916: I got fired, what should I focus on?

Welcome to Syntax. Today we have a potluck episode for you, which is you bring the questions, we bring the answers. Please keep the questions coming. Go to syntax.fm in the top corner. You click on potluck, you submit your question about anything you want us to answer and we'll answer on an upcoming episode. Today, we've got really good questions on what to do with the NPM package that has suddenly got very popular around how do you maintain it and make sure that it's not going to go away.

A lot of questions around what skills to focus on right now. A couple of people said they just lost their job and they're not sure what to focus on, how to skill up, how to catch up to what's going on. Dealing with imposter syndrome and a bunch of questions around. scott's beautiful lighting setup so let's get on into it speaking of imposter syndrome

I get imposter syndrome every single time I look at my website when it's not functioning. And you know what? Running with all these errors. And you know what can help you get past that? not only get past that in terms of like feeling like you got a handle on things but also really getting those

finely tuned skills of fixing your shit. I'm talking about Sentry at Sentry.io forward slash syntax. Sentry's got everything you need to make your application actually work, whether that is performing quickly. loading fast, tidying up those DB queries or fixing your endpoints so that they're lightning fast, implementing caching where you need it. But it also gives you things like a session replay so you can see what went wrong.

like in a scrubable video when it went wrong you can get uh just all of your errors monitored in this really excellent interface which just went underwent a a really nice redesign so Everything is really reorganized in a main new navigation now that's super good. And you even get logging now, code coverage, those types of things. So check it out at century.io forward slash syntax. Sign up using the coupon code.

tasty treat all lowercase all one word and get two months for free what's up scott how you doing today oh i'm doing good man just hanging out we got a cold one here in colorado it is like 50 and rainy. It's our kids' last day of school. So, of course, like, last day of school vibes is just raining and cold. That sucks. But it's all good, man. It's all good. Yeah, chilling. I'm going to Amsterdam next week for...

JS Nation and React Summit, which will have already happened by the time you hear this. Yes. And we just got back from, well, I just got back from Denver where we had the syntax meetup. What a hoot, man. We had like probably 120 people show up for a meetup. Yeah, you know, it was a good turnout. I would love to see what the final numbers are on that thing. But no, I thought it was great.

There's like this thing where you just think AI can do anything. So I took a photo of us sitting up on stage and I took a pan of the crowd. I was like, how many people? I was like, well, you just throw it into ChatGPT and they'll tell you how many. So I uploaded it to ChatGPT.

And they said there was three people in the crowd. And then it like even showed me the Python code and everything that I ran in. Nowhere close. I suppose we could just count the faces in that photo. Hmm. What would you, that would be. We could put somebody on that. Can we get an intern? Who wants to be syntax intern to count the people in a photo? Yeah, also Randy just told me we were going to have to upload like 150 videos manually to something. So I was thinking, huh.

That doesn't sound like a lot of fun. But also... Thank you to everybody who came out. It was a great time. We did coding games. We did some CSS battles on stage where we had to switch. We were all working on one computer. We were switching every 60 seconds. It was a riot. And then we had a... a great after party at, at Wincoop brewery and a ton of people showed up and it was just,

a lot of fun whole thing was great so shout out to anybody who decided to make the trip out uh some people came from far away like california flew and drove from utah yeah amazing yeah it's amazing let us know where you want us to do the next one because uh We're already thinking about that. It's going to happen. Let's get into the first question here from Niccolo Fidelli.

Hey, I created an NPM package last year that's surprisingly taken off. It's now getting around 60,000 weekly downloads. That's a lot of downloads. I'm looking for advice on what to do next, especially because I'd like to share ownership to ensure its continued maintenance. As I'm concerned, I might not always have the time for it myself. What do you recommend? Yeah, for sure.

Just cash out, brother. Yeah, throw some ads in the command line on install, all that stuff. Yeah, I don't, you know, this one to me is... one thing that i i haven't done personally but i do think there are some good practices in general especially for maintenance long term the thing you need to think about with maintenance long term

is that hopefully your package doesn't require a bunch of versions of several different mini libraries because things are always going to be evolving, especially like front-end frameworks and stuff like that.

In that case, yeah, you're going to have to keep it maintained. One thing I think that some packages have done really well lately is that they've um stopped relying on a bunch of external packages for things that may change their versions that may update that may go out of just out of sync in general so like really relying on less external dependencies to me feels like a good move for maintainability in the long run. Also,

Make it be known that you're looking for maintainers. There's people out there.

yeah pop it in the readme and and put it somewhere put it just at the dang top of the readme so that like people might see it you never know who's out there looking to get experience doing that kind of stuff but reach out to people that way they are whether it's on npm where they're going to be seeing it or on github whatever just make sure that that's visible that you're looking for help maintaining this thing anytime i've had a either a package or i have several like

GitHub repos that are not packages, but they're GitHub repos of... I have one for burner email addresses. I have another one for the uses.tech website. I got, I don't know, maybe four or five of those. And generally what happens is... somebody that either is interested in the project or somebody that relies on that package for their job is going to sort of like latch on and start submitting issues, maybe submitting pull requests.

