Whiskey Web and Whatnot

Many people dream about being their own boss, but there’s no clear rulebook that outlines how to get there. While self-employment seems glorious to some, it’s not for everyone. How does someone know when they are ready to take the step into the unknown, and how do they know if that choice will suit them? Josh Goldberg, Open Source Developer and author of Learning TypeScript , built much of his cod...

Working together in a professional environment is easier said than done, especially when teams have conflicting workflows, priorities, and skill sets. Designers are all too familiar with having their work feel like a second priority to developers. Is there a way that designers and developers can collaborate successfully without sacrificing their individual needs? Enter Penpot, the first Open Sourc...

It’s the Advent of Whiskey finale, and Chuck and Robbie keep it casual with more holiday treats, trivia, and traditions. But it wouldn’t be Whiskey Web and Whatnot without a little tech. Physicists are doing mindbending things with tech and in case you didn’t already know it, computers can create wormholes now. In this episode, Chuck and Robbie talk about their favorite holiday treats, holiday tri...

Every developer has a tech stack that they swear by. The perfect stack is usually a combination of convenience and productivity. Robbie released a blog on Ship Shape featuring “Top 5 Web Developer Tools for 2023”. The list features a browser that’s perfect for work and personal use, two terminals, a collaborative clutter-free code editor, and a simplified version of Git. Even if you have old favor...

Robbie and Chuck think the process is rigged. Memorizing algorithms and solving problems in 30 minutes isn’t good enough to judge someone’s capabilities and decide whether they can be trusted for a job. Many great developers crack under the pressure of interviews but that doesn’t mean they’re not good at what they do. The interview process is just a formality to verify someone’s identity, it shoul...

Is YAML a programming language? According to Robbie and Chuck, it’s not. And even though you could code in YAML and add functions to it, doesn’t mean you should. Some things are better left uncomplicated. YAML is a data structuring format, and that’s what it’s good at. While some might disagree, Chuck and Robbie believe functions are one of the key elements of programming languages and YAML doesn’...

It’s anyone’s guess what the future of front-end frameworks will hold but the developer community on Twitter has its own predictions. Meanwhile, usage numbers for Javascript frameworks are showing that Vue and Next are catching up to React. Is the hype around React plateauing, or is that wishful thinking? Whether you call them meta frameworks, backend frameworks, or rendering frameworks, they seem...

Popularity doesn’t equal quality. We’ve seen it with React and the latest technology to fall victim to this is OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT. ChatGPT is trending on Twitter and is talked about as one of the great innovations of this era. But when Chuck and Robbie put it to the test to recommend podcast topics, it doesn’t present the most imaginative ideas. Despite the hype, the tech is not all-knowing...

Every developer has their limits and Chuck and Robbie share their points of view. Shadow DOM and Custom Elements are the last browser APIs they know in the State of JS survey. In the spirit of the holiday, they’re breaking out the Christmas movies, decorating gingerbread houses, and visiting Santa villages to spend quality time with family. In this episode, Chuck and Robbie talk about their final...

The State of JS is one of the best ways to get your voice heard and learn about the Javascript ecosystem. The React developers are likely in the majority of survey respondents but every developer within the Javascript community should consider taking it to get an accurate representation. One of the topics covered in the State of JS survey is browser APIs like WebGL, Web Animations, and Service Wor...

The Javascript landscape is ever-changing. We can always rely on the State of JS survey to keep up with the latest trends and changes in the space. According to Robbie, Microsoft seems to be at the forefront of that change. Microsoft holds the lion’s share of platforms and products in Javascript development including VS Code and GitHub. It’s hard not to rely on Microsoft as a developer. It’s also...

It’s the season of advent calendars, and coding platforms are launching challenges left and right. If you are waiting for a sign to try a new language or framework, advent calendars are a great place to start. The Advent of Whiskey series will be 10 episodes leading up to Christmas. Chuck and Robbie are following Flaviar's Whiskey Advent Calendar 2022, trying new whiskeys each episode and talking...

