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January 20th, 2021 × #career#imposter syndrome#UI#sustainability

Potluck — $100k Dev Jobs × Sponsored Blog Posts × How To Keep Your Skills Up To Date × Libraries vs Custom × Dev Tools × More!

Scott and Wes answer listener questions on topics like transitioning to a high paying development job, building UI libraries, overcoming imposter syndrome, and more.

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Topic 0 00:18

Wes and Scott will answer potluck questions

Wes Bos

you send in your questions, and Scott and I will attempt to answer them. We really like these ones because it's all over the place. Things like we talk about Versus code and JavaScript and CSS rid getting a job, making more than $100,000 a year. Some some really good ones for you today. We are sponsored by 3 awesome companies today. First one is Prismic, your headless GraphQL, CMS, LogRocket, which is JavaScript logging and session replays, and Linode, which does

Scott Tolinski

Cloud hosting and Linux servers. We'll talk about them partway through the episode. How are you doing today, Scott? Hey. I'm doing good. Hey. Rid We should also state that if you want to get in on the fun here of these potluck episodes and submit your own question, head on over to syntax.fm, and there is read. A button in the top right corner of the website that says ask a question. So that will take you to our form so you could submit questions because While we do get a ton of good questions, in fact, we get so many questions we can't even begin to answer them all, but It's always nice to to have fresh perspectives and things like that. So head on over to syntax.fm and submit your question if you have one for us.

Scott Tolinski

Overall, Les, I'm doing good. Just, living life in the fast lane over here, trying out some really, like, exciting web dev tools. So I think we're gonna have, like, a a bit of a good show topics going on with some of the stuff I'm I'm working on right now. I'm I'm, really cutting the edge Right now on on some new tools that I'm working with and working on. I even wrote my own GraphQL plug in for ES build. It's like, that's where I'm at right now. So rid. It's a lot of fun, and I'm sort of loving it, but also at the same time, wondering if I should have picked something easier.

Wes Bos

Awesome. I'm looking forward to to chatting about that. Alright. Let's get into the 1st question here from Benny boy. Not so much of a question. Oh, so this is not a question, but That's me saying thanks. I started WebDev as a bartender slash college dropout in 2017 when syntax was pretty new, so about 3 years ago.

Wes Bos

I rarely missed an episode. And this year, I'm starting my 1st over $100,000 JS job.

Wes Bos

Hokey read. Doodle.

Wes Bos

Okey doodle. That is big. Your show has been, fun, kept my attention in the realm of web dev, and helped guide my interest. I think it has been extremely valuable in my career, and I look forward to more. I would like to give you and Scott 50% on my 1st year salary. Wow.

Topic 1 02:33

Listener went from bartender to $100k+ JS job in 3 years

Scott Tolinski

Rid Westside of Illinois.

Wes Bos

That's amazing. Congrats, Benny boy. That that's unreal that People can in in 3 years, you can go from doing something totally different, which is a bartender, and then, like, I'd like to hear, like, what did Benny boy do in order to skill up so quickly and and and how to land such a sweet paying job? Yeah. Benny boy, if you are listening,

Scott Tolinski

Go ahead and and submit another potluck, and we'll check back in with you in the next potluck episode because I do wanna learn a little bit more about what Your approach was because this is huge, and I know this show is all about asking questions. I put this 1 on here, Wes. This is the only non question. I just Put this on here off the jump just so people can see that there are people out there, who, you know, weren't Professional web developers, you know, just a few short years ago, and they're now making some big bucks working on code and slinging code. It's It's really super inspiring to me. I went from not working on code to making, $24,000 a year. So this Seeing somebody make, like, a big jump like that is is pretty inspiring.

Wes Bos

Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. It it's probably I'm I'm willing to bet it's, rid Like San Francisco Yeah. FANG, something like that, because that's that's a decent chunk of change. Like, I know I know senior developers that don't make that much, but Totally. Rid Yeah. A lot of that is dependent on on where you live as well. So cool. You wanna grab the next one? Next one is from Just the Dane.

Scott Tolinski

Hey, guys. Thanks for an awesome show. And And they even put a little alert tag. Wes and Scott are awesome. Thank you so much for that. Been a listener for a few months now. I listen to your podcast rid In the car to and from work, which is about an hour each way, and the subjects are really interesting. I find myself talking to my car radio commenting on pollock questions. This is so good. Rid love it, Jess. Okay. So here's the question. Not sure if this has been brought up before, but here it goes. How do I know when to pull in a package rather than to write similar functionality myself.

