've just refactored this into some sweet server component, but like, no one's going to care.

[00:19:46] Robbie: Look at the big O

notation on

this. The time

is

[00:19:49] Chuck: in, you're, you're, uh, Are you contractually obligated to like app directory and RSC?

[00:19:57] Jhey: Um, I am not, um, we're advised to, uh, yeah, like, you know, think freely

[00:20:06] Chuck: Oh, nice, very

nice.

[00:20:07] Jhey: and give a lot of feedback and stuff like, yeah, it's to be fair, like, I couldn't be happier where I am at the moment, but I did actually,

I actually really like the idea of app directory. Obviously everything has its. Pluses and pros and cons, but I just like the idea of like it feels like with react We kind of went through this like oh, this is a good idea yeah, everyone likes this and then like like let's just put everything in the client and now we're going to this point where it's like actually Let's just skim out the DX part because that's the bit that people like and let's try and make it as light as possible on the client and it's like, ah, we're finally going the right way.

That's, that's how I feel about it. Like it feels like the way it's kind of shifting, like when we do like server actions and things kind of feels more better for the end user. Some of the speed of some of these apps that use it is just like Like blows my mind, like I've opened it on a new tab and it's loaded before I even got there and it's like, wow, that's, that's really good and I'm not expecting it and I feel like, yeah, there's a lot of opinions out there about this stuff, but I think even as like users,

we're still discovering things about it, like that's how I approach most things, like I think, you know, just be open minded about it and see, see where it takes you.

You

just never know it.

[00:21:28] Chuck: yeah, there's a phrase, you know, there's a lot of different ways to skin a cat. Uh, I don't know why that's a good phrase or even

a

commonly known phrase, but, uh,

like, don't skin cats no matter which way, you know, you choose. But like, obviously it just means, you know, multiple paths to the same solution.

I think we are, like, facing another time of that where, like, there's a lot of different really... Smart ways to do things and it's kind of like choose your favorite adventure to get there Which is pretty exciting to me Which is why I like well, I used to threaten that I was just gonna be a yaml developer now I think I'm just gonna like You know do like rails or yeah or something,

[00:22:11] Jhey: Well, that's what I kind of love about, um, like I love, I love how Astro kind of changed perspectives when that dropped because it was the whole, like, you can write whatever you want. You

just,

you just do a react component. And then over there you could do some view and you can just drop it all in the same thing.

And I think like, that's just the magical developer experience. It's like, Oh, sweet. Like I can just dip in and use the bits I want. Here and

there,

I just think like that's really special. And I think that kind of starts making other people think like, Oh, actually, like maybe I can do things a bit differently.

Maybe I don't need to ship all this stuff.

[00:22:46] Chuck: Exactly. You

[00:22:48] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:22:48] Jhey: the end of the day, where everyone's just trying to ship something good for their end user,

right?

[00:22:52] Robbie: yeah. Yeah. I think they noticed, you know, that everyone loved frameworks and these huge JavaScript things, but like, we didn't actually need half of it. Like the whole, like, you know, if you have a hundred items and you want to like render them in a loop, right. But you actually. Don't care about that happening.

It should just like be spit out as a static HTML file with a hundred things in it. Like that's probably the thing you really want instead of that happening in real time.

[00:23:21] Jhey: This reminds me of like, uh, like AngularJS.

I was doing a contract, like this is quite a few years ago now, obviously with AngularJS, but there was always that issue with AngularJS of like, you can't render loads of things in a list. That's why you just reminded me of it. When you got to like, big numbers, you had to put in these weird hacks, so you'd be writing like a, I can't remember what the, was it directives?

I can't remember what they called it, like the controller sort of thing you would do, but you'd end up writing something and then what you'd end up doing is taking the data and actually using something like handlebars or a templating lib to render the HTML for you because you wouldn't want it to be controlled by Angular because it would just slow the whole thing down.

And it was like, wow, that should, those sorts of things should have been alarm bells then, but then. React dropped him and was like, Whoa,

this is gonna be different now. It's like, it is, obviously it's much, much different. It's a much more mature, uh, ecosystem. But,

[00:24:22] Chuck: But even at that time, it was, you know, I, I can recall coming from a backbone marionette app and then being able to do all these things. It's funny because I remember, uh, we just created like, um, Essentially like, uh, identity components and we dropped them into Django, right? Post load and then boom, you do some magic stuff and then they can log in and get some personalization and all that kind of stuff.

And it was like, oh, wow, I can do this in isolation on an, on an just regular server, you know, returned page. That was mind blowing. And then we went really far that direction. And now I think we're starting to ask the questions of what's a good balance there or. You know, when do we need all of that? When do we need less of that?

When do we need none of that? I think you bring up a good point. Astro really started to make us from a developer perspective. Sorry, I can't talk today. Maybe I

[00:25:17] Jhey: Nah, same.

[00:25:18] Chuck: should do it in a British accent. And then, you'll both trust me, and... Okay, so what region does my accent speak to?

[00:25:28] Jhey: Oh, I,

I

couldn't tell you.

[00:25:31] Chuck: TV.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Right? Like that?

[00:25:33] Jhey: I'm terrible with, uh, regions and things. So,

[00:25:37] Chuck: Okay, that's fair.

Yeah.

[00:25:40] Jhey: just down south.

Just near, like,

[00:25:42] Chuck: Down south. Kind of international. I blend in with everywhere. Use your American Express here. You know, it's like a commercial voice or something. Anyway, I don't know.

Can

[00:25:56] Jhey: Well at least we've both saved perspective on the bingo card, but we haven't reached for specificity yet. So we're okay.

[00:26:06] Chuck: yeah. That's a tough one. That's a tough one normally for me.

Um...

[00:26:10] Jhey: tough when you're like presenting something like, I don't know, like CSS cascade layers. And you've got to say it about six times and you're like... How did I get through that?

