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RRU 088: Frustrations with React Hooks with Paul Cowan
Paul Cowan was a painter and decorator for 30 years until he switched to front end development. He got into React because for him, much of programming didn’t make a whole lot of sense until he read about the flux model, and React Redux was one of the few frameworks that followed the flux model. Spending most of his life outside of the programming world has granted him a unique perspective frameworks like React. He talks about some of his frustrations with React hooks. Hooks can be frustrating because it’s a new paradigm to learn JS, the dependencies array can get bungled, React relies on the order in which hooks are called, and closures can be difficult. Overall, hooks come off at deceptively simple. Paul believes that we shouldn’t need external tooling to keep the dependency array on the right track. To avoid these frustrations, Paul reminds listeners that hooks have to be called in the same order each time at the beginning of your functional components. You also cannot have a hook in an if statement or event handler. It’s also important to remember the declarative nature of React. In production code, updating states is the best way to go. The panel agrees that it’s good that react has clarified their position on what hooks are supposed to be used for, and how we are beginning to see the limitations of React hooks. They discuss unit testing with hooks and how to determine when the React framework becomes too big. They talk about some of the new features that are coming out and how they benefit new developers. When mistakes do happen, Paul talks about how he determines what went wrong. If you want to get advice from other humans, they suggest consulting StackOverflow, ReactiveFlux, and IRC chat. When you do consult these sources, it’s important that your problem is reproducible so that it’s easier for people to help you out. It’s also important that you learn how to ask questions. The show finishes with them discussing how they handle changes in the industry. They have found that reusing components is difficult across Angular and React. They talk about the positive ways that React went version to version. They discuss complexity management in apps. The panel talks about some ways to do things in React without hooks, but also caution that avoiding the popular thing can also get you into trouble. Panelists Thomas Aylott Charles Max Wood Chris Reyes Guest Paul Cowan Sponsors Nrwl | Nx.Dev/React Sentry | Use the code “devchat” for $100 credit _______________________________________________________ "The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job" by Charles Max Wood will be out on November 20th on Amazon. Get your copy on that date only for $1. _______________________________________________________ Links Flux model React Redux useReducer Frustrations with React Hooks Solutions to Frustrations with React Hooks ESLint Next.js Relay Selenium StackOverflow ReactiveFlux Picks Thomas Aylott Shada Charles Max Wood The MaxCoders Guide to Finding Your Dream Developer Job It’s A Wonderful Life Mr. Kreuger’s Christmas Chris Reyes Netlify React Hooks deep dive AirPods Pro Paul Cowan Solutions to Frustrations with React Hooks Stay fit Special Guest: Paul Cowan.
RRU 087: The why-did-you-render Library and React Performance with Vitali Zaidman
Vitali Zaidman works for the WellDone Software consultancy. He has worked with a lot of different technologies, but currently works with React. In a recent React meetup, he talked about React performance. When someone says that React is not performant, Vitali disagrees and says that it is very performant unless you do certain things. If your React application is slow, it’s down to the tools you use. The panelists all agree that premature optimization is the root of all evil. The difference between premature optimization and good architecture comes down to experience. It is important to be data driven and consider performance a business environment. Vitali believes that performance is a feature and should be treated like any other. The panel discusses accessibility versus internationalization. Launching to one language is different than launching to one set of abilities. While you don’t need to internationalize on day one, don’t make it impossible to internationalize. They talk about how creating a timeline of changes in your project can help you pinpoint where your performance issues came from. It is also important to remember that developers have strong computers, while users generally do not. As you build, check your product on slower devices to make sure that it works for your users. Vitali talks about his tool why-did-you-render, which will notify you of avoidable re-renders. He also talks about considering why you are choosing to use React and whether or not is the correct choice for your project. The panel discusses their feelings on pure components. They talk about the importance of code review and manual QA since not everything can be automated, again suggesting having a slow computer or phone in the office to test as you go. They also agree that it is important to understand how your library works. They talk about the huge amount of work that is required to maintain an open source project, and how development is a team effort if you want to create sustainable software. The show concludes with Vitali talking about a performance issue he encountered and how he recognized it, diagnosed the problem, and fixed it. Panelists Thomas Aylott Lucas Reis With special guest: Vitali Zaidman Sponsors Nrwl | Nx.Dev/React Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan Ruby Rogues Links Knockout Why did you render Fusion.js: A Plugin-based Universal Web Framework - Leo Horie React Element's 'Parent' vs Rendered By How To Reduce Unnecessary Re-Renders Why Performance Matters Performance Impact Calculator Welldone Software Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter Picks Thomas Aylott: Face-API.js React force graph React 3 Fiber Lucas Reis: Opendoodles.com Adopting Optimizely at Compass Vitali Zaidman: JSJ 402: SEO for Developers with Vitali Zaidman Special Guest: Vitali Zaidman.