Chase Granberry can be called a serial entrepreneur. He bootstrapped his first software company before selling it and starting the centralized logging service, Logflare. Chase sold the company to Supabase and joined the team as an acquired hire to support the team with a centralized logging solution and plotting insights for customers. Chase explains where Supabase is really different from Firebas...

It’s not a normal day at the office. Robbie and his family are in Phoenix and the Whiskey Web and Whatnot hosts got together to play a losing game of golf and sip margaritas followed by whiskey. In this episode, Chuck and Robbie guess whether things are Javascript packages or grocery items in a game called “Is it a JS package?”, test their knowledge of tricky Javascript syntax from WTF JS, and tal...

React isn’t good at anything, except being popular. That’s a bold statement, but it’s one that Josh Collinsworth stands by. It seems like nearly every major tech company has React in their stack. But why is a framework built specifically for Facebook so popular in the general developer community? Josh Collinsworth, Senior Front End Developer at Shopify, wrote an article titled “The Self-Fulfilling...

The tech layoff saga continues. The latest company in the hot seat is Twitter. After Elon Musk took control of the company, the platform has been in disarray, leaving developers out of jobs and Twitter users confused about the future of the platform. Is the tech world on fire? Whether it’s social media, browser wars, or framework debates – the tech community seems to be in disagreement or in crisi...

WordPress powers over 43% of sites on the internet today, making it a powerhouse web technology. Its simplicity attracted bloggers and do-it-yourselfers who navigate the platform by Googling code snippets. That knowledge gap comes with a whole host of accessibility issues. Amber Hinds, Founder and CEO at Equalize Digital, quit her part-time gig as a freelance developer when she found WordPress was...

Working on open source projects is a largely thankless job and a labor of love. The developers behind these projects often juggle full-time jobs to pay their bills while maintaining the software that keeps so much of the internet afloat. Max Howell, CEO of tea.inc., pivoted from chemistry to web development because of his fascination for open source. He worked full-time and did pull requests for H...

While multi-page apps (MPAs) seem like a new fixation for the developer community, they're pretty ancient news. If you were browsing the web in the 90s, you were likely visiting a multi-page app. Lucky for us, web tech improved, and made the entire experience of multi-page apps more appealing. One of the cons of MPAs is that they don't have preload and prefetch out of the box. Single-page apps (SP...

Maintaining a CSS codebase can become chaotic pretty quickly and building a new stylesheet for every project can get tedious. Frameworks like Tailwind CSS were born to solve this problem. Adam Wathan, CEO of Tailwind Labs, built a "library-style CSS" for personal use and had no idea the concept would resonate with as many people as it did. When developers started asking him to share his library fo...

There's a lot to consider before committing to a framework to build a native app. If you choose to build in native, ask yourself whether you're prepared to handle the downsides that come with it.   To start, you're limited to one framework and writing in one programming language. If you're not familiar with the syntax, that could pose a major learning curve. With native apps, it's tempting to have...

Every once in a while a new framework rises to popularity and gets the developer community buzzing. One of the frameworks with the most momentum right now is SolidJS. But what makes Solid so special? Dan Jutan, Product Manager at Astro, Inc. and SolidJS core team member believes the frameworks that prioritize developer experience will always come out on top. Before he landed at Solid, Dan started...

The beauty of tech is that it keeps evolving. As a developer, it's important to keep evolving too. Whether that's trying new frameworks, starting side projects, or adopting emerging tech. JavaScript, for example, has taken on a whole new purpose since it was developed in the 90s to support a web browser. The language keeps developers like Robbie intrigued with features that seem underpromoted and...

We all have at least one friend who somehow finds enough hours in a day to have a full-time job and take on several side projects. How can you successfully juggle a career, side hustles, and make time for your passions? Kelly Vaughn, Engineering Manager at Spot AI, has some thoughts. She is leading a diverse, fully remote, global team that spans from California to India. Kelly keeps her management...

Accessibility is like learning a new language, leaving many developers wondering where to start. The answer is pretty simple, start anywhere. But the onus isn’t all on devs. Crystal Preston-Watson has partial sight and uses a screen reader in her day-to-day as a Senior Digital Accessibility Analyst at Salesforce, one of the largest tech companies in the world. As strange as it may seem, she never...