[00:26:22] Chuck: And I don't use that word at any point in my life otherwise, that's weird.

Yeah.

[00:26:28] Jhey: But no, I think, uh, it's interesting to hear someone else doing Backbone Marionette as well. I still have an app, like, living on GitHub pages that's Backbone Marionette.

[00:26:37] Chuck: Wow.

[00:26:38] Jhey: Still works. fine.

[00:26:39] Chuck: Well, that app we built over a year or so when I worked for National Geographic. And it went out in beta and then got crushed. So, it's dead. Womp womp.

[00:26:51] Jhey: That was a, that was an interesting little, like, framework tool, though. It was like one of the first ones that kind of made you think a bit differently about what you were doing.

But the only bit that I remember is, uh, well, not the only bit I remember, but one of the bits that always sticks out is how you would do, like, the event handling in strings.

Right, so you'd be like, what was it? Was it like button, like, it'd be like button at click or something like that, and then you would map it to the function or something, and it'd be like, this is weird.

But then, you know, people do it straight in the attribute in other things. So it's like,

it's

kind

[00:27:27] Chuck: if you think that was weird though, what about this whole, like, when, uh, Redux first kind of started going and then there were all these, like packages around Redux and you had thunk and sagas and stuff like that. And it would do an action here, but then the States over there, which gets triggered to run through and.

[00:27:44] Jhey: That whole, uh, yeah, that whole period was amazing. Like, I remember, I remember my first, uh, So one thing, like, because I didn't really, Well, I didn't really hop online or anything like that around that time when, like, Redux was dropping. And I remember I was doing a contract at the time. And it was like, that was coming out.

Someone had, uh, gone and done a bit of research and had a look at it and they, like, sat down to, like, pair up with me. And, uh, they were like, Yeah, I'll just, I'll just walk you through how this Redux works. And I remember the first time someone showed me that and I was just like, What?

What? What is this? Like, this, this is wild. And now you think about it and you think, Oh, it makes perfect sense. You know, you just dispatch the

actions.

[00:28:25] Robbie: yeah, it never made sense to me.

[00:28:28] Jhey: Everyone just subscribes to the actions and it all makes nice sense. It's funny, like, one of the biggest, not the biggest trauma, but when anyone brings up Redux, the thing I remember is when everyone thought, Hey, Hooks is out, you've got used context,

let's just build our own Redux.

And everyone seemed to like go on this rite of passage where they just... We're gonna do it. We don't need Redux anymore and everyone just did a use context thing and everyone just ended up Oh, we basically ended up rewriting Redux

[00:29:00] Chuck: ha

ha ha ha ha

[00:29:02] Jhey: Which is hilarious we we did it we like wrote we tried using context for a conference app It was good like it worked, but then we realized oh wait like in Redux, I would have just done this right well, I'll just write that functionality and oh no now I need that and you ended up just like Basically building your own.

[00:29:20] Robbie: yeah, but people enjoy that. So everyone does it, they like building shit for like the sake of building it.

[00:29:27] Jhey: Yeah,

I mean it's good, those kind of things are good, they are good for learning. Like, you learn a hell of a lot about like, how things work from doing that.

Like, one of the things I always say to people is just, just have a go at building things from scratch. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't matter, and then reach for stuff later on if you want.

Cause you never know, that, that's kind of why I build things that you can't just happy path. Because it's like... You're going to find out an awful lot by just trying to build something that you haven't seen before, or you don't know how to build. You just go on a tangent of like, well, and break it up into little bits, and then be like, right, well, that kind of worked, that kind of worked.

And in the end, you kind of mishmash it all together, and you learn a load of little tricks, and then you'll take them somewhere else, and yeah, it just kind of goes like that, right?

[00:30:14] Chuck: Yeah. It's almost like a cascade. Yeah, during that crazy Redux time, I got to have a break for a little while and I went and learned EmberJS. And that's actually how Robby and I met, and I was like, Wow, they've made all these decisions for me. Just do what they say and it works? No shit. Oh my gosh. Yeah, Ember Data was like, Oh my gosh, such a smart, fun, state management store.

[00:30:45] Robbie: Except when it's not,

[00:30:47] Chuck: Right. Yeah. Until you want to go off

the

[00:30:50] Robbie: If you're doing it all JSON API spec, then yeah, it's like, let me just hit save. And it like, does my post to save all my data or whatever behind the scenes. But like, yeah, if you're like, oh, I'm going to follow whatever format I want. It's like, no, I didn't work.

[00:31:03] Chuck: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

in the REST API, Wild Wild West, it gets harder,

[00:31:09] Robbie: Mm

[00:31:10] Jhey: Unfortunately, it's one that I've just not... It's one of the ones that I haven't been able to spend much time with. I've only briefly played with Vue.

Since React landed, it's always just been... It's always just been React, or like, Next,

or...

I've played in Astro quite a bit, but...

They're the ones that I never got to, like, have a proper play with, like, Vue is a good one that I, I, I like it, but just never, those opportunities never came up, and Ember's one that I dabbled with, and then it was like, I never got to use it, like, commercially. So it's like,

ah, because I, I've heard it's, like, very good when you use it on, like, real stuff.

[00:31:46] Robbie: Depends on your definition of good. It's, the DX, the DX is unbeatable in my opinion. The performance, it doesn't have like server side rendering. It does, but like, it's an afterthought. It's like, so, you know, there's give and take. If it's for like an internal JavaScript heavy dashboard, I think it's the best thing you could use.

But if it's for like a marketing site, don't touch that.

