Panel:

• Sia Karamalegos
• Lucas Reis

Special Guests: Jordan Eldredge

In this episode, the React Round Up panelists talk to Jordan Eldredge about his project Webamp. Jordan’s first introduction to programming had to do with music which led him to work both as a singer to now being an engineer. They talk about how common it is for programmers to have diverse backgrounds, especially in front-end developers, what Webamp and Winamp are, and what he originally wrote Webamp in. they also touch on his inspiration for creating this project, his journey in creating Webamp, and more!

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Jordan intro
• Studied music (opera) in college
• Forced himself to learn PHP and MySQL
• Common in front-end developing to have people with diverse backgrounds
• Why do you think it’s so common to have diverse backgrounds?
• Front-end web development is very young
• Self-taught developers
• What is Webamp?
• Reimplementation of Winamp in JavaScript
• What is Winamp?
• What did you originally write Webamp in?
• What was the inspiration for creating Webamp?
• CSS Sprites
• Wanting to recreate Winamp skins
• jQuery originally
• Rewrote in “vanilla” JavaScript
• The process of learning real JavaScript
• Managing transitions VS managing state
• React with Redux
• Do you believe your struggle with “vanilla” JS made you more aware of what React really brings?
• You Might Not Need Redux by Dan Abramov
• How did you deal with the audio API?
• The thing he loves about side-projects
• Not having a deadline
• Using a Redux middleware
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Webamp
• MySQL
• Winamp
• JavaScript
• jQuery
• React
• Redux
• You Might Not Need Redux by Dan Abramov
• Jordaneldredge.com
• @captbaritone
• Jordan’s GitHub

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• Digital Ocean
• FreshBooks

Picks:

Sia

• Google Docs

Lucas

• Timing App

Jordan

• @winampskins
• Inspiring Online
• WACUP

Special Guest: Jordan Eldredge.