This week we diverge from our typical technical focus to talk about communication. Many of you are developing a product. Whether that be an open source library, course material on your favorite framework, or your skills a freelance developer — you are selling something. Selling requires more than great technical skills. It requires strong communication. Today we sit with Val Geisler — founder of Fix My Churn. We talk about communication thru email, Why it’s critical for building and branding you...
Sep 12, 2019•43 min•Ep. 63
This week we sit down with Chris Biscardi — open source developer and consultant. He's working with Gatsby on projects like gatsby-mdx and gatsby-themes. So we talk about what Gatsby Themes are, why they promise to bring a new wave of shareability to Gatsby sites, and what you need to know to start using them. We also talk about designing a workflow around sharing what you know and building an effective content pipeline. Featuring Chris Biscardi — Twitter , Website , GitHub Michael Chan — Twitte...
Sep 05, 2019•57 min•Ep. 62
This week we sit down with Phani Raju. He's a Staff Engineer at GitHub and lead on the GitHub Package Registry. He tells us what package registries are and why GitHub is uniquely suited to take them to the next step in security, trust, and user experience. This is an awesome chat if you'd like to learn more about where your packages may be coming from in the future. It's also a fantastic lens into the great engineering and design thinking that is alive and well at GitHub — and how the Dear GitHu...
Aug 29, 2019•49 min•Ep. 61
This week on React Podcast we sit down with James K Nelson. We discuss what makes React hard to learn and how he's addressing that with his teaching platform frontarm.com. We talk about learning React without the buzzwords, his new router — Navi — and how to make some React bacon. This is a great episode for those who have had trouble keeping up with React and want to discover and master the things have remained the same Featuring James K Nelson — Twitter , Website , GitHub Michael Chan — Twitte...
Aug 22, 2019•41 min•Ep. 60
This week we talk Jamison Dance about the parts of programming that are distinctly non-technical. We talk about the perfect TLD, working with a team, finding psychological safety, the organization of React Rally, and how to recycle batteries. Jamison is co-host of the podcast Soft Skills Engineering where he and Dave Smith answer non-technical questions for technical folks. It's a great show that I highly recommend. check it out at softskills.audio Featuring Jamison Dance — Twitter , Website , G...
Aug 15, 2019•49 min•Ep. 59
This week we talk with Eve Porcello about getting started with GraphQL. She is the co-author of Learning React and Learning GraphQL. She travels the world with husband Alex bank teaching JavaScript and telling jokes. We talk about comedy and code and how to engage audiences with a little bit of funny. This is a great episode if you want to add a little GraphQL to your stack or learn how to give a hilarious conference talks. Featuring Eve Porcello — Twitter , Github , Website Michael Chan — Twitt...
Aug 08, 2019•43 min•Ep. 58
We sit down with venerable Emma Bostian to talk mentorship. She tells us all about different types of mentorship you can find, At what phases in your career each type is most valuable, And how to get a "yes" from someone you'd like to mentor you. We also discuss her new mentoring platform codingcoach.io and how it's helping connect developers based on technology and field. Buckle in and get ready to get help. Featuring Emma Bostian — Twitter , Github , Website Michael Chan — Twitter , Github , W...
Aug 01, 2019•44 min•Ep. 57
This week, on React Podcast, We sit with Paul Henschel and talk animation. Paul is the creator of React-spring a library for animating UI based on spring physics. We talk about the library's origin, its future, and how to create lasting beauty on the web. Featuring Paul Henschel — Twitter , Github Michael Chan — Twitter , Github , Website Links paranoid android — a custom ROM aiming to extend the system, working on enhancing the already existing beauty of Android and following the same design ph...
Jul 25, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 56
This week we sit with Erik Rasmussen to discuss forms in React. We talk about his library redux-form and it's evolution to final-form — a framework agnostic approach to making dynamic forms easy. Along the way the talk open source maintenance and monetization struggles. If you've wanted open source fame, this is a good one to listen to. Featuring Erik Rasmussen — Twitter , Github Michael Chan — Twitter , Github , Website Links Github Sponsors — Fund your work. Build what matters. Forms — React D...
Jul 18, 2019•50 min•Ep. 55
This week, we talk accessibility pitfalls with Aaron Canon. Aaron is the co-founder and chief accessibility engineer at Accessible360 — where he uses his experience as a blind developer to improve real-world accessibility for all citizens of the web. He shares his first-hand experience on which practices work, which ones are bogus, where to focus our accessibility efforts, and which libraries provide the best starting point. I learned a ton. You will too. Featuring Aaron Cannon — Twitter , Websi...
