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Panel

• Lucas Reis

• Thomas Aylott

Episode Summary

Today, Lucas and Thomas discuss how companies enforce what technology gets used, especially when companies get really large. Thomas talks about his experience with Facebook’s an ‘all carrots, no sticks’ approach, and says that if Facebook hadn’t given its employees the freedom to use whatever technology they needed, React would have never come about. Thomas talks about how he built his 2018 React Conference talk. He says that the hard part of being a programmer is not the technical aspect, it’s the social aspect and balancing the old and new. Lucas talks about his experience as a consultant, the path from analyst to manager, and how things change. Thomas brings up Facebook’s philosophy of “abstraction through extraction”. Thomas and Lucas agree that in the real world, it’s really difficult to have linear/boolean things, and as a result there is no one cure for everything. The great challenge is of solving problems is moderation in solutions and avoiding extremes. They agree that a lot of engineering is just moving complexity around, and it’s important to be aware of where you are storing the complexity and how it affects your workers, especially those who are just starting. This shifting is kind of where react came from. Ultimately, it’s important to leave a little room for chaos so that your project can evolve. 

Links

• Hooks

• CSS

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