Topic 2 04:12

When to use a package vs write code yourself

Scott Tolinski

And is there a rule when enough is enough in terms of having too many packages? What I'm concerned about is a bundle size overall. It doesn't seem to take a lot of packages before Webpack notifies you rid About a large bundle size, what is the best practice? This is Jesser is not a a hard and fast rule to any of this other than You kinda have to learn and grow with the process of it because there are some packages that you'll rid find that are absolutely massive. And one thing that I like to do is to add, bundle what's the package in in Versus Code? Bundle phobia? No. Not bundle phobia. Well, bundle phobia. Bundle size. Yeah. Bundle size in Versus Code will show you in your import statement just how large each of your imports are.

Scott Tolinski

Import cost is what it's called. Import cost. Yes. Import cost. You got it. The best thing about that is you'll see it in your code while you're writing to say like, Holy cow. This particular package I'm using is huge. For instance, here's a good personal story. I was looking in my code base the other day, and I was rid. Noticing that an npm package for Vue had been installed. It was like Vue template something, And that brought in a lot of other stuff. Now granted these things weren't being executed on the front end, so it's not like the user was getting shipped this code. But I was just thinking, I don't want all this stuff in my I don't want a whole Vue project in my application as well. Like so I began to try to figure out which package imported this thing. And sure enough, it was something that I was not expecting to have, used view, and it wasn't something I necessarily needed in that regard. So it's nice to have an idea of, like, what exactly is going on with your packages, what they're bringing in, how large they are, just overall their size. Rid In in terms of when you should write your own functionality for it, I would almost I don't wanna say always because I'm certainly not like this, but I would almost always air on the side of Get the thing working, get it up and running, get it going with maybe a third party package or whatever, and then trimming the size as you need. That's not necessarily great advice for for huge long term projects where you have the team and the money behind it to be able to write everything from rid scratch when you need it.

Scott Tolinski

But even in those projects, I doubt people are writing everything from scratch.

Scott Tolinski

So it really depends on where you can get those savings And being cognizant of what packages you're bringing in and what those costs are associated with those packages.

Scott Tolinski

And Just remember that at the end of the day, you're shipping stuff to users. And if too many projects are going in the client side of your application And you don't have even even with tree shaking, right, that too many things come into your client, that's going to take a hit on that load time no matter what. So you can be as vigilant as you would like about it, but at the same time, it's a delicate balance, and it's certainly something that you need rid need to, like, be aware of and, like, look into rather than just say, alright. What is the limit here? What in the what is this limit? Rid You mentioned bundle phobia, Wes. I use bundle phobia a lot. I use bundle phobia on some of my own packages that I wrote to realize that I was importing something that have been a pure dependency, and then that, like, greatly reduced the package size for me. So little things like that. Bundlephobia is a great place rid Learn about bundle sizes and how they grow. In the best case scenario, you would have something in your build tool or your CICD that would tell you, like, Something's too big. It would tell you something's too big or would say,

Wes Bos

your project has grown by an astronomical size between this and the last commit. What happened? You know, something like that just to make you aware of it. Yeah. And and she said that Webpack does notify her about that, and that that will happen By default, I think turning on that import cost in Versus Code is good. First of all, it will give you an idea of what is too big. Like, is a 100 k Big, or is that is that worth it? Depends what it is. For me, if it is something that is very cut and dry and it's just a little function, rid. I'll often just go and grab, copy, paste it from Stack Overflow, throw it into a lib folder or utils folder. But if it's any more complicated than that, rid Like, something like a a really complicated Lodash method. Those things are tested super well, and they've been battle tested. Not only are you you're getting the I don't know. You might be adding a little bit more, but you are making sure that that code is not gonna also break in production on you because you forgot to cover one little use case. Somebody Pops an emoji in and something like that. Like, actually, that's that's a problem I had once is my old course platform, like, years ago, I used to The URL to download the videos used to always be I would their name. Mhmm. And I had just got a little simple little one, And it's just called Slugify, and it re it replaces characters that are URL friendly and puts dashes where spaces are. And I had a bunch of Russian people buy the course, and their names were entirely in Cyrillic.