RRU 086: Gatsby Themes with Chris Biscardi
In this episode of React Round Up the panel interviews Chris Biscardi. Chris is now working with Gatsby. He shares a bit about his background and how he got into programming. Chris explains his move from Kubernetes and Docker over to Gatsby. His overall drive is to increase leverage for other people and what drew him to these projects. Chirs explains what Gatsby is and what it has to offer to React developers. Gatsby is like a creat react app which is attached to a static site generator that has an API that allows you to pull in data from anywhere. Also, by using Gatsby developers do not have to operate alone, they get the whole Gatsby ecosystem to help them. The panel considers Gatsby and if it would be a good way for developers to learn React. Chris explains with Gatsby’s documentation it would be great for learning React. The panel believes it would be a good place to learn because of the hands-on goal-oriented work engaged in when using Gatsby. Chris shares what developers get when using Gatsby and why it appeals to programmers today. Chris explains what Gatsby themes are and how they are more powerful than CSS themes. The panel discusses how to use themes and how to write them. ThemeUI library is shared and Chris explains how it works. They consider what is next for both Gatsby and React. Panelists Lucas Reis Charles Wood Thomas Aylott Guest: Chris Biscardi Sponsors Nrwl | Nx.Dev/React Sentry– use the code “devchat” for two months free on Sentry’s small plan Adventures in Angular CacheFly Links JSJ 386: Gatsby.js with Chris Biscardi https://www.gatsbyjs.org/ https://www.christopherbiscardi.com/ Views on Vue https://vuejs.org/ https://www.facebook.com/React-Round-Up https://twitter.com/reactroundup Picks Lucas Reis: Don’t procrastinate Charles Wood: Find solid people in your life Get away Chris Biscardi: Chris's Discord Thomas Aylott: Real relationships with real people outside of work.
RRU 085: Building Resilient Architecture with Monica Lent
Monica Lent has been interested in software from a very young age, and made her first domain name when she was 9 years old. She studied legacy languages Latin and Ancient Greek in university, but ended up keeping her college development job and going into software. She recently left her job and founded a startup, analytic tool designed for bloggers designed around affiliate marketing. She talks about some of the lessons she’s learned, including how to sift through data and how to make it useful for people. Monica gave a talk at React Finland and she first applies some of her principles from that talk to what she’s learned founding a startup. One of the main differences she’s found is a small startup has different needs and levels of stability than a business. In early stage business, you have to decide where you want to invest in quality and where you shouldn’t be investing. For example, her primary focus is on her algorithm that runs the tool, and UI is less of a priority. In a large company, this might be structured differently. The panel discusses how to distill the priorities from the project manager so you know where to spend your time, something that takes a lot of experience and failure. They agree that if something is business critical and will cause the business to lose money if it fails, those things should be a top priority. Second, the panel discusses the merits of different practices such as whether or not to deploy on Friday and having engineers on call. In Monica’s React Finland talk, she talks about the importance of constraints, which can help with these kinds of decisions. She explains that instead of thinking of architecture as something super abstract, think of it as enabling constraints, as picking ways to do less and end up with code that is safer to run, longer lasting, and has fewer bugs. Thomas shares how he used to oppose constraints and architecture, and how he changed his mind. They discuss the importance of automation over documentation for building sustainable code. Third, Monica explains her opinion on how copying and pasting code instead of adding dependencies is a positive constraint. She prefers this method most of the time but not in all cases because it keeps your code flexible and avoids unnecessary specialization. However she is not advocating for copy/paste over dependencies in every situation : rather the point comes down to using copy/paste instead of inappropriate coupling. Sometimes, when you create an abstraction and combine two pieces of code, this new combination makes code more brittle than it would be otherwise Components put in the shared folder almost never leave. This causes the component to become very specialized and not work in all scenarios. The panel discusses where this method may not work. Thomas talks about some of his favorite tools for simplifying complexity, React Hooks and Relay. Monica and the panelists discuss the merits of using TypeScript and proper methods for coupling code. Fourth, the panel discusses how so much of programming is dealing with other people and the importance of keeping your ego out of it when designing constraints, especially since developers hate other developer’s abstractions. They debate whether pride is a characteristic of junior or senior developers. They note that it is easier to get prideful and opinionated when you’re not working on a team. Thomas believes that if you aren’t working on a big team, you should force yourself to talk to people with opposing positions. The show concludes with the panelists agreeing that it all comes down to the balance between priorities and making things work. Sometimes we can get so focused on making something work that we lose sight of what actually matters. They agree that collaboration generally yields better results than leaving it to one person. Monica talks about the importance of senior developers nurturing their team by leading from behind to help people come up with their own solutions. The panelists talk about different methods they’ve seen for doing this. Panelists Leslie Cohn-Wein Thomas Aylott Lucas Reis With special guest: Monica Lent Sponsors Progress KendoReact | Try now for FREE: kendoreact.com/reactroundup Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan Views on Vue Links Monica's React Finland talk Narcissistic design talk A Philosophy of Software Design React Hooks Relay TypeScript Webpack gRPC Prettier 7 Absolute Truths I Unlearned as a Junior Developer Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter Picks Leslie Cohn-Wein: Xochimilco, Mexico City, Mexico List of CSS mistakes Thomas Aylott: Get the Truth book Lucas Reis: Lovevery Zero Fasting app Monica Lent: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick Special Guest: Monica Lent.