Jul 11, 2019•49 min•Ep. 54
Have you had the privilege of working in PHP? If you haven't let me tell you: You can have a dynamic website just by putting a single PHP file on a host, anywhere. It's magic For us React developers, everything is a lot more complicated. We want server-side rendering for Google crawl-ability, Hot Module Replacement for quick feedback in development, and code-splitting to get quick initial page loads for users. None of that is easy to implement. But there's hope. The team at Zeit wants you to hav...
Jul 07, 2019•54 min•Ep. 53
Navigating a career is tricky. This is double true for women in tech. Add a spouses career, traditional gender expectations, Single-parenting, Or illness to the mix And finding a satisfying career can feel impossible. Today, Sophia Shoemaker sits with us to discuss how she manages being a mom in tech, conference speaker, FullStack React editor, and deeply invested in her community. It's a different story than many of you are used to hearing on this show. A more complicated one. I'm excited that ...
Jun 27, 2019•52 min•Ep. 52
How many times have you written a state reducer? 100 times? 100 times a month? Truth is, it's tricky for human brains to write performant state mutations in immutable terms. Maybe you're whip smart and you've got the theory on lock but the resulting "spread hell" is hard to read and edit long term. Michel Westrate wants you to stop writing state updates with immutable APIs like spread, concat, and slice and take a second look at mutable APIs like property assignment, forEach, and push. He's made...
Jun 20, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 51
Saron Yitbarek is the CEO and founder of CodeNewbie, the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. She's also the vibrant host of the CodeNewbie Podcast, Basecs Podcast, and Command Line Heroes (a Red Hat podcast). Chantastic Asks her about learning in public, interviewing the world’s greatest developers, the art of storytelling, and aggressive kindness that surround her #CodeNewbie twitter chats. They discuss podcasting, building a community you can trust, shower new...
May 30, 2019•52 min•Ep. 50
Scott Tolinski is creator of Level Up Totorials and co-host of Syntax — a tasty treats podcast for web developers. He joins us on React Podcast to talk about career, hobbies, and building a business. Chantastic asks him about break dancing, YouTube as a career development platform, weeding out hators, and making the jump to independent creator. They discuss podcasting, self-management, embracing ignorance, forcing confidence, determining content value, and importance of being kind to creators. F...
May 23, 2019•55 min•Ep. 49
Jon Rohan is an Engineer on the Design Systems Team at Github, building tooling for Octicons and Primer — their React component library. Chantastic asks about his 6 year tenure at GitHub, the inspiration behind his primer.css slam poem, how their using CSS-in-JS and Lerna to structure their work, and his project Figma Actions for seamlessly building icons from Figma design files. They discuss design apps, Monorepos, GitHub Actions, CSS-in-JS, and why you should open source your systems. Featurin...
May 16, 2019•41 min•Ep. 48
Kent C Dodds is a blogger, podcaster, open sorcerer, and community builder that recently made the leap to full-time, self-employed educator. Chantastic asks about the approach Kent took while developing his career PayPal, what he had to give up to stay focused, and what's changed now that he's independent. They discuss learning by teaching, the importance of being consistent, avoiding the permission trap, and what it means to "increase the impact of your value". Featuring Kent C. Dodds — Twitter...
May 09, 2019•59 min•Ep. 47
Houssein Djirdeh works with the Developer Relations team at Google, educating React developers on web application performance. He created the world best iPhone and Android app for Github — GitPoint. Chantastic asks about his experience creating GitPoint (a fully featured GitHub client, built in React Native), what performance vernacular like tti, fcp, and Web Workers mean, and common performance pitfalls and misunderstandings found in React apps. They discuss the importance of limiting scope to ...
May 02, 2019•38 min•Ep. 46
Versioning. How do we do it? It's a lot more complicated than "just use semver!" This week Michael Jackson joins us again to discuss the pains of versioning, how to avoid them, and why it all comes down to communication. Chantastic asks about upcoming how React Router v5 will take advantage of new features like Hooks and what versioning strategy they intend to employ with for legacy React Router users. They fumble clumsily around what the various characters in a package.json file mean, discuss o...
Apr 25, 2019•47 min•Ep. 45
Nader Dabit is the author on React Native in Action, Host of React Native Radio, Educator, Speaker, and doing developer relations for AWS Cloud. Chantastic asks about Amplify and AppSync, where they fit into AWS offerings, why they make authentication and GraphQL server setup a breeze, and how we can start using them. They discuss the opportunity and difficulty in podcast, the challenges of author a book, and travel the world speaking and educating. Featuring Nader Dabit — Twitter , Github , Web...
