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Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Potluck - Dev Culture Fit × Slack Communities × Vanilla JS × Backpacks × Raspberry Pi × More!

It’s another potluck! In this episode, Scott and Wes answer your questions about dev culture fit, Slack communities, vanilla Javascript, backpacks, Raspberry Pi, beards, and more!

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Show Notes

3:10 - Q: Recently I took a job as a lead dev doing the exact kind of work I’ve always wanted to do. But after the first week, I really hate it. I feel like I don’t fit in and I’m seeing many red flags. There are no processes and there doesn’t seem to be any real excitement around what we are building. What should I do? Do I suck it up for a while? Or do I start looking for something else, potentially taking a pay cut (and moving back into doing web dev as opposed to building apps) to work at another creative agency with people who are more my jam?

10:32 - Does Syntax have a Discord or Slack community channel to collaborate on topics?

12:00 - What is one thing that really annoys you about Javascript? I’m curious if you could change one thing about the language itself, what would it be?

15:08 - Have you tried Fauna DB?

19:13 - What are your thoughts on including tutorial projects in a portfolio? (For example, putting the Sick Fits site from Wes’ Advanced React course in a portfolio.) I’m relatively new to React and have a couple of my own projects, but a bunch of projects from following a course.

23:58 - A site you’re maintaining is hacked, how do you handle fixing it?

30:28 - My bookmarks are overwhelming! I just started learning web dev and even though I sort my bookmarks into folders, I end up with so much that I don’t even know how to use them. What do you guys do for managing bookmarks on browsers?

34:15 - How would you recommend integrating React and other modern JS frameworks into (more or less) “static” or “brochure” websites? Say for instance I have a banking website that has mostly static content, but also has complicated JS pieces such as calculators, location finders and sign-up forms? I currently reach for jQuery & jQuery plugins for these pieces of functionality, but React and Vue sound like they could also help solve these one-off pieces of functionality. Most tutorials and examples are based on creating apps from the ground up, but what if you only want to sprinkle these frameworks in and only use them where JS is necessary? How might the both of you solve for these scenarios?

38:00 - I was wondering whether you could share which backpack, or bag do you use for carrying your laptops? I’m looking for something that would be useful for carrying my 16" Macbook Pro, but also could hold some other stuff like groceries, clothes, or other various things that one may want to put there.

41:50 - Do you write out a vanilla fetch() in your components that need it, or do you use a fetch “wrapper” written by yourself or someone else? If so, what does it look like?

46:16 - Have you ever done any automation projects using a Raspberry Pi? I am trying my hand at remote access to the solar power setup at our ‘bach’ (pronounced ‘batch’) here in New Zealand, which is the same thing as a ‘cottage’ in Canada. Finding it hard to find good resources for this online as most get really technical really fast. My idea is to take the RS485 modbus data and just send it up to a DB every 5 minutes or so.

51:38 - What do Wes and Scott think about beards and have you ever thought about growing one?

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