RRU 084: What Makes a 10x Engineer?
In today’s show, Chuck talks about the recent Twitter thread about 10x engineers. He goes through each of the points in the tweet and talks about each of them in turn. There are only two points he sort of agrees with, and believes the rest to be absolute garbage. One of the issues with this tweet is that it doesn’t define what a 10x engineer is. Defining a 10x engineer is difficult because it is also impossible to measure a truly average engineer because there are many factors that play into measuring productivity. Chuck turns the discussion to what a 10x engineer is to him and how to find one. A 10x engineer is dependent on the organization that they are a part of, because they are not simply found, they are made. When a 10x engineer is added to a team, the productivity of the entire team increases. Employers have to consider firstly what you need in your team and how a person would fit in. You want to avoid changing the entire culture of your organization. Consider also that a 10x engineer may be hired as a 2x engineer, but it is the employer that turns them into a 10x engineer. Overall, Chuck believes these tweets are asinine because it’s impossible to measure what makes a 10x engineer in the first place, and hiring a person that fits the attributes in the list would be toxic to your company. Panelists Charles Max Wood Sponsors Progress KendoReact | Try now for FREE: kendoreact.com/reactroundup Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan iPhreaks Links 10x engineer Twitter thread Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter Picks Charles Max Wood: Copyhackers.com Good to Great by Jim Collins Keto diet Podcast Movement
RRU 083: Reactive Programming with Storybook with Dean Radcliffe
Dean Radcliffe has been web developing since the table tag was the new hotness. His interests include his wife and two kids, music, sports, and he likes to say he helps people make whatever they can dream of. Since starting to move towards the frontend, React has been his weapon of choice, which he got started with in 2014. Dean works at G2.com, a software review site. They are developing a review form, which requires the code to react to events. For example, a person’s position in the company would affect what questions they see, so the form needs to react to which box is checked. Dean talks about the use cases for building a reactive form and what kind of things are going to happen when you fill in an input. For his form, the input will be remembered, and they want to increase the user’s involvement with the form through incentives. To accomplish this, Dean uses component driven development with Storybook. Storybook is a tool available for React and other frameworks, which lets you jump directly to each state you want to view instead of having to go through them all one by one. Basically, it gives you shortcuts directly to the visual states of your components. These states facilitate development and the feedback cycle going back to the designers, allowing them to see more than just the finished application and enabling them to circumvent mistakes. Storybook relates to reactive programming because component driven development lets you discover the API and what sets of props are necessary to put this component into each possible state that can be displayed. Dean does not use it as a test environment on his team, but it does help them write unit tests. It has an addon that lets you write unit tests in Storybook, but he hasn’t used it. Dean compares where reactivity and Storybook come together by comparing it to a thermometer.A thermometer will get readings over time of discrete values, and that timing is how people experience your components. You can create an observable of those states, and Storybook Animate ties them together. Your components, however, are still your responsibility. Dean talks about how he creates the observables. The observables are hardcoded, but the great thing is you don’t need to know where it came from. Dean describes how the observables are connected to the components. Dean feels that having this dynamic feed cycle makes it kind of fun to write tests. There is also a function called After which creates a set time out, which creates an observable of that value over time. Dean talks about his other tool, RX Helper. RX Helper provides an ‘after’ abstraction, and an event oriented layer in React. RX helper allows you to listen for custom events raised from the individual components of a form, and you respond to those events with observables, and the observables produce values over time.The goal of RX Helper provides some transparency and makes it easier to try out concurrency designs. The show concludes with Dean talking about some of the changes he’s made to his tools and how he came up with the idea. Panelists Charles Max Wood With special guest: Dean Radcliffe Sponsors Progress KendoReact | Try now for FREE: kendoreact.com/reactroundup Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan My JavaScript Story Links Knockout.js G2.com Storybook StorybookAnimate RX Helper Meteor JS Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter Picks Dean Radcliffe: Follow him on Github and Twitter Kent C. Dodds @davidkpiano XState Gangstagrass Charles Max Wood: St. George Marathon The 360 Degree Leader Special Guest: Dean Radcliffe.