And those are generally good people. They have a little bit of skin in the game. They need to make sure that this package that they're relying on is well used. reach out to those people, throw it in the readme that you're looking for maintainers because it's generally a good idea to have more than one set of eyes on something that starts to get a little bit big.

And also like maybe set up some things to accept donations because yeah, you, you might not want to be maintaining this full time or whatever, but if you get enough donations, then, uh, Hey.

That kind of makes the pain a little bit less crazy on that one. I think more people need to do that. It's just throw a little donation on there. And even if you're getting... i don't know 50 100 bucks a month of donations maybe maybe that's even high but you get a couple hundred bucks a year that's still significant and like that stuff can pay for like a laptop or whatever and you don't necessarily feel like you're

you're getting burned when you're like, oh, I just work on this thing that I love to do. And it actually starts, you get a couple little benefits from it here and there. Yeah, word. Ryan says, hey, Wes and Scott, the most irrelevant question.

For Scott, I'm traveling to Denver at the end of July for Laracon. Yeah, we heard a lot of people are heading out to Denver for Laracon. Any recommendations of what to see or do when I'm in town? Denver has a lot of... low-key good restaurants and what i mean by low-key is that like you don't necessarily think of denver and food especially we were talking about this at the meetup sushi man there's a lot of great sushi in denver whether that's um

sushi den or uchi there's some like kind of higher end places if you're looking for a few dollar signs man just look up any of the top restaurants in denver because the the fancy stuff is is fantastic if you're looking for like a good middle ground place to eat linger is a really cool restaurant it's not like that the cheapest place but it's also not some place you have to go get dressed up to go to and it's a really really interesting kind of like blend of of various

regional world foods and stuff like that. It's fantastic. They do a great job there. And while you're at Linger, Right next door to it is the best ice cream place in Denver. You can get yourself some ice cream at Little Man Ice Cream. There is always a line there. The first time we came to Denver...

It was in October, and we got Little Man one day because it was recommended to us, and then it was like we were headed to the airport, like in the car going to the airport, and my wife was like, can we stop at Little Man on the way there? Which was not on the way, mind you. It was out of the way. And we had to go wait in a line for it. And so that's a great place to go. It's fantastic. If you do have means of transportation.

I would highly recommend going out to Red Rocks, not for a concert or anything, but it's just people might not know this, but it's just open during the day. And Red Rocks, the park and amphitheater is like. the coolest dang thing and you can just show up there anytime go through it's like a mountain amphitheater right like you can you can see concerts there and it's just like out in the mountains yeah it's so cool because it is a

Like the literal sides of the Implitheater are just giant red rock. They're massive. And that like really like used acoustically. with the natural landscape. But you'll see people working out there like 24-7. People are running up the stairs. People are... you know, doing yoga or it's just a beautiful landscape. So if you can get out to Red Rocks, do that. Yeah. A lot of cool stuff around Denver. Yeah.

Rocky Mountain Oysters. Where's your favorite spot to get those? I've never had Rocky Mountain Oysters. No? No, I think there are good spots to get them, though. Yeah, I know. I've never had them. For me, it's like... Not for me. Not my style. Do you know what a Rocky Mountain Oyster is? Of course I do. Okay. I live...

In Colorado. I know what Rocky Mountain oysters are. They are bull testicles for anyone who hasn't heard of that. Yeah. I don't need that in my life. I'm going to just say that. I can't say I've partaked before, but... Maybe at one point. Next question we have here from Dan Longtime Lurker. Thanks for all your work. Thank you, Dan. I'm a designer and self-taught developer from New Zealand. I've been lucky enough to have been working in a marketing digital agency.

space for the last nine years i have predominantly working on wordpress designing and building bespoke websites for clients using php js css etc though i have been trying to upscale myself in frameworks like react view etc the reason for this is both job security as well as a way to broaden opportunities i am a family man so anytime that i do have outside

A family and work is generally late at night, so my progression in learning is frustratingly slow, and I often find myself having to go back and restart what I have... already covered and i feel like i'm never getting anywhere and i'm guilty of getting stuck in tutorial heal probably meant tutorial hell there sorry for the long word question is but my question is if you're in my position how would you tackle

this have you guys had to do this yourself yeah this is very common problem in our industry or problem that people have is that the industry moves so fast and if you cannot skill up during your day job, you kind of are in the spot where you work on the same tech stack all day long and you never increase your skills. And then if you get canned...

I think we even have a question like this later on today. Then you're, oh man, my skill set is kind of out of luck. So your approach here is, first of all, try and... Eek these things into your day job. If your day job is constantly standing still, then... the company you work for is probably going to be in trouble as well at some point. And they certainly need to be trying new stuff. Not to say you should try absolutely everything new, but you should constantly be looking at what is the latest.

and creators what are these things that can help us build better faster things right if you

for whatever reason, you simply cannot do that because the tech stack of whatever app you're working on is pretty set in stone, then you're going to need some sort of either side project or little things that you can do. And being able to start and... finish and just dust your hands off of a project i think is is the way forward a lot of people say like have like a little passion project where you're working on it for

like eight years or whatever. And a lot of people like that. But for me, it's like, I gotta like, I'm going to start something. I'm going to build something that I want. And I'm going to learn a whole bunch along the way. And then I'm going to be done that thing. You might want to come back to it at another point and update it. But being able to simply go through the entire motion from start to finish is going to be great for your skill set.