Apr 18, 2019•38 min•Ep. 44
Jamon Holmgren is CTO and cofounder of Infinite Red, a consultancy that specializes in React Native. Chantastic asks about Jamon's start in programming and entrepreneurship, why consultancies have an edge in Open Source, and how the Chain React conference plays into their business strategy. They discuss the team benefits of TypeScript, humble PHP beginnings, and the big differences between consultancy and product. Featuring Jamon Holmgren — Twitter , Github , Website Michael Chan — Twitter , Git...
Apr 11, 2019•51 min•Ep. 43
Sara is a developer on the beloved CodeSandbox app. She's worked for years as a developer advocate, giving brilliant talks across the world, and building some of the wildest sites on the web. Chantastic asks her about succeeding against mental illness, how she achieved meme status, why we should "build dumb shit", and what the heck a developer advocate does. They discuss corporate "change the world" bullshit, casual racism, why you should teach what you know, and the shockingly unglamorous lifes...
Apr 04, 2019•50 min•Ep. 42
Typescript. What is it? How does it help you write better code? Will it help you sleep better at night? Jared is a lead engineer at The Palmer Group, a strategy, design, and engineering firm. There he uses TypeScript every day to keep code sturdy and maintainable. Chantastic asks Jared what we need to know to get a little TypeScript into our apps. They discuss the joys and pains of Typescript in 2019 and how it compares to languages like Reason, Ocaml, Fable, and Elm. Featuring Jared Palmer — Tw...
Mar 28, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 41
Cassidy Williams is a Senior Software Engineer CodePen in Seattle — using React, Redux, GraphQL, and Apollo Client to build the frontend of CodePen and CodePen Projects. Chantastic asks about building a startup on a plane, maximizing side hustle effort, the importance of networking, and what it's like to meet your heroes. They discuss tips for getting great advice from smart people, building passive income, finding safe workplaces, and what it looks like to lift as you climb. Featuring Cassidy W...
Mar 21, 2019•46 min•Ep. 40
Kyle is a JavaScript engineer at webflow, speaker, educator, and Twitch streamer. Chantastic asks Kyle about his experience healing from burnout, identifying his value, interviewing as a senior developer, and evaluating team fit. They discuss the importance of networking, brand building, managing your energy, fighting the desire for more, and weaving it all together. Featuring Kyle Shevlin — Twitter , Github , Website Michael Chan — Twitter , Github , Website Links secondCareerDevs — Roads less ...
Mar 14, 2019•33 min•Ep. 39
Kyle is a JavaScript engineer at webflow, speaker, educator, and Twitch streamer. Chantastic asks Kyle about his experience breaking into web development, how he navigated the early portion of his career, and the inspiration behind his show secondCareerDevs. They discuss the importance of finding your community, learning how to learn, and how to make progress on your side projects by live streaming your work. Featuring Kyle Shevlin — Twitter , Github , Website Michael Chan — Twitter , Github , W...
Mar 07, 2019•38 min•Ep. 38
Brian Vaughn is a member of the React Core team and creator of libraries like react-virtualized and react-window. He's a wealth of knowledge in React performance and application profiling. Chantastic asks Brian about the new profiler tools he's been working on (available to React v16.5 apps), React Core team dynamics, and the future of windowing in React and browsers. They discuss a handful of practical performance tips, Concurrent rendering in React, React.memo and the useMemo Hook, and how to ...
Feb 28, 2019•41 min•Ep. 37
Sean Swyx Wang moderates and organizes r/reactjs on Reddit. He also works on developer experience at Netlify. Sean is a voracious learner and loves to share what he's learning and believes that everyone — regardless of experience — should "learn in public". Chantastic asks him about what's new in React and how r/reactjs is helping developers learn React, get connected in the community, and find jobs. They discuss strategies for being a lifelong learner, how to get started in React, the growth of...
Feb 21, 2019•40 min•Ep. 36
Matt Perry is the developer behind PopMotion, a declarative animation library for the web. Chantastic asks his inspiration for PopMotion, the difficulties of maintaining a low-level open source library, what he things declarative APIs might look like in the future. They’re discussion goes all over the place. You kinda just have to listen… Featuring Matt Perry — Twitter , Github , Website Michael Chan — Twitter , Github , Website Links Popmotion — Simple libraries for delightful interfaces Pose —...
Jan 17, 2019•47 min•Ep. 35
Jen Luker is a lead software engineer at Formidable Labs, keynote speaker, host of @BookBytesFM, and expert knitter. Chantastic asks her about the Fiber Arts Corner at React Conf, the history that textiles and programming share, and how we can make our apps more accessible. Featuring Jen Luker — Twitter , Github , Website Michael Chan — Twitter , Github , Website Links Fiber Arts Circle on Periscope Jacquard loom on Wikipedia 99% Invisible Podcast Kids: Articles of Interest #1 — discussing Jacqu...
Jan 09, 2019•37 min•Ep. 34