Like,

[00:32:11] Chuck: It's way too opinionated for that shit. And, and, Astro is your tool for

that anyway. Right for a marketing site. It's a crazy town to reach for a framework really in general. What about Svelte? I would

[00:32:23] Robbie: Yeah, I was gonna ask about this felt

[00:32:26] Jhey: yeah, I've had a little play with it. Again, it's not one that I've, I've really pushed much to production with, but I have played with it. A fair bit, there's a good community around that, people really like it.

especially at the moment, everything, there's a lot of hype on AppDirectory and like,

that kind of thing, it's like, hot, hot topic,

[00:32:44] Chuck: I mean, yeah, I think next well, obviously there's the conference tomorrow, right

tomorrow

[00:32:49] Jhey: yep, tomorrow. Yeah,

[00:32:54] Robbie: yes

[00:32:54] Chuck: Yeah, well, whatever Yeah. Tomorrow, October 26th, for

[00:32:59] Jhey: yeah. Remember the conf.

[00:33:00] Chuck: We're recording. Yeah, exactly. Remember that thing

[00:33:03] Robbie: Yeah, that thing Guillermo said was insane.

[00:33:06] Chuck: Yeah, I can't believe he announced that.

That he's giving away all his shares. To Jay. He's the new CEO. Let's see where you take it. Anyway. I'm here for the jokes. I don't know.

[00:33:20] AD SPOT

[00:33:20] Chuck: there are a couple of these hot takes that I do want to ask him,

so

[00:33:22] Robbie: We should do a couple. Yeah.

Regress

[00:33:24] Chuck: do a couple. I like hot takes.

[00:33:27] Robbie: I don't know which of them are actually hot anymore, but, uh, just, just jump in

wherever you feel, feel like.

[00:33:32] Chuck: okay, so your CSS experiments, how much harder or easier would they be using Tailwind?

[00:33:38] Jhey: they're not too bad, I was hoping this topic would come up, actually, because I, I, actually really like Tailwind.

[00:33:47] Robbie: Ooh.

[00:33:48] Jhey: I think, it's one of them, again, people just love a, love a little, poke something in the fire, you know, oh, that'll, that'll get some, that'll get some hot takes, some spicy action online,

but, and I, I actually,

I disagree with the negative takes on both sides, if that makes sense, like, I think everyone should just be happy that it exists, for reasons.

Like, I, I use it, like, I use it on my, on my site, the thing with Tailwind is, I don't know, people just get hooked on it thinking it's like some kind of weird bootstrap, where people don't know what CSS is or something, I don't know, but,

at the end of the day, it is still CSS, and everything you can do in CSS, You can do it in Tailwind.

You just configure it to do it. and it works. I think people get blinded by the syntax and don't appreciate the real value it brings. And the value it brings is tackling the hardest piece of CSS. Which is making it performant and structuring it and not repeating it. And

like,

creating bloated files because you've written display grid.

84 times across your repo. that's the issue. One thing I would say like to people if they're uh, starting out and they're not sure of these things and they want to understand a bit more Try building a site from scratch with nothing Like no tools, just HTML CSS, JS, maybe a bundler right, like V or something, I don't know When you get to the page speed insights part of your project, depending on how many pages you've got, you'll get hit with Hey, your CSS could be quicker.

And you'll be like, damn, what do I need to do now? you might end up going down this route where you're like, Right, well now I need to think about which styles are critical. Which ones are above the fold, right? So right, how am I gonna do that? And then you go down this route. I've done this, like, cause I'm a nerd.

And I like, you know, in a good sense. Like, I love these kind of problems, so... Yeah, my wife got that surprise when we had one over the holidays. I'm like, she'd be thinking I'm doing the animation. I'm actually... I'm going to make this image optimization great, and I'm going to make my styles really good, so I get better PageSpeed Insight scores, and I'll spend a week doing it if I have to, you know? But I'll happily sit in a Node script and be like, I'm going to work out which styles I need. At runtime, and then I'm going to extract them into a critical file and I'm going to inline them in the head and then I'm going to load all the below styles at the end of the body and I'm going to get my PageSpeed Insight scores right down.

But that stuff takes time and you need to kind of understand what you're doing and and that's where Tailwind comes in and just says, do you know what, I'll work all that out

for you.

Yeah, you, just build your components and you just drop your little styles in here and you can configure some if you want and add them in.

But I'll worry about making the file as small as possible and loading it for you in somewhere and you don't worry about it because you'll only load a little minimal piece of, like, styles and that'll be it. And you can put all the new experimental stuff in Tailwind. the last article I wrote for Smashing was about, the new linear function in CSS.

So there's a new function where you can essentially draw, like, paths to create easing functions. So you can do, like, bounce. Or like elastic easing,

just

with like, a function. But what I did was I uh, I added them all to a Tailwind config and did like a Tailwind play at the end of the article so you could go and use them in Tailwind and it'd just be like you'd just write ease bounce out or bounce in and it would, it would work fine.

And it's like, I, I kinda love using it. Cause it makes, it makes a lot of sense in components because you're just gonna write once and... The only thing that I would like in the tool that I started building was um, like, just like a, almost like a linter, but like an analyzer that would look across your repo and say, How many times have I used a specific Tailwind class name?

Because, like, I feel like sometimes, you know, if there's one instance where you've accidentally written mb4 or something, and everywhere else you're using mb6, and you'd be like, oh, I forgot about that one,

and like, I want to know where it is. Like, that's the only thing that sometimes I'm a bit like... Did I accidentally leave a flex somewhere, you know?

Like, that's the only thing I'm sometimes unsure of. It hasn't caught me out yet, but sometimes I'm thinking like,

but that's where like visual regression testing or things like that would come into play anyway on something big. But yeah, I'm always like, I wonder if I left a little sneaky text white somewhere.

[00:38:13] Robbie: yeah, yeah. I think one of the big benefits that people don't think about often is like, we've probably all worked in enterprise size apps that have like, you know, those big CSS files where people are like, no, don't touch that one. Because like, that's, that's maybe used. We're not sure. just don't touch it.