It is tough. And I think some of these things for me is like always, especially when I was at my full time job working in an agency was just how can I shove. this new upskill stuff into either the work that I'm doing at work or how can I finish early on my projects and then work on tools for my job. So that way, if my boss is like, hey, what are you working on? Why isn't it relevant? You can always be like, well, I built a tool for myself.

I built our team a production checklist because I wanted to learn Angular and local storage, saving stuff locally. Just find things like that if you can in your day job so that way you aren't... having to do it outside of your nine to five. Because I know as somebody, you know, I worked outside of my nine to five for many years, just by being like a business owner working on level up tutorials.

Man, that takes a toll on you. It takes a toll on your family. It takes a toll on everybody. So if you can find a way to shove this stuff into your nine to five, do that as much as possible. And I also think like. great job listening to this podcast right because half of it is simply just knowing what's out there and what the tools are you're probably a pretty good developer as well already and when it does come time to having to pick up this new stuff

you will probably be able to skill up pretty quickly given that you know how to program and you hopefully know about what that tech is because you've been listening to us. Yes, that's right.

Next question we have here from Max. Hi, Syntax Crew and Codingarden. I have been trying out Nuxt, inspired by CJ's mammoth tutorial and loving it. So CJ dropped a massive tutorial on Nuxt on our YouTube channel. One thing I still have in Toilet Grass is when I would reach for Pina. How do you say it, Scott? Pina. Pina over creating various composables to manage my application state. Can you help me when I would need it?

max that's a good question like when do you reach for the built-in state and then when do you reach for an external state management library and i honestly i just i wish cj was here to help us help us out oh Look who's here. What's up, guys? What's up, CJ? Glad you popped in for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just lying in dormant wait for Nux questions, but I'm here. I have an answer for this. Yeah. So, like Wes mentioned, Pina is global state management.

So I'll try to relate this answer like a little bit back to React so I don't bore any of the non-View and Nuxt people that are here. But you can think of Pena as global state for view. It's kind of like Redux or Zustand. Essentially, you can have state that you use throughout your application.

And then composables are like reusable hooks in React. They can have their own internal state and kind of like encapsulate functionality. Some examples of some composables are things like a custom caching fetch function.

or a composable called useDebounce, where you have all the code that can debounce a value, or something like useGeolocation, where you have a bunch of logic that gets the user's location, but then it makes it really easy in any component because you can say, like, useGeolocation.

Some good examples of these are at viewuse.org. They have a bunch of reusable composables. But if you're trying to wrap your mind around, like, what is a composable or why I might write one, they have a ton of examples there. But I would say that the TLDR is if you have an application that's like moderately complex, you should reach for Pina because simple apps technically could create custom composables that share state.

But the moment you need a larger bit of state or something used across a lot of components, Pina is just going to be a whole lot easier. So simple answer is just use Pina. And the way to think about the differences here are composables are... created for each time you call them. So it's a new instance each time it's called. So if two different components called the same composable, like use geolocation, that's two instantiations.

Technically, you could do some things where they share state, but think of them as one-off uses, whereas Pena is a singleton. You have one Pena instance, and then it's that same instance throughout your application. Yeah, you have that in React Land as well. We're like, yeah, each time you create a component, that component has its own state and it's...

It's fairly encapsulated to that component unless you pass it down. But then you also have your global state management, which is, like you said, a singleton once. And that is global for your entire app. Exactly. And I think one thing I'll add to that is... Nuxt does have this composable called useState.

and essentially it allows you to create a state value that can be shared across your application and so this might be where some of the confusions coming into play because you could create a composable that uses the use state function and now you have a state variable that technically is the same thread

your application. But it gets a little bit cumbersome the moment your store starts to get a little bit bigger. So I would say if you've installed Pina, just start using it because it's the way to go. Nice. Beautiful. Well, I'm glad you popped in, CJ. I appreciate it. Yeah, no worries. I'll see you guys later. Thank you. Next question from Bobby Tables.

Hey guys, love the CSS battles, and I love the hacks you all have to be as concise as possible, but one suggestion. Could you remove the white space and new lines after the time limit? You could all use the same tool to make it fair. This way, it would be simpler for us to follow. Cheers. Bobby, I don't mind this idea personally because oftentimes...

I finished the darn thing, and I run out of time to minimize it all. But also, some of the removal, I guess the removal of white space and new lines, that is the one, like, if it was just that. I would be in favor of this proposal. Yeah. Because it is the white space. Like that's not adding anything to the technique. And also when you write the code, it's harder to read if it.

You know, by default, like CJ just writes his in a giant block, which that's amazing. I lose super track of I lose track of what I'm doing with that. No, I can't do it either. So then I have to do all the removal of white space at the end. I would be in favor of this, but I don't know. I think the chaos of trying to remove the white space at the end is part of what makes it fun too.