RRU 082: Progressive SSR with Dinesh Pandiyan
Dinesh Pandiyan is a developer from India. He started as a backend engineer and then moved to frontend. Currently he is working for ThinkMill in Sidney, Australia. Today Dinesh and the panel are talking about devtools and progressive SSR. Dinesh got started with React Redux. The panelists talk about their experiences using primarily Redux for projects. Dinesh talks about his transition from backend to frontend and how it’s a totally different world. On the backend he was working in Java and it ran on a server, but on the frontend, code runs in a browser and the browser is very different for each user. Frontend development is tricky because you don’t know where your code is going to run. One of the trickiest parts of frontend development is debugging something in production. Unless you have good logging tools, you won’t know what’s going on. Debugging this stuff when it’s running on client browsers is hard, but when you’re in development mode your own browser you’ve got handy tools. They talk about some of the tools in React, and agree that console.log is the greatest debugging tool of all time. Dinesh talks about some of the most surprising features about React dev tools. You can benchmark your preferences and identify weaklings in your project, which are things that slow down your application or things that might slow it down. On an application level, you have to build a mental model of how the data flows from the top, where things change, etc, and dev tools can help you build that pretty easily. They talk about how things had to be done before great React tools. In fact, Dinesh chose React just for the devtools. They talk about how the dev tools for React compare to Java. The most important thing is that you have a good debugger that can stop where you want it to. They transition to talking about the differences between SSR and progressive SSR For SSR (Server Side Rendering), rendering happens on the server and you send it to the client. CSSR (Client Server Side Rendering) is when all the rendering happens on the client’s side. PSSR (Progressive Server Side Rendering) is where you render small chunks on the server and then send it to the client bit by bit. They talk about how this has been occurring from the beginning of the internet. This concept is similar to microfrontends. Dinesh gives advice on how to implement PSSR. He says that when you surver render, it loads on differently. Your framework has to do one complete pass of the histiema, so this means you cannot send things to the client until the whole histema is designated. To beat this they’ve been doing a mix of SSR and CSR, with the header, body, and non critical content rendering on the client side. PSSR bridges the gap between SSR and CSSR. How do we make it real and how do we use it? The panel discusses ways to make PSSR a reality. Dinesh has been experimenting with it with extra services, and he gives his method for doing it, emphasizing the importance of where you divide your code is very important, it has to be in sequence. CSS Grid solves this problem, so you could render things out of order and the browser puts it in the right spot. They talk about other ways to get around it. Lucas shares some of the difficulties he’s encountered with streaming and rendering. They talk about the new feature for the Phoenix framework for Elixir, Live View Now. For this feature, you don’t need client side frameworks to generate dynamic content and it enables two way streaming. However, it does not scale well for extremely large apps. They talk about some of the tradeoffs for using this feature. They conclude by discussing the gap between website optimization and device performance. Panelists Thomas Aylott Dave Ceddia Lucas Reis With special guest: Dinesh Pandiyan Sponsors Progress KendoReact | Try now for FREE: kendoreact.com/reactroundup Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan My JavaScript Story Links React Redux Console.log Puppeteer Webpack Datadog CSS Grid Transport headers Phoenix Elixir Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter Picks Lucas Reis: Ben Hoyt Wholesome Learning Elm Cast iron skillet Thomas Aylott: 6 Lessons Children Need to Learn Dinesh Pandiyan: To-Do List app David Ceddia: On the Utility of Phoenix Live View Special Guest: Dinesh Pandiyan.
