Front End Happy Hour

Users are extremely sensitive to web performance. The slightest change in a website’s load time can impact a user staying or going. In this episode we talk about ways to help improve web performance and why it’s so important. Items mentioned in the episode: Amazon found every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales, Page speed correlates to business metrics at Walmart.com, For Google, 400ms of incr...

In this episode, we are joined by Chris Saint-Amant from Netflix to help discuss what it’s like to transition from being an engineer to becoming an engineering manager. We share our thoughts on what engineers expect in their manager and share advice for engineers interested in moving into a management role. Guests: Chris Saint-Amant - @csaintamant Panelists: Ryan Burgess - @burgessdryan Augustus Y...

As an engineer we build things, but we also make mistakes or introduce bugs into the software we write. In this episode, we share horror stories of things that we’ve experienced in our careers and how we’ve learned from them. Hopefully, this episode helps you avoid making similar mistakes. Items mentioned in the episode: Flash, Sass, Python, PHP, Chartbeat, SRE, Reddit Marketplace, Full Stack TO,...

In the JavaScript community, we have a lot of amazing frameworks that help us in our day to day work. It can be at times overwhelming to understand what framework is the best one to use. In this episode, we discuss our thoughts and opinions on the various frameworks. Items mentioned in the episode: React, Angular, Ember, JQuery, Backbone, Marionette, Knockout, Troop, Prototype, YUI, Webpack, GWT,...

Conferences continue to be a great way to learn and grow as an engineer. In the 14th episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast we discuss the value of conferences and why you might want to attend. It’s a special episode because we recorded at React Rally in Salt Lake City. At the conference we caught up with a lot of great attendees and speakers to hear about their experiences at conferences and...

In episode 13 of the Front End Happy Hour podcast, we’re joined by Jafar Husain from Netflix to talk with us about the future of JavaScript. Jafar is part of the TC-39 committee that helps determine the future specs of ECMAScript. Jafar shares a lot of interesting insights into how the committee works and how a feature makes it's way into the spec. Jafar also talks to us about Observables and canc...

As an engineer or developer we currently fortunate enough to have a wide selection of amazing jobs and companies to work for. Although we have a wide selection of jobs, finding the right one is extremely important and may require some additional work. In this episode, we are joined by the guests Chrissy Running and Alayna Ketner who are both talented recruiters at Netflix. Chrissy and Alayna have...

Leveraging transpilers is extremely helpful in allowing us to extend the JavaScript language in ways JavaScript engines cannot. There are a lot of amazing transpilers available in the JavaScript community and we all love transpilers, but there are things developers should be aware of when we’re using transpilers. Items mentioned in the episode: Babel, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Traceur, Sass, Less,...

In the technology industry we’re continually trying to grow the diversity of people who are working in the space. Most recently there have been a lot of great efforts made to increase the number of women in tech. In this episode we are joined by two talented women working at large tech companies in the Bay Area, Lisa Burgess (Uber) and Mars Jullian (Netflix). We discuss what it’s like to be a wome...

In this episode we learn about animating with JavaScript. We’re joined by a special guest, Sarah Drasner, who is an expert in JavaScript and SVG animations. Having good animations in your product is really important for the overall user experience. In the episode we discuss various libraries to help create animations in your websites or applications. Sarah shares a lot of valuable information. Ite...

Working in Silicon Valley is very unique. We work in a bubble, immersed in technology. There are billboards about frameworks, technology, and gadgets. Coffee shops are filled with people on Macbooks covered in stickers. Conversations on the train, coffee shops and on the streets are about programming languages. There’s a unique culture from other places we’ve all lived. In this episode, we share o...

In this episode, we have a special guest joining us to talk about digital accessibility, Jennison Asuncion who is a leader in the accessibility community and has a lot of information to help us improve our websites and applications be more accessible for all users. We also talk about Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) coming up on May 19th. Find out how you can participate. Items mentioned...

We’ve all heard unit testing is good, but how do you get started writing unit tests? In this episode of Front End Happy Hour we share our experiences and advice writing unit tests. We discuss why it’s important and beneficial to have unit tests in your JavaScript. We share how we’ve approached unit tests and what a good unit test looks like. We also talk about the various tools and frameworks avai...

In order to work professionally as a front end developer, there is always an intense interview process. In this episode, we share our experiences and thoughts on the interviews we’ve done in the past. Not only have we had experience being interviewed, we’ve also had a lot of experience interviewing other engineers for jobs at our companies. We share things we’re looking for when we interview candi...

ECMAScript 6 was a major release for the JavaScript language. There’s a lot of great new features that have been added. In this episode we discuss how you can start using ES6 today and what we’ll start seeing in the next year for the latest update to ECMAScript. We share our favorite features and the best ways to learn and stay up to date with new features. Items mentioned in the episode: ESNext,...

In this ever changing industry of front end development, developers are constantly learning. In this episode of Front End Happy Hour we discuss everything from our school backgrounds and what lead us to front end development. We also share ways we stay up to date with the ever-changing landscape of new technologies. Along with our usual panelists, we are joined by guest Sarah Showers, a front end...

In the second episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast, our special guest, Ben Lesh joins us to talk about all the great things in RxJS 5. Items mentioned in the episode: Rx Marbles Guests: Ben Lesh - @BenLesh Panelists: Brian Holt - @holtbt Jem Young - @JemYoung Ryan Anklam - @bittersweetryan Ryan Burgess - @burgessdryan Picks: Ben Lesh - Egghead.io Ben Lesh - Egghead.io - RxJS Creating Observ...

For our very first episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast, we have our panelists (Augustus Yuan, Derrick Showers, Jem Young, Ryan Anklam and Ryan Burgess) discuss their opinions on the Medium article posted in early January, titled "The Sad State of Web Development", written by Drew Hamlett. The panel shares their thoughts on front end tools and how they view the current state of web developm...