Wes Bos

And none of those characters are valid in the URL. Right. So rid It broke because they would hit a URL with nothing in it. And then I swapped it out for a package that was, npm installed, and they rid took care of that. They converted the Surrealite characters to whatever you're all friendly character is close enough to that. So the I I wouldn't sweat it too too much, but, yeah, keep an eye on, on that type of stuff. And, also, if it is the issue, you're looking at it, it will tell you what is causing the issue, And you can figure out, okay, well, what am I really using this for? Am I gonna hit am I really, like, Merging nested arrays, or am I just doing this one little simple thing that you could swap it out for a little line of code? So I know that that was a long answer to say. It depends, but Yeah. Hopefully that helps. It's not necessarily an easy answer

Scott Tolinski

overall, and I I struggle with this greatly because I I really like performance, so I I find myself really seeing how much I can squeeze out of things. Another option that we didn't list I know we're done with this question, but Another option that, is is in the pie. If you find a library that is too big, you can always look for alternatives. A good example is we were using a React color picker That used Redux and a whole bunch of extra Redux thunk and whatever just to control a stinking color picker element, Including tons of other inline packages, and it was huge, huge, huge package and, the biggest package I've ever seen. And, of course, I found a smaller React color picker, and it worked very well for us and is about 1 tenth the size. So that's always an option as well. Okay. Next question, is from Paige Niederinghaus, who I just wanna say, Paige, she mentions that she, writes a lot of questions and then we've answered the last 3 of them. Read. Paige is an all star question writer. Every single time, I could read her questions before

Topic 3 11:41

Tips for keeping skills current during long break

Wes Bos

even getting to her name and being like, this is a great question. Every single time, it's Paige. So shout out to Paige Niederinghaus for always asking great questions. Today, I got a new one for you. I received rid an email from a creator of an IDE I've never heard of with a plug in support for languages and frameworks I don't use asking me to publish a review of their IDE. I I get these all the time. They attached a prewritten guest post or said I can write my own opinion if I choose, and asked what my terms are. I wrote back saying I it wasn't a great one to review their IDE for reasons I left it up listed above. I'm very happy with the Versus Code editor too, but it got me thinking. My question is to you. What is your opinion of doing sponsored post or guest post on your own sites? Rid. And if you're in favor, what sort of terms, payments, etcetera, would you outline to charge for it? Sponsors' posts on personal sites seems like little disingenuous suspect To me, but maybe I need to get over that way of thinking and focus on bringing in a little bit of extra income via my site, when the opportunity presents itself. Oh, this is this is an awesome question, because I get this all time. Scott and I get it all time. We have people that wanna come on the pocket. They wanna pay to come on the podcast Oh, ridged. Just to, like Goodness. Pump their own thing up. My boss has been working on a great project.

Wes Bos

Yeah. Or, like, YouTube videos is the biggest one. Someone offered ready. To send me, like, 3 boxes of different types of drones because I did 1 video. And I was like, that was amazing, but I was like, not really a drone YouTube channel. I did 1 video on writing a drone with a job script. Woah. Woah. Woah.

Scott Tolinski

Can I just say, I'm gonna a little bit of a anchor towards this because Wes directly stepped in front of my getting a drone in the 1st place, and now here, Big bucks, Wes? No. I didn't direct you to They're coming in with 3 drones, and Wes is like, you know what? I don't need your 3 drones. And you know who doesn't need your 3 drones either? My cohost who didn't even get one drug.

Wes Bos

It wasn't the same not the same company. It was totally different company. They just Searched on YouTube. So, yeah, that's a really good example. What was the company? IBM and Tello approached Me and many other creators, including Scott, and they said, can you do a video, and we'll send you a drone? And I said, sure. I forget how much it was. Couple $1,000. I'll do a video on it.

Wes Bos

And, unfortunately, I asked for so much that they didn't have any money left for Scott. So sorry about that, Scott. But whenever I approach these types of things, in most cases, it it's not a good fit. Like, people like an IDE editor. But if you do approach them in whatever use case, what I usually like to do is let me do my own thing. Like, I'm not gonna rid. Use your IDE or your your page builder and be like, this is amazing. I'm gonna use this for all of my stuff. I'm gonna say, alright, these people pay me to check it out. Rid. I'm gonna try to build something with their tech, and I'm gonna let you know what I think about it along the way. And those are the types of rid of things that I like to do. I I don't do them very often because of my time is better spent actually making courses.