RRU 081: NX and Monorepos with Jeffrey Cross and Victor Savkin
Jeffrey Cross and Victor Savkin are the cofounders of NRWL. They used to work together at Google on the Angular team and started NRWL so that people could use Angular 2 well. Victor talks about NRWL’s tool NX, which came from the desire to help people develop like the tech giants. Companies like Google and Facebook develop in the same repository so that people can collaborate. NX is an open source tool for this collaborative development, known as a monorepo. Monorepo style development is a way to develop applications such that you develop multiple projects in the same repository and you use tooling to orchestrate development. The tooling connects everything, makes the experience coherent, and ultimately makes the monorepo style work. The benefits of monorepo development are that the tool chain enables you to interact with different projects in the same fashion, collaboration is more effective, and multiple apps can be refactored at once. The panel discusses what situations are appropriate for a monorepo and which are not. Victor believes that any company with more than one large product would benefit from a monorepo, but it would not benefit a company that wants to keep their teams distinct from one another. The hosts express some concerns about implementation, such as scaling and creating the infrastructure. Victor assures them that a monorepo is inherently scalable, and most tools will work for years and years. As for the infrastructure, companies like NRWL specialize in helping companies set up monorepos, and NX provides many of the necessary tools for a monorepo. A monorepo can be tailor-made to fit any size of company, and can even be created for already established projects. If you wanted to start your own monorepo, you can start by taking a project or handful of projects and moving them to the same place. As you develop, pull pieces of your applications out and put them into packages. Victor cautions that monorepos tend towards a single version policy, so you’ll want to get on the same version as your third party dependencies before you move your next application in. You can move things in and temporarily have different versions, but plan to make them the same version eventually. Victor talks about how the CI in a monorepo setup looks different, because you run tests against everything that might be broken by that change, not just the project its in. So, when you change something in your code, you need to consider what other pieces of code need to be taken into account. A monorepo does make dependencies more explicit, and when you have good tooling it’s easier to see the effect the changes you make have. This is where NX excels. One of the big advantages of NX is that it allows you to partition your application into packages with a well defined API, and prevents the project from becoming one giant node. You can then interact with those packages, and see what happens when you change something. You have a lot more clarity of how your app is partitioned and what the restraints are. NX allows you to share stuff between the front and backend. The show concludes with the conversation turning to Jeffrey and Victor’s consulting work. They talk about some of the interesting features that are happening outside of React that we are missing out on. Victor is very impressed with tooling in the Angular community. He talks about a tool called Console for NX. They end by talking about the schematic powered migrations in Angular. Panelists Leslie Cohn-Wein Dave Ceddia Lucas Reis With special guest: Jeffrey Cross and Victor Savkin Sponsors Sustain Our Software Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan My JavaScript Story Links NRWL Angular NX Building Fullstack React Applications in Monorepo Angular CLI Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter Picks Lucas Reis: Dear Startup Cryptocurrencies video by 1Blue1Brown Dave Ceddia: Help, I’ve Fallen (into code) and I Can’t Get Up! Code maps frontend Victor Savkin: Ember Mug Heal the Internet Jeffrey Cross: lululemon Commission pant Leslie Cohn-Wein Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People Everylayout.dev Special Guests: Jeff Cross and Victor Savkin.
RRU 080: Navigating React Navigation with Zain Sajjad
Zain Sajjad is a frontend developer at his company Peekaboo Guru, an app built in React. The show begins with Zain explaining why he chose to build Peekaboo Guru in React. Ultimately, he chose React for its composability and reusability. He talks about how much data is shared between his React and React Native applications. Zain explains what he means by a container since he is not talking about Docker, and how he has the app organized. He talks about the differences between routing and navigation between React and React Native. When approaching these differences, he breaks things down into components, containers, and platform, paying careful attention to how they work together. This differentiation can actually help a lot with testing as well. The panel asks Zain about choosing between React navigation and React Native navigation, but Peekaboo Guru uses both React navigation and React Native navigation, but on different platforms. They use each on different platforms because React Native doesn’t let you configure it with existing native apps. He talks about the pros and cons of each, but prefers React Native navigation. They decided to use both because Peekaboo Guru is based in a region where there aren’t many users with high end devices, so this decision was made to accommodate them. They then discuss how to approach making important software decisions with a team and how to make an objective decision away from your bias against old or new technology. Zain believes that you have to step out of your comfort zone and think of the team rather than yourself. They talk about the thought process of making these decisions, especially concerning who is going to do the maintenance. They talk about ways to give good feedback even when the maintenance is not going to be your responsibility and the importance of staying humble. Making decisions like this can be tricky because it is where hard skills and soft skills intersect. The panel moves on to talking about machine learning, and Zain talks about his experience using it to screen comments on Peekaboo Guru. Machine learning is getting more and more common, with giants like Snapchat and Facebook doing it as well. There is also a lot of machine learning on our phones that we don’t think about. Zain gives advice for those who want to start learning about machine learning. He advises people to think of it in two parts, preparing a model and using a model. Thomas feels that machine learning is more approachable than it first appears to be, though it is always related to how good the abstraction is. They compare machine learning to AI and a database to assist with understanding. If you want to play around with AI, Zain counsels that programming has the addiction of success. Keep your tasks small to keep getting those tastes of success. He advises that it is best to start by using the inference part and then make a model. He talks about different tools to help with the math. The show concludes with the panel agreeing to his counsel and reminding listeners that failure is trying to go from 0 to perfect in one step. Panelists Thomas Aylott Lucas Reis With special guest: Zain Sajjad Sponsors Adventures in Blockchain Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan My Angular Story Links Peekaboo Guru React React Native React Native Navigation React Navigation SQL TensorFlow Fun Fun Function Immer.js Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter Picks Lucas Reis: Ember.js 3Blue1Brown Thomas Aylott: Rite in the Rain notepad Special Guest: Zain Sajjad.