And you just ship, you know, a megabyte of extra CSS for no reason. And if you're using Tailwind utility classes, when you delete your HTML that you're not using anymore, it goes away. Like

[00:38:41] Jhey: it just does all that tidy up

for you.

anything that's scale, like, I really recommend it because it's just gonna take that decision making process out of the way for you.

Like it's an added stress that you don't need, like, especially if you're trying to ship something quick, like, I just wanna ship the thing, get it out the door, I don't wanna be thinking, oh, damn, the performance is bad.

like, I just want to worry about something, making something that looks good, gives a direct call to action or whatever, gives whatever my user needs, if I need some scripts thrown in there to do some client side stuff, that's great. And then the styling part is like my last little sprinkle of sugar, but I don't want to be worrying about, like, ooh, I don't want to add too many styles, because it's gonna, it's gonna hamper performance.

So, that's like how you always kind of approach it in the, You know, in HTML, then in JS, Like you're building a house, right?

[00:39:33] Chuck: Yeah.

Yeah. And you gotta trust the machines. I mean, right? Give them good instructions. You get a good output. Like, I don't know, I, I tend to, listen, uh, in the future, I want my robot overlords to know that I, I respected them. You know?

[00:39:48] Jhey: Yeah!

[00:39:49] Chuck: And let me live.

That's

[00:39:51] Jhey: So they treat you well?

[00:39:52] Chuck: Yeah, they treat me

well.

[00:39:53] Robbie: kept your Roomba clean?

[00:39:55] Chuck: Exactly. Yes. I've kept it clean.

I've done the maintenance. I, you know, take it apart. Give it a new battery. Everything. So, it won't kill me.

[00:40:07] Jhey: Do you have a how do you find your Roomba? Any good?

[00:40:10] Chuck: Uh, yeah. I like it.

[00:40:12] Robbie: yeah.

[00:40:13] Chuck: Maybe this is a little, like, sexist or something. But I bought it for my wife as a gift.

[00:40:18] Robbie: Hmm. That's like buying the Peloton for the wife, like that big controversy, uh,

[00:40:24] Chuck: I only bought it because she asked for it. I was like, hey, they sent me something like with a sale or something. And she already had a spin bike. She's very into that. Used to be a spin instructor, actually. But, uh, uh, I was like, hey, this came up. You want that? Yes. Okay, done. I didn't suggest it.

I

[00:40:40] Robbie: Yeah, but the optics don't, no one cares what, what the intention was. They still have to

just

blow it up. But

anyway, the Roombas, we we now have three Roombas. Because we have one per floor.

[00:40:54] Jhey: An army of Roombas.

[00:40:56] Chuck: Yeah. There's more Roombas than yous. Sorry.

[00:41:00] Robbie: Yep.

[00:41:00] Jhey: Is it gonna be like that? No, this is an old film. Is it, uh... Is it batteries not included?

[00:41:06] Chuck: Yes, short

circuit.

[00:41:07] Jhey: the Roombas are

good.

[00:41:08] Chuck: not included. Yeah.

[00:41:10] Jhey: All the Roombas are gonna turn into little spaceships.

[00:41:12] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:41:14] Robbie: That, that's my, that's my, uh, product idea. Roombas should be drones. So that you only need one and it could fly to your next floor and vacuum it.

[00:41:22] Jhey: ha! Or, you could set up your own service, where you have like, a fleet of them, and they just go and clean other people's

houses.

[00:41:30] Robbie: yeah.

[00:41:30] Chuck: gosh. Yeah, there you

go. They can fly and come in, come in through some like little doggy door like

thing. The Roomba service is here. There are, uh, there are drone mowers that are like fairly industrial strength, so I feel like it could be a similar thing.

[00:41:46] Jhey: well we have like the uh, and I know they have them in some places in the States, but um, like the little six wheel robots with the flags and the lights, and

they

[00:41:57] Chuck: Mm hmm. Mm Hmm?

[00:41:58] Jhey: And they just like, you just see them out on the streets, like just...

[00:42:01] Chuck: yeah,

[00:42:02] Jhey: Like rolling

[00:42:03] Chuck: in a couple of like, college areas where they do like, delivery

[00:42:07] Jhey: Yeah, we have them

here.

[00:42:08] Chuck: campus. Yeah.

[00:42:10] Jhey: So my, uh, my wife loves it whenever we drive past and they're like, oh look, robots. Robots.

[00:42:16] Chuck: Right, robots, one day they turn around and shoot you or

something, I

[00:42:21] Jhey: They're kind of cool, like they just wait, they wait at the traffic lights, you know, they take their time and

[00:42:25] Chuck: Ooh. So, I'm in Phoenix, there are cars like that here.

Waymo is here. I'm in Phoenix. So there are cars here that are driving by themselves And I can actually do like a uber with a driverless car if I want. I haven't

done it yet But I'm gonna do it soon

[00:42:44] Jhey: So, uh, My in laws are in Arizona.

[00:42:47] Chuck: What?

[00:42:48] Jhey: that's where

my wife is at the moment. Um,

[00:42:51] Chuck: She's here? In Mesa. Oh, yeah, that's the same hood. I mean, it's basically like, you know, whatever suburb of Phoenix It's like 20 minutes from my house

That is, that is

wild.

[00:43:03] Jhey: We're there at Christmas. We did, uh, we went mountain biking, um, uh, yeah, the hills.

[00:43:09] Chuck: Hit me up next time you're here.

[00:43:11] Jhey: Yeah, that's cool.

Small

[00:43:13] Chuck: That is, yeah, that is really

funny.

[00:43:15] Jhey: I'm, I, well, I might be there soon,

[00:43:18] Chuck: All right, well, I will be here for a while because

It, it, it gets colder everywhere else and it gets nicer here. So I just stay, turns

out.

