The Call Kent Podcast - podcast cover

The Call Kent Podcast

Kent C. Dodds•kentcdodds.com
Technology
The Call Kent podcast is a regular podcast where you call in with a question and Kent answers. Call in with your questions right from your web browser with any device at https://kentcdodds.com/call
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Episodes

Using Remix with a custom backend (Nestjs)

Understanding why its good to continue to use server sider rendering with a custom backend and adding the extra middle layer for Remix to handle

Jul 12, 2022•7 min•Season 2Ep. 14

Feedback speed in TDD

What feedback speed should we aim for in a frontend test suite? What's too slow?

Jul 11, 2022•5 min•Season 2Ep. 13

Understand what's effect and what is derived state

How to understand what should be stored in the state and what should be derived from that state. And also how to understand there isn't need in useEffect hook. https://kentcdodds.com/blog/dont-sync-state-derive-it

Jul 09, 2022•6 min•Season 2Ep. 12

State bloating vs api call (again and again)

When a user enters the tab (btw it's a SPA) I call the api in useEffect and saving the response in redux store. May I know is it better approach to call the api again and again when the user leaves and enters the page? (In this case I see a flicker of loading every time) or storing the response in redux store (UX for this screen is good but is it harming the performance overall?) or storing the response in component state? (Is there any difference b/w this and above approach performance wise?) T...

Jun 24, 2022•7 min•Season 2Ep. 10

Separation of rendering vs logics custom hooks

I recently joined a company where they use a lot of custom hooks for separating logics at the level of a component. When to break up a component into multiple components

Jun 24, 2022•5 min•Season 2Ep. 9

Imposter Syndrome and Working at FAANG

Hello Kent, my name is Joshua Osagie, I'm a software developer focusing mostly on front-end dev (https://www.joshx.dev my portfolio website). I made this call because you've been a big inspiration and model in my React/JavaScript journey. I've taken some of your courses on egghead.io and recently I told my boss about your EpicReact course. I really appreciate what you're doing in the React/JS ecosystem, and I do hope you receive this recording. Thank you!

Jun 24, 2022•7 min•Season 2Ep. 8

In a Startup only testing in the backend?

Startup says that we should be only testing on the backend, since the frontend is changing so fast, so no need to test the frontend, just a couple of integration tests.

May 20, 2022•4 min•Season 2Ep. 7

Using GraphQL queries in Remix loader functions

Hey Kent! We've been using Hasura to generate CRUD APIs for our small team. Our existing web applications are all using Next.js, and consume the GraphQL API via Apollo Client and TypeScript hooks generated from the remote schema using graphql-code-generator. This workflow has saved us a lot of time, particularly in API development, and I love the generated type-safe hooks. After watching your new Remix content, we're very excited to try Remix as an alternative to Next, mostly to leverage the per...

May 17, 2022•4 min•Season 2Ep. 6

Servers + Databases + Remix

I am trying to figure out my stack on the backend side of things for Remix, more specifically services that will allow my server side code to run at the edge be it the server itself or the database or both so that everyone everywhere can use my app at super fast speeds. There are not a lot of resources out there about the best services out there that do this and I am wondering if you have any suggestions where I can begin to look for such services

May 17, 2022•5 min•Season 2Ep. 5

How can I incentivize users to not share accounts?

I would really prefer to use magic links for authentication rather than username/password. However, I'm running into an issue where several of our clients share a single account login which means many people logging in don't have access to the email inbox. We already don't charge per user, but have you come across this situation before? Any tips on how we can incentivize users to use individual accounts?

May 17, 2022•3 min•Season 2Ep. 3

Could the useState be used without the setter?

I have a question... could the useState be used without using the setter? because a teammate use it in that way to get an item from sessionStorage const [initialScrollPosition] = useState(() => Number.parseFloat(sessionStorage.getItem('offset') || 0)); and argues that this is so that the component is not unnecessarily rerendered and to read the sessionStorage only once! 🤔 but I think we can use useMemo for those cases but the useState is still used in this form in several components. useStat...

Dec 13, 2021•6 min•Season 2Ep. 2

Best way to reset a form

This is a question about: Improve the Performance of your React Forms In the example, submitting the form successfully will still retain the current values of the fields. I want the behavior such that" when the server response says the form is NOT submitted successfully, then the form field will have the current values that has been inputted by the user But when the server response says that the form is successfully submitted, then the form fields will be blank again. What's do you think is the ...