RRU 079: State Machines and State Charts with Farzad Yousef Zadeh
Episode Summary Today’s guest is Farzad Yousef Zadeh, a developer from Iran with a unique path into computer programming. He started by studying astrophysics and aerospace engineering in college, then dropped out in his last semester because it wasn’t the right path. He then taught himself to code, working mostly in web programming and frontend development. Despite his change in course, Farzad remains passionate about observing the night sky. Farzad is here today to talk about the ideas in his talk Explicitness and Consistency in UI, where he talks about the difficulties of developing a user interface and how the experience can be improved by using state machines and state charts. He talks about his inspiration for the talk and how he has implemented state machines and state charts into his work. The panel backtracks and talks about the definition of state machines and state charts. A state machine, from an academic background, is a model for computing something. It's for managing and controlling, taking over branching and managing a finite amount of state declaratively. State machines are not so much about sharing or reusing, but about how your communicate a certain behavior. Despite the fact that event driven programming permeates the programming consciousness, thinking about state charts and state machines is actually more natural than it first appears. The panel explains how it’s the same principle as whiteboarding to solve a problem. Lucas asks how state charts are different from pure React. Farzad talks about how it’s important not to just treat your static states as first class, but also the transitions between them. Otherwise, you would end up with something that looks like a map with cities and towns, but no roads. Using statecharts and state machines makes testing an application much easier, and in some ways you let the machine test itself. The machine will know what to do with your states because you define the path, and the machine will take the path for you. They again talk about the difference between state machines and state charts. A state machine defines a finite set of states and defining the events that the machine can take and respond to when transitioning from state A to B. If you use only this, you will encounter a snag called ‘state explosion’ because not non-concrete things cannot be modeled. So, state charts were invented to compensate for this. A state chart brings the idea of an extended state, or the context and data you need to hold and reason from. Farzad talks about other types of machines and supports that exist for branching, entry actions, and exit actions. This is similar to the use effect hook in React. He gives examples of where you would use this logic and how it would be worked into frameworks. Farzad talks about how your machine is just a definition, a declarative model of how something is supposed to behave, and how having that separation between the definition of the logic and behavior vs the implementation of API has given us so much more freedom and portability The panel talks about how using state machines and charts is an investment in the long term maintainability of your code. They agree that using state machines and charts makes it easier to communicate with other developers, new team members, and even non developers. They talk about Cerebral.js and its contributions and model. As with everything in programming, state machines are not a silver bullet and don’t work in every situation. Farzad talks about situations where state machines can be unhelpful. It is still valuable to consider state machines and charts because it forces you to dedicate time thinking and organizing your thoughts so that you can build something maintainable that won’t just be thrown away. The panel discusses how thinking things out before starting to code can be beneficial. They finish by talking about how React Hooks has started them on the path to implement state machines and charts into their code. Panelists David Ceddia Lucas Reis Leslie Cohn-Wein Thomas Aylott With special guest: Farzad Yousef Zadeh Sponsors Sustain Our Software Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan My Angular Story Links Explicitness and Consistency in UI David Khourshid xstate library RRU 069: The State Machines in React with David Khourshid State machine State chart Cerebral JS Origami by Facebook Elm The GaryVee Content Model Overmind JS Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter Picks David Ceddia: Reverse Interview Thomas Aylott: Machine Learning Zero to Hero TensorFlow at Google I/O 2019 channel Lucas Reis: How to Learn D3.js Leslie Cohn-Wein: Write Fewer Tests! From Automation to Autogeneration by David Khourshid Farzad Yousef Zadeh: Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You Special Guest: Farzad Yousef Zadeh.