[00:43:28] Jhey: Yeah, that was nice. Yeah, we were there at Christmas and it was really nice.

[00:43:33] Chuck: Yeah, and this is the place for Christmas for sure,

so.

You know, by the time this is released, you will have hung out, probably.

[00:43:40] Jhey: Yeah, maybe. Who knows?

[00:43:43] Robbie: uh,

[00:43:44] Jhey: That's cool. Where are you, Robbie?

[00:43:47] Robbie: I am in Great Falls, Virginia. So it's like about an hour from dc.

[00:43:52] Chuck: What's your address?

[00:43:54] Robbie: Uh, it's, uh,

I need to know yours off the top of my head so I can just list it off. uh,

[00:44:01] Chuck: be pretty funny. So, thanks for letting me know. I'm never gonna make sure you memorize my address. Just the office address or something.

[00:44:09] Robbie: yeah.

[00:44:10] Chuck: Anyway.

[00:44:11] Robbie: yeah. I do want

[00:44:12] Jhey: Virginia was the, uh, the first time I ever went to the States was Virginia.

[00:44:18] Robbie: Oh really?

[00:44:19] Jhey: I went to Herndon,

[00:44:20] Robbie: Oh, Herndon. Okay.

Yeah. That's,

[00:44:23] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:44:23] Robbie: close to me. So,

[00:44:24] Jhey: to this day,

[00:44:25] Chuck: metro stop.

[00:44:27] Jhey: to this day it's my favourite, uh, like, barbeque place I've ever been to.

Um, called Red Hot and Blue, and it

[00:44:36] Robbie: yeah, I've heard of it. I have not had it.

[00:44:39] Jhey: it was very good.

[00:44:41] Chuck: We, We, can do a barbecue tour. You come here, there's a place called, uh, Little Miss Barbecue that has the best brisket I've had outside of Texas.

[00:44:50] Jhey: Yeah, you see, I haven't been to like, where places are renowned for barbeque. Yeah, so,

[00:44:56] Robbie: Well, I think Texas is

[00:44:57] Jhey: holds the

[00:44:58] Chuck: Ooh,

spicy. We're still in the hot takes.

[00:45:01] Robbie: we went, we, we went to, uh, I think it was like, it's pine, something like pine, pine in, or I don't know. It's like a famous barbecue joint in Texas and there's like an hour long line. So you're like thinking it's going to be amazing. And I got it and I was like, eh, it's food.

Like it was not great.

[00:45:21] Chuck: What did you get, and what are they known for? Because it

does

[00:45:23] Robbie: Well, I had some of everything. I had some brisket, some pulled pork, um,

sides, whatever. Like,

[00:45:28] Chuck: You want to lean in where they're known. I mean, obviously, there's, like, they're going to make a bunch of stuff and they run out of things or whatever, but like, Texas brisket is definitely kind of the thing. I think in like, you know, you go to like, North Carolina or whatever, you want more like pulled pork,

and

then they have some different sauces and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, not just the sauce though, you know. Anyway. That could be, that, we should do a second. A second episode all on barbecue,

because I can definitely talk about this. I just love food in general. Which, by the way, I want to say, I remember before I went to Europe, everybody was like, ooh, the food, the Brits, the food in Britain sucks, the food in the UK sucks, blah blah blah.

Not at all my experience. I don't know. Uh, Bubble and Squeak? Delicious. Bangers and Mass? Delicious. The Indian food there, now I've not been to India, so I can't compare to that, but for me, it was the best Indian food I've

ever had.

I spent a lot of time in Leeds, and I went to some places there that were just, like, insane.

So anyway,

[00:46:27] Jhey: Leeds was where I, uh, yeah, so Leeds is where I... gave my first conference talk and also where I met my wife. So

[00:46:35] Chuck: Wow.

[00:46:36] Jhey: randomly, um, yeah, we, we ate a really good restaurant there called the OXO club.

really good. But yeah, the food here is good. But I was, it was funny because I was about to say something which, uh, would probably, well, might make you laugh, but when you said about places running out, the, the sad thing is here that we don't really have, uh, many Taco Bells.

Like, just not a thing. Now, there is a Taco Bell about a 25 minute drive from me that regularly closes early because it runs out of food on a Saturday.

[00:47:08] Robbie: As it

[00:47:08] Chuck: And that's how they stay in

business. So

yeah. I was gonna say, this is, you are, you are hitting a note with Robbie. We have this debate, cause I mean, obviously Mexico has amazing food, but like, Mexican food in Arizona just like, hits right for me. And it's hard for me to go and, to this place that doesn't make Mexican food.

It makes something else that kind of resembles

[00:47:30] Robbie: They don't claim I don't think it says anywhere mexican food I need to check that but I don't think it like they make you think that it's kind of implied But

it's

not and as

[00:47:41] Chuck: I will, I

will,

[00:47:42] Robbie: it's fine

[00:47:43] Chuck: if you get a crunchy beef taco supreme, like that hits. I'm like, this is, this is Taco Bell for me. Everything else, ugh,

I don't know, some weird shit there.

It's just a tostada, I don't know.

[00:47:57] Jhey: first, uh, yeah, that first time when I was in the States, when I was in, uh, Herndon,

like I had, I had a car for the week and, um, every night I was like, what franchise am I hitting?

Just, so I was like, Taco Bell, Wendy's, all the ones that you don't get here at the time. So I was like, I gotta try them. I gotta try them.

And then Taco Bell was a good one. But yeah, Mexican food outside of, if you're including Taco Bell, is, is really good over there. Like, and it's one of the things that, uh, my wife complains about a lot here is that Mexican food is not good here.

Like, well, especially where we, we are here. Like, it's, it's just not very

good.

And.

[00:48:38] Chuck: to make it, really.