Dec 07, 2021•5 min•Season 2Ep. 1

How to decide among advanced react patterns?

So this short call is about when to use which advanced react pattern to create re-usable components. Like are there any indications or things that make you think about why one approach is better than the other.

Dec 02, 2021•7 min•Season 1Ep. 50

Use React frameworks (Remix) for SPAs

There are many applications that consist mostly of a single page. Will we get any benefit if we use frameworks like Remix or Next.js for these?

Nov 19, 2021•5 min•Season 1Ep. 48

Isolating tests

I am using testing library to test my React app and one of my tests leaks or somehow affecting and causing another one to fail if they are in the same file. They work just fine in separate files. What can be the reason for this?

Nov 17, 2021•5 min•Season 1Ep. 47

Versioning and dependency management for libraries

How did you approach versioning and dependency management when you were building this reusable component library at PayPal? I would like to know 1. How did you go about introducing breaking changes? 2. How did you make sure that people are using the latest version of your library or it doesn’t matter if they are using the same version? What’s bad about having different teams using different versions of the same library?

Nov 16, 2021•5 min•Season 1Ep. 46

Full stack framework vs front-end with saas

I have a question with regards to building out a minimum viable product. I am comparing using a full stack framework like django, that includes authentication and arm’s and routing and all the batteries builtin, versus creating a react app with all the backend farmed out to saas offering like auth0 for auth and the millions of sql/nosql/graphql. With django approach, you have simple dynamic pages with server side generation and when you’re ready you can separate out the frontend to something bui...

Nov 13, 2021•7 min•Season 1Ep. 45

Learning Gaps & Cluelessness as a Developer

Hello Kent, I learnt software development in a self-taught path and I really didn't do a good job (Now I know) because when I hear words like Serverless and others, I don't have the first clue what they are talking about. In summary, I'm clueless about a lot of things and I need help.

Nov 10, 2021•8 min•Season 1Ep. 44

Why React JS?

We're observing a lot of feedback about React and started to think "why". Why not Svetle or Vue? Why not something else. And it's also inspired by what you have put on the epicreact.dev landing page about why React is awesome. One of the good examples for more context please read: https://dev.to/jfbrennan/really-why-react-5958 Why I Love React The Beginner's Guide to React...

Nov 05, 2021•23 min•Season 1Ep. 42

Bailing out of re-rendering in useState

If useState contains a simple value like string or int, setting a new value that is the same as the existing value will not cause the component to re-render. However, if useState contains an object and I update the state with a new object that contains the exact same values, it will trigger the component to re-render. The React documentation says that is used Object.is to compare values. My 2 objects are identical, so why does the re-render happen? useState lazy initialization and function updat...

Nov 05, 2021•4 min•Season 1Ep. 41

Remix Styling w/CSS in JS

Trying to figure out whether a CSS in JS approach will take a significance performance hit when using Remix, and whether it would be better to stick to remote and plain stylesheets. Also wondering whether Remix has any Babel-like class naming structure, or if there might be support for Babel in the future. Why Remix over other React frameworks? How Remix makes CSS clashes predictable...

Nov 05, 2021•8 min•Season 1Ep. 40

Learning web development the right way

As web developers, we come across a lot of topics and want to build a solid foundation on them. We also need to know what to focus on at certain stages in our journey. Deciding What Not To Learn How to get started with programming Dealing with FOMO How to get experience as a software engineer How to React ⚛️...

Nov 03, 2021•7 min•Season 1Ep. 39

Protected route and redirect after payment

Hey Kent, Thanks for the chance to ask you a question. This is about protected route and 3rd party payment flow, ending in a re-direct back to my website. The user would need to re-login again. How to avoid that? Super Simple Start to Remix Stop using client-side route redirects

Oct 27, 2021•6 min•Season 1Ep. 37

Making changes on a new team

As a designer/developer on a new team, where I'm also the most experienced, but haven't been given the path to recommending change wherever necessary. In other words, I was brought on to be an individual contributor, not specifically a consultant, although it's very obvious in many places that the app lacked a designer, and that the code lacked senior developers. For context, they don't do JavaScript testing because "the team was new when we started and we wanted them to get off and running." So...

Oct 26, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 36

Building an Open Source Website

We are looking to build an open source website for students of our organization in college. What are some tips that can help with the building and management of such a project.

Oct 26, 2021•9 min•Season 1Ep. 35
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