RRU 078: The Uncanny Valley with Håkon Krogh
Episode Summary Today’s guest is Håkon Krogh, and the panel is discussing his talk on lightning fast SSR React apps given at React Amsterdam. He gives a brief overview and defines his use of the Uncanny Valley (called the Valley of Lies in his talk). In this instance, the Uncanny Valley in programming occurs when everything in a website or application looks great, but none of the buttons work or users simply can’t connect. This is especially common when users try to connect to a site or app with their cell phone rather than a computer. The panel discusses what can be done. It’s important to begin by measuring the lag in your applications. Designing the progressive loading experience first is suggested as a solution, as well as organizing what loads first and using React and HTML for different parts of the app. It’s important to realize that some tools don’t work in every situation. The panel talks about the merits of Next.js. Next they talk about what kinds of applications require SSR that make the loading slow. They discuss the importance of SEO ratings and how it can affect your rank in a Google search. Services like Lighthouse can give you an SEO rating so that you can improve. Håkon and the panel talk about other ways to improve on the Uncanny Valley. It’s important to make sure that users have a way to use your site even if they’re stuck in the Uncanny Valley. One way to do this is to provide fallbacks so that if your React isn’t working, the site is still usable. They discuss the merits of micro frontends, using SSR for only part of the app, and reducing bundle size. Unfortunately there is no silver bullet, so solutions will vary by what you’re building. In spite of these setbacks, one of the great features of React is you don’t have to do everything in React. They discuss the emerging idea of shipping different JavaScript for different things and talk about some of the React-like alternatives available. Bridging the Uncanny Valley is vital because it is the reason many people are afraid of their computers, and a good user experience can make people gravitate towards your product. The show concludes with Håkon talking about things in the React community that are piquing his interest. Panelists David Ceddia Thomas Aylott With special guest: Håkon Krogh Sponsors Sustain Our Software Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT Links Håkon Krogh’s React Amsterdam talk Next.js SEO ratings Gatsby Lighthouse Apollo GraphQL npm TypeScript Preact Inferno.js Follow DevChatTV on Facebook and Twitter Picks David Ceddia: FX microjs.com Thomas Aylott: Mindset by Carol Dwek Håkon Krogh: Bundlephobia Special Guest: Håkon Krogh.
RRU 077: Reusing Code Responsibly with Andrey Okonetchnikov
Episode Summary Andrey Okonetchnikov is a specialist in frontend architecture and design systems. He runs his own consultancy and made the package lint-staged. Andrey has been in programming for 20 years and talks about his background, how he got into React, and why he started component-driven.io. Andrey has always been interested in design tools and design systems, it just wasn’t the right time because the right tools weren’t available. Since Andrey has been working in frameworks for 20 years and has watched them come and go, Lucas asks Andrey how he has seen the communication between developers and business owners evolve over that time. Andrey reflects on his first conference talk and believes that not much has changed, even if the tools have. His perfect interaction between developers and business owners would be codeless, and would instead draw his design on a napkin. This idea ties into Andrey’s ideas of creating things in primitives instead of wireframes. He relates his idea to the pattern philosophy of the building architect Christopher Alexander, the idea that specific design problems require specific solutions. He talks about since everything in React is a component, we can encapsulate a design decision into a component. Since the power of components is redistributing knowledge, the panel discusses how components promotes reusability, accessibility, and sustainability in code. However, Frankenstein components are the dark side of reusability. Andrey talks about the dynamic view of a design system that does reuse and how to make sure that it evolves cleanly. They discuss how much of can be planned in advance the first time you’re creating a component versus how much should you not try to think too far ahead and fix it when it comes up. They all agree that early abstraction can be almost as destructive as early optimization Panelists Leslie Cohn-Wein Thomas Aylott Lucas Reis With special guest: Andrey Okonetchnikov Sponsors Sustain Our Software Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT Links Lint-staged Component-driven.io Primitive Shape Up book Create prototype using AI : Airbnb test Monica Lent twitter Wireframe jQuery CoffeeScript Backbone.js Christopher Alexander Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter Picks Leslie Cohn Wein: Frontend Masters Intro to Vue course Gatsby.js glossary Thomas Aylott: Designing Web Interfaces by Bill Scott Lucas Reis: Shape Up book MIT open courseware Andrey Okonetchnikov: Components.ai Special Guest: Andrey Okonetchnikov.
RRU 076: Ignite and the React Community with Jamon Holmgren
Sponsors React Native Radio Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan GitLab | Get 30% off tickets with the promo code: DEVCHATCOMMIT Panel David Ceddia Lucas Reis With special guest: Jamon Holmgren Episode Summary Today’s guest is Jamon Holmgren from Oregon. Jamon is the the CTO for Infinite Red, a consultancy that designs and builds mobile apps. The show starts with Jamon talking about his background in coding, which goes all the way back to when he was 12 years old. The panel brings up his React Finland presentation on building a community around Ignite. Ignite is a plugins and boilerplate maker for React that can speed up app creation. Jamon talks about how it works and how it came about. The panel believes this to be an excellent product that will contribute to code quality and doesn’t contribute to the jumble of boilerplates out there. Since Infinite Red engineers work on both web and mobile applications, Jamon talks about how they navigate the differences between the two platforms. Their primary tool for doing this is MobX, and Jamon expounds on how it works. The panel discusses situations where using React Hooks and React Context are too low level for a state management solution for a big application, and thus where tools like MobX become necessary. The conversation turns to the React Core team and how they view the community coming up with their own solutions. The panel discusses the lack of executive decisions in React and compare it to other languages like Ruby, and how it affects the longevity of a language. They weigh the benefits of a core team that makes executive decisions and causes conflict versus one that doesn’t and the chaos that ensues. They discuss the benefits of standardization, but ultimately agree that collaboration almost always comes up with the best solution. Links Infinite Red Building a Community Around Ignite Ignite Boilerplate MobX State Tree MobX React MobX Emer React Redux React Context React Hooks Apollo Elm Prettier @jevakallio Tweet Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter Picks David Ceddia: Devurls.com Reducing Motion to Improve Accessibility Lucas Reis: CSS Grid like you are Jan Tschichold Jamon Holmgren: React Node GUI Special Guest: Jamon Holmgren.