[00:48:39] Jhey: Yeah, now I've seen it on the other side. I'm like, oh man, it's so

good over there. Like even in like,

[00:48:44] Chuck: In N Out?

[00:48:46] Jhey: yeah. Yeah. That's like a tradition when we get into Arizona.

[00:48:50] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:48:51] Jhey: So

[00:48:51] Chuck: just checking.

[00:48:52] Jhey: I like a Jack. A Jack in the box as well.

[00:48:56] Chuck: Yeah...

[00:48:57] Jhey: I like the

shakes.

[00:48:58] Chuck: said you don't drink that much, so... Are you sure?

[00:49:01] Jhey: What Jack in the box?

[00:49:03] Chuck: Jack in the Box is like, drunk food for sure. A sourdough jack is interesting. I don't know. You come here, hit me up, we'll do a little food tour.

[00:49:15] Jhey: Yeah. There was one pla, there was a place when we went for mixed when we were in Arizona last and it was really good, but I can't remember what it was called. It's like quite an old restaurant.

Um,

[00:49:27] Chuck: teepee or something like that. I don't

know.

[00:49:29] Jhey: I

have to

ask.

[00:49:30] Chuck: uh, Macayos. There's...

[00:49:32] Jhey: It

was good, I have to

ask.

[00:49:34] Chuck: Yeah, there are a lot of options that are good. You know, there's like good and, and then great. Essentially.

[00:49:41] Jhey: all good, compared

[00:49:42] Chuck: Yes, exactly.

[00:49:44] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:49:45] Chuck: fact, I'd just take you to the Mexican grocery store. And just have a field day.

It's

[00:49:50] Jhey: Yeah, that's one of the things as well, like, when you're here, it's like, even just getting simple things like, you know, like queso cheese and stuff, it's just like not, it's just not the same. Like, it's never the same. It's like, ugh.

[00:50:04] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:50:05] Robbie: Yeah, part of that, if you're comparing it to American stuff is because in America we can use a lot of chemicals and stuff that are like, not allowed in Europe.

[00:50:14] Chuck: We artificially extra

flavor it. Yeah.

that's true. But then again, like, I've been to some incredible chippies in, England and in, in Ireland. They were just like, it's so simple. It's in a bag with just the right amount of salt and, and malt vinegar on every single one. So, you know,

it's

[00:50:32] Jhey: Yeah, it's hilarious when, uh, when you look up a fish and chip place, in like, say, Arizona or something, and it's like, you look at the, look at the images, and you're like, what is this?

[00:50:43] Chuck: Exactly. We do have a place here called the Cornish Pasty that has like, elevated the pasty. Like, it's not just like a grab and go kind of thing. Have you been?

[00:50:53] Jhey: the pasties are a big thing, like, in the South here, so like, in, uh, like, Devon, Cornwall, like, it's, it's a big thing. and yeah, they are, they are good. And yeah, you have the Cornish Pasty Co Rank.

[00:51:05] Chuck: Yep.

Yep.

[00:51:06] Jhey: Yeah. So that's like a, you get that

over

[00:51:08] Chuck: locations now. It's like,

crazy.

[00:51:11] Jhey: It's really good.

It's just, it's just very different. it's like a, I don't even know what to compare it to, is

it, would

you

[00:51:17] Chuck: call them fancy Hot Pockets. You know, Hot Pockets.

[00:51:21] Jhey: well it's almost like a um, what's the pizza equivalent?

[00:51:25] Chuck: Calzone.

[00:51:26] Jhey: it's like a,

it's like

[00:51:27] Chuck: Yeah, empanada. A lot

[00:51:29] Jhey: meat and vegetable

calzone.

Yeah.

[00:51:31] Chuck: of this.

[00:51:32] Robbie: Yeah.

everybody made like a flat one and then went, could we fold it over?

[00:51:36] Chuck: Yeah, exactly. You know it's portable? Fold it over.

[00:51:40] Jhey: Yeah, someone just made a, a pizza with meat and vegetables and gravy and just went. Nah, we'll just

[00:51:46] Chuck: the...

[00:51:46] Jhey: it.

[00:51:47] Robbie: yeah, yeah,

[00:51:48] Chuck: that's it

[00:51:48] Jhey: Blast that in the oven for a bit. That's

good.

[00:51:50] Chuck: What can I stick in my pocket? Not a pizza.

[00:51:53] Robbie: yeah.

[00:51:55] Chuck: Again, that's why they call it a hot pocket.

[00:51:57] Jhey: That and, uh, sausage rolls. Another good one.

we have one here called, uh, the clanger.

[00:52:03] Chuck: I

[00:52:04] Jhey: I don't even recall ever having one. Um,

but, yeah, there's some weird kind of pastry things you can get over here.

[00:52:11] Robbie: I want to ask one more hot take before we, move completely past that. Is CSS a programming language?

[00:52:19] Jhey: I mean, if we go from the technical, it's a style sheet.

[00:52:27] Chuck: you're

[00:52:27] Jhey: I don't know, like,

[00:52:28] Chuck: how to style

[00:52:30] Jhey: yeah, I guess, you're giving instructions,

[00:52:33] Robbie: It does

[00:52:34] Jhey: I don't know,

[00:52:34] Robbie: stuff now.

[00:52:36] Jhey: yeah, there's trig, there's also, um, now, I can't remember what you group these as, because I was messing around with a silly demo to make a triangle, are they called exponential functions? When you do, like, math. pal, math. squareroot,

[00:52:52] Robbie: That

[00:52:52] Jhey: so they're, they're in there now as well,

so you can do, like, calc with a pal and a,

Which is kind of interesting if you want to start doing like calculations and things, you can start doing like proper Pythagoras and stuff like that in There

[00:53:09] Chuck: There we go. I think the answer is yes.