I think what would be a fun project is if we could build our own minifier with... What does all the CSS Next stuff use? Basically, we would write a tree walker that would then apply all of the minifying properties. Because the stuff we use, which is leave off pixels for some, and then... leave off the last semicolon of the property. You know, there's all those little tricks. And like, someone's got to build a little minifier that takes all those hacks into account, right? Oh.

Maybe that someone should be me and I'm just going to keep it for myself. Maybe that's the thing. It's like who can build that we all are given a block of CSS. And then we all have to try to build the smallest minifier while it still renders 100%. Oh, that's a great fun. Although, like, I don't know why I'm suggesting this. That makes for a fun video. Because writing...

They're like tree syntax AST walkers. Basically the way that these syntax... things work is that you you parse out your code into what's called an ast an abstract syntax tree and then you you write these walkers that walk through the code base and then You can go, it'll be like variable declaration or on JavaScript, it'll be like default export. And you can modify those values as you walk through the code. And it sucks.

It's no fun. People that write that stuff are really good at it. I've had to do that a couple times. And then I also wrote a code mod recently, which would walk through my code base and modify it. And that was... A little bit easier, but still, that's confusing, man. Yeah, I know. I mean, honestly, that sounds like a fun video in itself. So, like, who can write the minifier that...

returns the best score with the same CSS. That would be pretty fun. All right. Thank you, Bobby Tables. We liked that one. Alan Asks.

What is the streaming gear Scott is using for camera mic lights? The audio visual quality is amazing and I'd love to know how to reproduce it. Yeah, Scott has. I was in his office last week. Quite the setup. Yeah.

So my setup, one, first and foremost, nice camera is going to do a lot. I've always liked Sony cameras because of their low light performance. So before... we joined century i was using an a7iii and that was a really great camera even though it's a picture camera but if you're looking for like a dual purpose camera the a7 series cameras are just really great for this type of thing. I am currently using a Sony FX3, which is a cinema camera because...

We primarily do video. We're doing a lot of video on here, and I use it for more than just my webcam here. But this is like... It's a Netflix approved cinema camera. It's like four grand. It's crazy to have that as your webcam. Wes is using the same camera as well. I have my whole kind of space dialed mostly with a couple of lights. I was using all LED panels. There's one right here.

And there's one right here is a backlight. So I have a backlight LED panel. I have a, I guess you would call this a key light LED panel because it's kind of harsh, but I'm not. Since I have white walls, I'm mostly just bouncing off the wall to get like a full fill. It's a fairly harsh, bright LED light. But the star of the show, which is...

My new light, which I've only had for if you've noticed a change in my setup at all. Like we've had this comment like probably 10 times since you've put this light on. So everybody's noticing. So it, which is, it's wild because it is, you know, I've been using the same camera and the same stuff for a little bit. This is a, I use a light dome from aperture light dome and it is the.

this like big old soft box with a grid on it and a light thing to diffuse the light and then for the light itself i'm using an aperture amaran 150 c this light rules it is not cheap it's 350 bucks but again we do this professionally so gotta have a professional lighting setup This is on the cheaper end of fancy lights like this, even though it is extremely high quality. So this light does...

full on RGB, I could change it to be any color in the world. So I actually have mine a little bit yellow to give me some color. I'm a fairly pale person. So it gives me a little bit, just a more color. And Yeah, I think this light right here is the star of the show. I do have some LED, like some cheapo LED things to give some color behind me. You may or may not see it. But this big old softbox makes such a tremendous difference.

And I can even show you, I used to have a harsh LED light right here, and that was, yeah, it was a little too harsh all the time. So this is the backlight. Yeah, I have that, and it's... I don't even like having it on because it's like you can see me right now when I move my hands in front of it. It's just a bit too much. I need it to be a bit more diffused. Dude, you get this softbox and you're going to be looking.

like me so you turn this you can see i get a little bit of fill on my back light side of the head so that's the uh this is the back light here i have the this is the fancy light so you can see what it looks like without the softbox and then you give this on and it just gives it a full-on like production studio feel and then this is the other harsh led light you can see

That one is filling this side of my face. The thing that I have that is difficult for, more difficult than what you will have is that I... wear glasses and therefore i cannot have a light you could see like when i look at the light or when i look at this light they end up in my glasses so i have to have this one way over here and i have to have this one way over here and

That causes so many issues with trying to, you know, not cast shadows or whatever. So this softbox, again, makes all the difference in the world. Microphone, it's a Electra Voice RE. Oh, man, I always forget the number on this. RE20, it's a classic radio mic, and that's why it sounds good. I have a deeper voice, so this microphone is good for people with a deeper voice. That's it. Sounds awesome.