RRU 075: Animations and React Morphe with Bruno Lorenco
Sponsors Adventures in Devops Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan My JavaScript Story Panel David Ceddia Thomas Aylott Leslie Cohn-Wein Lucas Reis With special guest: Bruno Lourenco Episode Summary Bruno is a developer specializing in multimedia. He is currently building websites with React and the creator of React Morph, an animation library. Bruno talks about what React Morph is, how it originated, and the flip animation technique. React Morph is uniquely designed to be compatible with many platforms. Bruno talks about his goal to make everything simpler, from having animations on your website, to making things easier for users of the application. The panel discusses the importance of animation and how it relates to user accessibility. They discuss how animation is interpreted in the brain to create meaning and purpose. On the other hand, it can be easy to go overboard with animation and can even make people feel sick. Since animation is important, Bruno outlines ways to avoid causing motion sickness in users. They discuss the difficulty of communicating animation intention between designers and developers. Animation should not be the last thing a team thinks about and should be given the same kind of considerations as for color and typography. They discuss the difficulties of adding animation to a project and whether or not animations should be included in the design system. They talk about the differences between mobile apps and web apps in how animations are used, and what the different expectations users have for them. React as a framework emphasizes static states, so Bruno and the panel discuss whether or not React is an animation friendly framework. Bruno talks about ways to get animations to fit the React paradigm so that they can be added. His hope is that React Morph will take care of a lot of animations automatically without CSS. He talks about other animation libraries that have influenced React Morph. The show finishes with Bruno talking about what he would like to accomplish next, which is to bring the design world and developer world closer together. Links Render Props React Morph React Hooks Flip technique Change blindness Qartz composer Origami Keynote Popmotion Popmotion Popcorn Node.JS Designing Web Interfaces Reduced motion preference Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter Picks David Ceddia: DevJoy Thomas Aylott: Lecture on Jung’s Typography Thomas’ Youtube channel Lucas Reis: Information Theory for Intelligent People Leslie Cohn-Wein: Resilient Management by Laura Hogan Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse Bruno Lourenco: A-Frame React Bruno’s React Finland talk Special Guest: Bruno Lourenço.
RRU 074: Learning React and TypeScript in Public with Shawn "swyx" Wang
Sponsors Netlify Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry’s small plan Panel David Ceddia Thomas Aylott Leslie Cohn-Wein Lucas Reis With special guest: Shawn Wang Episode Summary Today’s guest Shawn Wang is a career changer starts off the show about how he got from finance to programming. The panel talks about how they each got started in programming. Shawn explains his Learn In Public manifesto. They discuss the benefits of learning in public and how concepts like Cunninham’s Law and lampshading can be a good thing. Shawn talks about the differences between inbound and outbound marketing. The two biggest benefits of learning in public is that people will come to help you, it helps you to build capital, and it os the fastest way to learn. They discuss the balance between sharing too little and oversharing. Leslie brings up some possible safety concerns, and the panel discusses ways to stay safe while learning in public. Ultimately, it’s ok to learn in public and maintain anonymity. They discuss ways to adjust public learning to your comfort zone and how to know when you’ve done well with your public learning. Shawn talks about why he started doing TypeScript and React and the importance of saying thank you to your teachers, which also comes with some unexpected perks. They finish by discussing how to know if people care about what you’re producing. Links VBA Microsoft Excel Haskell Hoogle Cunningham’s Law Lampshading Nerd sniping Julia Evans cartoons React Suspense talk by swyx Lin Clark code cartoons Lin Clark - A Cartoon Intro to Fiber - React Conf 2017 Samantha Ming React/TypeScript Cheat Sheet Learn In Public Follow DevChat on Facebook and Twitter Picks David Ceddia: Why React Hooks Thomas Aylott: Atomic Habits by James Clear Lucas Reis: Tweet from James Clear Leslie Cohn-Wein: Storybook Accessibility Add-on Shawn Wang: Lizzo’s Juice 12 Leverage Points Special Guest: Shawn Wang.