[00:53:11] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:53:13] Jhey: I

think

there's,

[00:53:14] Chuck: approach math calculations

[00:53:17] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:53:17] Chuck: to that degree,

[00:53:18] Robbie: doing that.

[00:53:20] Jhey: I think it's

getting to the point where there's a lot more like capabilities. So there's a lot of things you can do, which replace the script alternative, which kind of make you think a bit differently. Because I spoke about it so often over the last year, it feels like I've been shilling CSS has for like the last 18 months or something, you know,

[00:53:44] Chuck: Right.

[00:53:45] Jhey: when it does finally land cross browser, it's like, it's still regarded or, you know, touted to be an absolute game changer across the board, which it will be because it,

it has so many cool applications, but at the same time, it's like, I still feel like there's loads of capabilities that people haven't even thought of or uncovered yet.

Because that's what all these things need, right? All these things that come to the platform that are coming down the line, they need people's perspectives or a fresh look at something to be like, hey, why can't I do this with it? Or like, could I do that with it? And that's what kind of makes these APIs grow.

Like, that's kind of like why when people would be like, why on earth did you make that? you're never going to use that on production. But, actually, like, I made this, and it uncovered some bug in some API spec, and now, because I made some silly demo, like, that API, when it lands, might be more useful for you.

it's kind of interesting, like, when you think about it, like, there was one I did, well, there was a couple I did last year, where it was like, one I did with, uh, the CSS anchoring spec, which was like, I was doing something where I updated the... The anchor position dynamically, and when it was initially implemented in Chromium, you could do transitions between the anchor positions.

So like if you updated it, it would animate to the next one, like it'd be animating like an inset properly or something. Something changed in the implementation as it evolved and the transition stopped working. So I raised this bug and I said, look, I made this demo where a bear paw moves between input fields, but it doesn't work anymore.

but What it did was it triggered, like, an implementation, like, rewrite, or refactor, to support transitions. So it's like, now, when someone goes, when that spec does land, eventually, at some point, or, you know, it'll probably change a bit between now and then, but hopefully it'll retain that behavior because of that funky little issue I raised ages ago, and it'll be like, oh, sweet, like, I can transition this.

And it's like those little things. So, like, the more people try out stuff for their own use case, like, The more everyone benefits in the long run because people have tried it or like seen a different way or just seen it through different eyes because it's really hard to try and think of like all the possible use cases, you know I always think of like when I used to contract The most, some of the most fascinating people would be like

the testing engineers or like the QA people because they could spot an edge case from a mile away

that you'd never even

[00:56:18] Chuck: gonna say. You suss out some edge cases by like pushing the boundaries and experimenting with these things. And they give you an API and you're like, Great! Let me try something weird and cool with it, not just a built to form,

[00:56:31] Jhey: exactly. Right. So like, that's like, it kind of echoes back to the initial idea of like how I would learn things or how I have learned things along the way, which was like, my line was always, uh, or is on my slide deck would be, uh, go beyond the documentation, become it kind of thing, like, just follow your ideas, because, uh, you just don't know what you learn from it, so you just supercharge yourself and you just become the docs because there are no docs for what you want.

[00:56:59] Chuck: Yeah, there

[00:57:00] Jhey: And then... It just raises things and you can, yeah, you can help shape stuff, especially if you end up working close to these kind of things, but some of them you don't need to, like there's open, open UI, that's an open group, people can go and join that and get involved with like these, these platform things that are like coming down the line, some of them are really cool, but it's just interesting, it's interesting to see that side of things, like I hadn't seen it, Until I, that work.

So it was like, it was kind of cool to see. But to think like, oh, actually, The more people get involved with it, the easier it becomes for the spec writers and things. Because they see more things. And it's easier to get it in early doors and get it, like, As, cover as many things as they can. As opposed to like, later down the line, Oh, we didn't kind of cater to that.

the API

[00:57:47] Chuck: Yeah.

[00:57:47] Jhey: fit for that.

[00:57:49] Chuck: You need fresh eyes, essentially,

right? Like, you're like, trying to lead something with some bias, essentially. Like, it just ends up, not intended, but, you know, it just ends up being like a natural artifact of doing new things, and documenting what you think are certain assumptions, and then you have someone come in and do some crazy shit with that, and you're like, Oh!

Okay, yeah, I hadn't thought about that, didn't realize that was a thing.

[00:58:13] Jhey: yeah, that was pretty much, well, it still is pretty much what I try to do. I'm always like, ah, I wonder if I could Shoehorn that in to do what I want or

like, can I do this?

You learn a lot doing that. And it's not just like CSS, it's like even like JavaScript or like, you know, Canvas, React, FreeJS, GreenStock, whatever you want to use.

It's like, always makes you think, ah, could I do that or would that work? Would it, would it do what I want there?

And like, a lot of the time, you, you find a way. one of the weird demos I, obviously at the time of this, this will be ages ago now, but, was like a little Apple tear strip thing, right?

And it was

like, someone posted a, video of this like tear strip concept. Like, like the Apple box kind of thing.

And I was like, how would you do that? Like you would grab it and then you would want to maybe use like a clip path and then that would hide part of the backing and then as you pull it like you're dragging it but then I want like drag resistance so when I first tug it it needs to not move as much and then as I go past and it eases off and then I get to the end and then well now I need to be able to move it around because I've gone past the end and then when I drop it it should just go away and then and like all these little ideas and things come up and then they're all little things that you tackle along the way you.

But each one picks up a new skill, or something new that you found, or some... And then it just, like you said earlier, it snowballs. And then like, they're new things that you take into the next thing. And your, your knowledge just picks up, and you're like, Ah, just use that trick from that one, and that trick from that.