All right, let's get into the next one. Mark C says, I keep seeing the use of lowercase snake case in TypeScript, JavaScript files in notable projects like Svelte.js and even in your own code bases. Example, export. get first paragraph with underscores in it. I wonder if you can talk about why this is. I've been led to believe that camel case was the more typically used standards for function naming. However,

I do find that the snake case is easier to read personally. Yes, this like, should we use X, Y, or Z? It's just constant circles in web development. And for probably... I don't know, probably 10 years that Snake Case was the move in... most of javascript i think maybe led by rich harris of svelte js that's how i first heard about it snake case makes a lot more sense it's a little harder to i guess maybe not harder to type an underscore versus a shift but

It certainly is easier to read. What do you think? Yeah, I think it is like clinically, I don't know if that's a word, easier to read. There is a study done with eye tracking that determined it was easier to read. Me personally, I think the biggest problem that you have is that everything in JavaScript ends up being camel case. All the AIs want to write camel case all the time. But for me, I prefer snake case.

i have dyslexia so for me camel case everything just kind of jumbles together but when you have snake case there is a clear delineation between each word that for me personally with my challenges just make it easier to read. So I don't know if that's that like, is easier to read for everybody.

But me personally, I find it tremendously easier to read. So that's why I use it. But I didn't even consider using Snake Case until Rich started talking about it. And then I started checking it out and was like, huh. This is way easier to read for me. So you learn something new all the time. That's awesome. By the way, I just purchased...

The light and fill box that you had while you were talking. I get this Amazon credit every now and then from my users page, westboss.com. Please go click the links. And every now and then I'm like, hmm, I use it for like the splurge stuff, you know, like, I don't want to spend real money on this, but I'll put my Bezos bucks towards this. Yeah, right. I will tell you the softbox.

is a pain in the ass to set up. It is huge, but, like, you have these, like, tension rods that you all have to do. Man, tension rods, I don't like them. My trampoline doesn't have springs. It has tension rods that are like for fiberglass tension rods. And that sucked. I will tell you that. I had a... bruise on my palm from setting that thing up and this thing I'm just like but when it's done it's amazing yeah once it's done it's amazing I will say that

But get ready for some tension rods. I had to actually have like one that blows up. You know, they have tents now that you can pump them up. And instead of having to put rods in them, it's just like air. Hmm. where's that isn't that a good idea you just blow it right up yeah million dollar idea right there i mean there you go joner asks have you ever had imposter syndrome it's funny we

Get this question probably once a week. And we haven't answered it in many years because I feel like we've answered it quite a bit. But let's hit it again. Have you ever hit imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is, if you don't know...

where you don't feel like you have the skill to do something. So you have a job and you think, man, how did I get this job? I'm an imposter. I can't possibly be doing... getting be getting paid for this they're gonna find me out and i think a lot of people in our industry have this in fact i think we talk about imposter syndrome so much that we maybe even have a little bit of the flip side where

especially in the last five or so years where people take a three-week boot camp and get a job at Facebook and get paid $100,000 a year. But have you had it? Yes. I don't think I have it as much as other people, especially once I... got the confidence of being able to be able to say, I don't know, but I can figure it out. Like there's a certain point in your career where you realize.

There's no chance that you're going to know everything, but you get to a point where you realize, I probably can figure that out given enough time and resources. My biggest advice to somebody that does have imposter syndrome is to know that everybody has it and that you can...

You can push through that. People that have been in their careers for many, many years, certainly don't put yourself into situations where you literally don't know what you're doing. Yeah. But there should be a little bit of something inside you that says, I can figure this out. Yeah, I think the best jobs, the most growth I've ever had have been the ones where I've started feeling like an imposter. Like, why would they have picked me for this job? It's a good spot to be.

It's a good spot to be if you can step up to the plate. Because if they call your name and you come up there and you hit a touchdown with your baseball bat, then... You can get just a tremendous amount of personal growth from that. And I found personally, again, that like that is where the massive jumps in my education have always come from, because you.

Feeling uncomfortable or like you have imposter syndrome is a sign that you are on a path of, you know, an uncharted path for you because it's always a little bit scary to go someplace you haven't haven't gone. So. As long as you are the type of person who's willing to take on a challenge, man, that's a good feeling. And as far as have...

I ever had imposter syndrome? Yeah, yeah, totally. Again, like I said, in any job that I got, that was like a big step up from where I currently was. And within three months, whatever, you're then at that level. Next thing you know. You're ready for the next big jump in your scary trajectory of constant progression and growth. We've said in the past, like, you should be...

like a 31% uncomfortable or a 21% uncomfortable with where you're at. And if you don't feel uncomfortable with any aspect of where you're at in life, not just like your code. like your your professional career but like other things in your life if you're not uncomfortable with those things maybe stop and ask am i am i just sitting am i just maintaining right now because Maybe it's time to take on something that is a little bit harder. All right. Next one from bootcampgrad.

Hey guys, thank you for your hard work in keeping your audience up to date on the latest and greatest when it comes to web development. I love your show, especially when you get excited about the topic you are discussing. Here is my career question. I'm considering earning a master's.

degree in computer science or machine learning or something related to artificial intelligence. I changed careers and only went through a three month full time boot camp for education. Currently, I have several years experience as a full stack developer working on enterprise-level applications that are built in Drupal, WordPress, or a microservice architecture with Next.js and React. I feel confident and competent at my job, yet I'm finding it difficult to get promoted or get another job.

