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Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Potluck - Working with designers × Is WordPress Crap? × When to stop working × More

It’s another potluck episode in which Wes and Scott answer your questions! This month - working with designers, criticisms of WordPress, avoiding burnout, time management, and more.

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Show Notes

5:05 - How can you help a designer understand how styling works and how layouts work in the web? In other words: How do I explain my boundaries as a front-end developer to a designer?

  • Work closely with the designer
  • Allow the designer to push your limits
  • You can help them understand by:
    • Showing them poor performing websites
    • Showing them things that usually are taxing on the GPU to paint - rotations, background images, drop shadows, etc.
  • Don’t be afraid to let a tough design push your boundaries

13:23 - How do you manage your time for learning new things when you have children and a daily full-time job?

  • Those who figure out how to make it a priority will win out
  • Family first - talk to your spouse
  • Ask your boss for time to learn and grow
  • Find ways to get paid for learning

19:45 - How do you deal with burnout in this constantly evolving front end tech ecosystem?

25:00 - Do you code at night (past 9pm)?

  • Start your wind-down time earlier
  • Let your brain wok on problems while you sleep
  • Get it out of your head
  • Listen to podcasts, audiobooks, etc.

29:23 - How do you compress your videos/audio for your courses/tutorials?

  • Handbrake Fast 1080
  • Use presets
  • Output from video editor, rip from YouTube, or compress directly from video editor

33:10 - It seems like in the web dev community, a lot of people give WordPress crap. Any idea why?

  • WordPress is dope - people just like to complain.
  • WordPress is often one of the first things people learn and have bad memories of it
  • It’s easy to write bad code with WordPress
  • It can be slow
  • It can attract a certain type of developer

33:10 - What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they are learning programming and what’s the best way to overcome them?

  • Don’t focus on too many things
  • Don’t worry about picking the right technology
  • Focus on the fundamentals
  • Let your curiosity and excitement drive you
  • Celebrate wins

40:29 - What are your best tips for writing documentation?

43:08 - What are some good questions or techniques to better understand a client’s requirements?

  • How does your business work right now?
  • What are people coming to the website for?
  • Questionnaires are good - they get people thinking
  • It’s your job to understand what a client want out of a website - what problems they have and need solved

45:38 - Do you guys have any tips for taking over maintenance and development of existing websites where the previous developer is no longer reachable?

  • Take time to asses the codebase before writing anything
  • Learn what’s there any and why
  • Don’t start ripping out code without understanding what’s really going on
  • Don’t leave it worse than you found it
  • It depends on the stack, but it’s probably worth giving it an honest go before re-writing the whole thing
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