And then,

you just become like, to the point where you're like, Nah, I can just build whatever I want. It's cool. And that's what I used to do when I freelanced. I'd just be like, You can dream it, I can do it, you know. It's just

pixels. And that's what I would

[00:59:54] Chuck: I was, I was, trying to look for a second because I wanted to try to quote him, but I feel like, um, So, Ken Wheeler said something about one of your postings recently, like, it was something like, I've just learned more about CSS by seeing this than I have in, like, my last ten years of dev. Something like that. You know, I'm paraphrasing or a little buzzed and forgetting half of it, but, uh, I think that's exactly it, right? Like, you can learn so much by going off script and just, Let me recreate this thing. And see what where that gets me. Or, oh there's a new feature. What weird shit can I do with that?

But they're not telling me.

[01:00:29] Jhey: Yeah, and even exploring some of the like just specs and like random things that there's, there's so much out there it's funny I was watching a colleague's podcast interview and he mentioned an app that I went and checked out and the first thing I noticed was they had a number counter Of like dollars on the home page and it was shifting all over the place and I was like man They just need to throw some font like font variant numeric on there or whatever Um, I don't even think that's, is that even the right property?

It'd be alright if I was in the

IDE.

[01:01:03] Chuck: I'm a lot dumber than you, so I

don't

[01:01:04] Jhey: There's font,

[01:01:05] Chuck: I'm just nodding my head, yes.

[01:01:07] Jhey: there's font feed. Oh, there's font There's font, feature settings, Tnum, and then there's font variant tabular nums? Or numeric? Font variant numeric tabular nums? I don't know. It'd be fine if I'm in the editor, I'd just do it. But, yeah, so I put it into DevTools, reloaded it, and I was like, oh, that fixed it.

So then I was like, nah, I'll just post that. I'll just post that as a funny one, like, hey, just remind it. If you're gonna animate numbers, like, Because for some reason, like, I've found, and I don't know, like, if it's just I spend so much time in front of animations, or I've become, like, more sensitive to some of these things recently, like, more colour, like, things, or like, more animations, and I'm a bit like, Ooh, that's caught me off a bit, or like, I'm like, let's dull this down a bit.

And, um, I just notice things like that more, but especially with the numbers thing, I was just like, Just post it out there. Now, that's quite an old property, but there's so many cool things you can do with that property, right? So if you had like a fraction, you can get in CSS, you can just get like a 3 over a 4 or something.

There's just a CSS property that will render it and lay it out for you. all those kind of things. So this is kind of sweet. Like, you can do all those kind of things.

But they're like little properties that people might not be as aware of because they're not commonly used. But they are pretty clutch when you need them.

[01:02:23] Robbie: Yeah, you don't know what you don't know. It's hard to know the fix for that if you had no idea that existed. So,

[01:02:29] Jhey: yeah,

you might be thinking, like, especially, I think when I posted that, people were like, oh, I'd try and like, lay this out in a grid, and you could do it with like a grid if you padded it out, or, you know, you look for different, or people would just be like, oh, I just use a monospace font. Well, that's fine, but what if your designer says, no, it needs to be in this font.

That's out of your hands.

You can't turn around and go, well, the only way I'm going to animate this is if it's JetBrains mono.

Right.

So,

[01:02:59] Chuck: the fuck is

[01:03:00] Robbie: Yeah.

uh, I was just going to say we are over time here now. so is there anything you want to plug or mention before we end

[01:03:08] Jhey: I don't, I don't really have anything to plug, I just, uh,

[01:03:11] Chuck: Bears and

[01:03:13] Robbie: bears?

[01:03:14] Chuck: or...

[01:03:14] Jhey: Yeah, really, get, get your hats now, I, um, no, I don't sell any

hats,

[01:03:19] Chuck: You

[01:03:19] Robbie: You should sell, You should sell, hats with the, with the red and then a bear on the other side.

[01:03:26] Jhey: I

do have ones with bears

on, but I haven't found anywhere to, like, I just have a wall of hats behind me.

[01:03:33] Chuck: Right. Uh, I don't know, all I see is Manchester United Colors, so I guess that's who you support?

Or,

[01:03:39] Jhey: I'm an Arsenal supporter, so I'm

offended. Ha ha ha ha ha! We're Arsenal in this house!

[01:03:47] Chuck: uh, I rescind all of my invites. No, I'm just kidding, it's not that serious.

[01:03:52] Jhey: No,

[01:03:52] Chuck: It's not 2005 anymore, I'm not too worried, even though you're doing a lot better.

[01:03:56] Jhey: well, that's debatable. We're still yet to win anything, you know. So, ha ha ha ha ha! But no, there's uh, I don't think it's an interplug. I guess it's uh, it's more of a watch this space kind of thing. Come find me on the interwebs and uh, follow along for the journey. Because there are some things we want to build, like we want to build a new, CSS related blog site.

is something we're working on.

[01:04:21] Robbie: you,

[01:04:21] Chuck: CSS traffics. What? Oh.

[01:04:25] Jhey: And, uh, that's, yeah, people have

[01:04:27] Robbie: it for pretty cheap now.

[01:04:31] Chuck: I don't know, the traffic's probably pretty good. I don't, I don't know what Chris got, but he's doing alright.

[01:04:35] Jhey: Yeah, well, people have, people have suggested that I build something like that. And, um, I've also this week had suggestions of doing a book or something. Which is something I've always thought like, like an anthology of walking through different types of demo. And the tips and tricks you can pick up along the way.

So that's something maybe I'm thinking about. And then, um. Hopefully we'll be doing a front end masters course like next year.

So that'll be quite cool

[01:05:03] Chuck: So follow Jay and see what comes.

[01:05:05] Jhey: what comes It's all you know, who knows I didn't realize I didn't think i'd be sitting here last year, you know

[01:05:13] Robbie: cool. Thanks everyone for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe, leave us ratings and reviews. We appreciate it. And we will catch you next time.

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