I'm also afraid of being replaced by AI. What are your thoughts on degrees these days? Are they worthwhile? Or would it be wiser to continue building projects on my own to learn? Thank you for any help you can provide. Okay, you know, I don't necessarily think a degree is a bad idea for machine learning because there's so much there and it's such a deep well of deep technical things that you could be learning.

As opposed to just YOLOing learning AI tools on your own. Because I think you probably could get some good distance on learning machine learning. As a outsider of the educational system, just like picking it up on your own. But I do think there is a lot of big scientific topics there that if you were to. really dive deep into them to me that screams a little bit more career longevity these days than just doing a degree on

anything related to just engineering in general beyond that, or like, just in general, AI. So I think if you can get into the more deeply technical aspects of machine learning, to me, that feels a little bit more like A place that people would want to be hiring because, yes, the type of quick things that we're all going to be doing will certainly probably be replaced more and more by AI every single week here. Man, somebody's got to build the AI. Yeah. Yeah.

I think those are the skills that are going to be needed, right? Like deep math, algorithms, data science, analysis, those things are...

are what we use to build AI. You know, it's one thing to ping the OpenAI API and put a clever little prompt in there and parse the JSON that comes back. But it's another one to be able to like... figure out like a middle algorithm of how to like most appropriately do something like that so if you're asking me i would not go get a like personally i would not go get a computer science degree because you can also

be in this uh like the proof is in the pudding with this career right you can also just like build a whole bunch of shit and learn a whole bunch of stuff and build and get really good at it and you can have a really good career But you can if you're the type of person that likes school and feels like that would be beneficial to your career, which I think it will be. You know, it's for a lot of time we had.

You just have to learn React and you can get a really well-paying job. But I think that those days are probably... limited and being able to be able to go deep on something to actually get really smart and understand how these things work rather than just being able to type it into chat gpt that's probably a good idea Word. Randmom says, hi, Scott and Wes. I was listening to episode 798, which was self-hosting reverse proxy servers. Just so what we did is we discussed.

what a reverse proxy is when you have your own server. And it's an area where I'm usually on someone on thin ice. For example, hosting multiple applications and servers on the same domain name. What can and should a reverse proxy do for me? I was thinking about setting up a small tutorial repo for others to use with a small project to teach yourself some of these practical applications. All right, so a reverse proxy. is this idea that you have a server.

And on your server, you can have multiple processes running. And generally, those processes run on each on their own port. So you have a server. Maybe you're running a node application. Maybe you're running a web server that serves up a front end. Maybe you have... like a database, maybe you have an API server that's running, or maybe you just have literally 20 WordPress installs running all on the same server.

When it comes time to visiting those applications, generally what happens is you visit the IP address, colon, the port that that application is running on, and that's how you run each of them. What you want to do, likely, is... You want to have a single domain name like syntax.fm and then you want to put each of those applications at like a forward slash, you know, forward slash API, forward slash admin, forward slash watch when you're logging in.

So what a reverse proxy will do is it will, like Caddy Server is one that I use all the time. Nginx is another really good one as well. What's the other one that they have in Coolify? They have Caddy Server and... Oh, I don't know. Traffic. T-R-A-E-F-I-K. That's the default one. Yes. So basically you write these config files for your reverse proxy and that...

will take in every incoming request, whether it's HTTP, whether it's WebSocket requests, whether it's like TCP traffic. And then your reverse proxy will then route that traffic. depending on your rules, to the different applications. And that is how you can set up something like forward slash admin, and it will know, ah.

I'm going to capture admin forward slash whatever, and I'm going to just pipe that straight into the admin application, which I know is running on port 1234. And then if something else comes in that doesn't match those, then I'm going to route it to this one. Or if it's like an asset, you could like match it by like JPEG or whatever. And you could you could route it to another simply just static file hosting that is is on your server.

It is a great way to run multiple apps on the same server. It's a great way to save money because a lot of these platform as a services, they're going to bill you based on how many apps you have running. So if you want to run... like 50 different things on one server for five bucks a month, that a reverse proxy is certainly something you're going to need to figure out. Word. Yeah, great answer. Next question from Red Liz.

Found your podcast back in 2019. You've been inspiring me to be a better dev ever since. Many thanks. Well, thank you, Radlis. I've spent the last three years working for a company that used Umbraco CMS. I originally started my dev journey as a front-end React developer, but they hired me and I learned Umbraco on the job. Have you heard of Umbraco? Probably around 2019, we have an episode where I'm like, what the hell is Umbraco? It's like a .NET CMS, very popular in the corporate world.

Yeah, they have a nice-looking website. I have no idea how the CMS looks, but it looks nice. I think it's better than, like, what's the other one that .NET does? SharePoint. That's the one that everyone... SharePoint's not really, like, a... like a proper CMS, but it kind of is. It's its own beast. Yeah. Okay. I was never given the opportunity to learn and implement new tech, upgrade any of our code bases to the latest version of Umbraco or even update something as small as Bootstrap.

Now that I've been laid off, I feel like I'm way behind on all the new tech that's available. I've been working on learning React Native since it's basically React, but I was curious what the direction you'd recommend. I had... While refreshing my skill set. Yeah, this one, the direction is honestly going to be right now. Make make stuff because.

If you have been laid off here, you probably are just applying. You're looking for stuff. And a lot of these jobs are going to be giving you technical interviews or expecting you to know all this stuff. And since you're behind. Sure, you're going to want to study specifically the things you are interviewing for. I feel like React, React Native is never going to be a bad thing to study and get really good at because, I mean, here in the world of...

2025 with AI, AI just is going to assume that you're writing React every single time. So like having a good understanding of React. deeply i do think will will help you but just be building as much stuff as possible like a small app every single day Because you getting your hands dirty in some real code is going to really take you a lot further than opening up your books and starting to study. Now, I think in this new world as well, like, really? Being good at AI tools.

is going to be a job differentiator. If you go into an interview and you're up against somebody who is very skilled with all of the latest AI tools, or perhaps it's like on the bleeding edge of that stuff. And you're like, I don't know, I just write it all by hand. They're going to get the job. You're saying like a cursor or co-pilot being able to use those effectively?

Being able to use them effectively, but not even just like being able to use them effectively, even as far as like having an opinion on what like is an effective use of those verse.

like oh i just paste my code into chat gpt and then whatever or i don't use anything at all i i do think being like i use this tool for these reasons and it helps me because of this way and i'm a faster developer for it is like a much better thing to bring to the table than shrug you know yeah so i i think yes obviously i do think learning react you know react native that those are great things to to hang your hat on

But in addition to that, I do think you see all these mandates from CEOs saying, I'm not going to hire anyone who is not skilled in AI. I think that's serious. And I think that is. Like the new norm already. So if you want to bring something to an interview, I think you got to bring those those cutting edge AI skills. That's a really good point because.

Like people don't want to hire someone who just bop, bop, bop types in the box and the AI code comes out the other end. They want to hire somebody who knows how to effectively use these tools, like Scott said. and and be able to move faster and and crank out more code right like that as much as like people listening are probably being like no it's gonna it's gonna bad code is going to come out and it's going to be unmaintainable in a couple of years. And those are valid concerns, but...

The person hiring you doesn't necessarily care about that. What they care about is that A, you understand how the code works and B, you're able to use these tools to effectively create stuff. build the stuff that it is that they want so that's a really good point i think also you need to Be scaling up on stuff that is very hireable right now. So Scott says, of course, React, React Native. Those are very hireable as well. Build many projects that...

Every single time you choose something a little bit different, you know, use Tailwind in one project, use some other CSS thing in another project, use Vita in one project, you know, maybe try the new roll down so that when it comes time to. talking about it you can say yes i've i've used all these things i've i've played with this i dipped into it so it shows that you have like not only are you like keyword optimizing your resume but

you're also just showing that you know what you're talking about. And then the final thing I'll say here is that not only using AI to code, but building stuff with AI. So interfacing with the different models, interfacing with the different OpenAI APIs, building a little chat for yourself, because... A lot of people right now, as these businesses get sort of scooped by AI, they're going to be kind of reactive and say, oh, we need to put AI in our own product as well.

they're going to want to hire somebody that actually knows what they're talking about with these things. So I think that React and AI, as much as you may hate both of those things, those are probably very top of the hireability skills right now. Yeah. You know, I think you had a good point about trying things slightly different each time because there's nothing worse than somebody who has a really firm...

opinion on something they either don't understand or have not taken the time to actually use and learn. Like I have an opinion on Tailwind, right? I've made that clear. On this show enough times. But it's not an uninformed opinion. And people may not agree with it, and that's fine. But, like, I don't think... It's not a, like...

It makes my HTML too long opinion. Yeah, right. Those people are the worst. I don't like the way it looks. Yes. Yeah, totally. Or anything. People come at me about my React. opinions now because i don't use react but i used react for like 10 years like it's not like i i have no experience there i've built several highly used big apps with react so you know you can have i thought you didn't like react because of like mark zuckerberg and like

problematic stuff around him. That's not why. I've never said anything to that degree. I don't like React because of... A lot of because of JSX, I don't really like how...

The entire function runs every single time something changes. Like I like when values update and those values update rather than a function running. I also... don't like how there's a virtual dom i i get that there's a virtual dom i got a real straight up dom is what you are give me give me the dom yes yeah yeah give me that dom that's all i want all right

Next section of the show is Sick Picks. Shameless plugs. I had a sick pick, and this is something you see. I don't know if you see this on TikTok shops or whatever. We don't have that in Canada. We are free from the capitalism that is TikTok shop. I honestly don't know if this is a TikTok shop.

item but it seems like it could be i got a a wire a wireless a cordless cardboard cutter which is essentially just like a blade and a handle you squeeze it the blade spins and you and it just shears oh caitlin has one of these for fabric yeah it shears through heavy cardboard and it's not just cardboard they say it can do like carpet and all kinds of stuff i i don't know

I'm only using it for cardboard. And it seems ridiculous to have a power tool for cutting cardboard. But we have our cardboard day. is once every two weeks, which is crazy. And you got cardboard in these modern times. And so we were just struggling to do anything other than fill the bin and then jump on it. Jump on it until it all fits in. Breaking down the delivery cardboard is like a full-time job. Yeah, your hands get all dry and stuff from it. So this thing costs $35. You charge it with USB.

And you just... And you cut your cardboard into little strips, and it takes no time at all. And... I've already used this thing $35 worth of time, like this thing has already saved me so much time. So for a little $35 tool, I found this to be a delight to use, even if it is probably just drop shipped, rebranded, whatever. It works just great enough for me for 35 bucks. That's awesome.

i i actually thought about that as well my approach to the cardboard is simply just get more blue boxes because we're allowed unlimited recycling here because i just like i hate breaking down the cardboard that's it's such a huge thing but maybe I, I have, I carry a knife on me all the time too. Yeah. But I've like cut myself so many times. It's so much easier. Yeah. And I will say like,

We have two cardboard bins and we still fill them up like crazy because whether that's like paper bags and, you know, Amazon boxes or whatever, we're getting our this or that. Man, it is crazy. The people. The people that owned this house before us on our like while we were moving in, the guy was here and he was like, hey, just so you know, I stole you a second cardboard bin.

And nobody knows about it. And so they're not going to take it away. But this one, this other one, this one's yours too. And I was like, oh, my man, setting me up. Yes. Everybody else has got one and I got two. You never want anyone to find out about those things. At our cottage as well, we're the only people that have a mailbox. Everybody else has to walk to the end of the street and use the community mailbox, which is like this grid of them and you have a key.

I don't know what happened, but we have a mailbox and I don't want it to get messed up. That's right. Yeah. I'm going to pick another thing for cutting, which is just. scissors we do a lot of like prep meal prep for our kids obviously um and we are big kitchen scissors family instead of having to get a cutting board out and cut it up with the knife we simply just have

probably six or seven pairs of kitchen scissors. They're just regular scissors, but we keep them in the kitchen. You throw them in the dishwasher every single time they use them and use it just to cut up the kid's food or if they're having pancakes or whatever. And I think that... Using scissors in the kitchen is severely underrated, so I'm here to sick pick to you using scissors in the kitchen. Yeah. Are you a scissors kitchen kind of guy? We got kitchen scissors specifically, yeah.

I have some that can cut through chicken bowls or chicken bones or whatever. Those are decent, but they're so big. We just ordered a... like a 12 pack of just the regular paper cutting scissors. And they've been great for the kitchen. Costco is good for that. They sell like, uh, normal pairs of scissors in a three pack that are nice scissors.

Alright, that's good. You always need scissors, like in every room. It drives me nuts. And the kids take them away, and oh man. Check this out. My wife even wrote... Tolinsky on them. So no one's going to take these scissors. They're mine. Oh, yeah. These are technically kitchen scissors, but I don't know why they're in my office.

You best believe mine are inside a Gridfinity bin inside this drawer that has been sectioned into Gridfinity bins. Amazing. I printed out last night a Gridfinity teabag holder. So shout out to Gridfinity. Everything in my house is Gridfinity now. I did the whole utensil drawer. So if anyone doesn't know, Gridfinity is basically you print this track for like a drawer and then you print out...

Literally any bins or holders or whatever. And you can make your own. And then it will slot into the grid that is in your drawer. And then things won't slide around or whatever. So I redid our whole utensil drawer. I made a couple custom models for the like Asian spoon and one knife holder. And then I printed out just a bunch of like proper size boxes for things like our scissors. And it's like game changer. So good. Makes me so happy.

My wife is just like, I'm happy that you're happy, but it wasn't a problem before. I'm like, are you kidding? This was a major problem in our house. I did the whole angled spice drawer because Courtney's always wanted a nice-looking spice drawer. And I like I had the spice drawer looks immaculate. It looks so good. And her comment was, I wish it was acrylic. Can this thing do acrylic? No, it can't do acrylic. I'm not impressed then.

I gotta have everything acrylic. Oh, man. I think the acrylic looks kind of cheap, if I'm being totally honest. The acrylic is nice, but... Having it custom fit for your home is the ultimate flex. You know, there's nothing more nice than having something that is perfectly sized for what it is that you need it. Oh, I forgot. Shameless plug. Go to YouTube.com. Search syntax.

uh coding challenge or syntax css dev battles and watch one of our videos because they're absolutely hilarious yes uh the dev battles let me tell you A lot of people have been tuning in. I've been getting comments saying, I don't even program, and these things are a riot. And I got to say, I agree as somebody who has been really enjoying watching them myself.

Randy does just such an incredible job editing these, but as CJ, Wes, and myself competing in various either CSS or JavaScript competitions that have some rules, it is... Just an absolute blast. So check those out. And CJ has like a bot or something where everybody comments, CJ did the best job. No chance. CJ did by far the worst job on the last one.

And like all of these like anonymous accounts come out of the woodwork and are like, CJ did the best job. It is. You know what? I will say, CJ, we're not ripping on CJ. Because we don't like him, we love CJ. He just wins everything, folks. So we have to fight back with our words because we are upset and offended that he wins everything. So the only way I can get back at CJ.

is by being aggressive to him and text. Ripping on him. Yes, ripping on him. We love CJ. All right, that's it for today. Peace. Peace.