Wes Bos

But, Yeah. I think I think as long as you feel okay about it, and know and are very clear that somebody is paying you to do something, which Unfortunately, it's not the case with a lot of reviewers out there. I think it's totally fine, and and get that money if you can because rid. It's, you worked hard to obviously build this thing. I I think in the case that you're saying right here, these people are just straight up looking for rid. Link backs and SEO juice. They're just they're not looking for, like to get actually, like, good informed reviews. There's they probably found your blog.

Wes Bos

Rid They probably found it ranks high for keywords, like, that they want, like JavaScript.

Wes Bos

And then they're probably saying, alright. We if we pay this person $300,

Scott Tolinski

It's gonna really help our SEO journey. They're trying to gain that, it sounds like. Yeah. I think this is an interesting question because it's like as long as you feel Comfortable with it, then it's it's good to go. That said, be very explicit up front. I I like to say, like, 800 times in my videos, almost to the point where it's obnoxious.

Scott Tolinski

Like, you hear me gushing about Netlify right now or or who am whomever. Right? This I'm not being paid for these opinions. There was, like, a, a video I did on Scott Tries begin begin .com, and I was just, like, going nuts about it. And I had to say, like, Alright. They did not pay me. They do not even know I'm making the video. The bummer part of when you do like a company, people are like, oh, they're paying you. Right? Yeah. Right. Especially rid Even here on Syntax, we do get paid for these advertisements. Right? But the ads that we read on Syntax are almost all Companies that we've used before they even reached out to us in the 1st place. So and the ones that we haven't, we test the products and we use them, and we love the rid The the stuff that we bring to you here. And so it it's a tough call because, yes, in some regards, you don't want to ruin your credibility, but if you are able to Do a follow-up review of something without having to, you know, butter their biscuit the whole time, then rid Then go right ahead and do it. Get that money or whatever. And if it doesn't feel like a good fit, chances are it's not going to be rid A good fit. Okay. So let's transition into one of our sponsors. I always love it when Russ West writes these sponsor transitions he wrote, Speaking of getting paid, which is just weird because the sponsor that we're transitioning to, it's nothing to do with money.

Scott Tolinski

LogRocket.

Topic 4 17:11

LogRocket sponsor ad

Scott Tolinski

LogRocket.

Scott Tolinski

What are they? Well, they're a visual tool to help you see bugs happening.

Scott Tolinski

Okay. Well, maybe perhaps there's a a new hot framework that wanted you to review their framework. So what do you do? You throw a LogRocket on that bad boy, And you check out to see if there's any errors happening. And if so, well, now you've got a better idea how they're happening with this new service. Rid. So check out LogRocket at logrocket.comforward/syntax.

Scott Tolinski

You're gonna sign up, get 14 days for free. LogRocket is this really, really cool modern tool that allows you to see errors happening with a scrubbable video replay.

Scott Tolinski

You can even get access to your Redux store, your network tab, your console logs, and more. There's an on premise version as well as the cloud version.

Scott Tolinski

It works with all of the tools that you know and love and even and even integrates into many other tools that you probably or may already be using, really just giving you that that full control over seeing how your errors happen. So stop guessing when bugs happen rid. [email protected]/ syntax.

Topic 5 18:19

Tips for selling digital products

Scott Tolinski

Alright. Let's get into the next question from Rob Osborne.

Scott Tolinski

Hey, Scott and Wes. Do you have any resources for those of us who want to learn more about digital products through ecommerce? The sources I found, Scott's re Ecommerce and Gatsby courses, Next. Js commerce demo focus more on creating stores that sell physical products. Are there any gotchas when selling digital or physical? Thanks for all that you do. Okay. Let me tell you, Rob, selling digital products is way easier than selling physical products, because physical products have so many, like, little edge cases, whether it's around shipping or locations that you're selling to. Those things really add up, and and next thing you know, you're coding a whole bunch of stuff if you're doing it from scratch. I know.

Scott Tolinski

Coded my own e commerce platform from scratch, and it, at launch, had access to both physical and digital products.

Scott Tolinski

And rid The first thing I did after, like, 1 year of running it was just remove physical products since I was spending way too much time on managing that stuff. So digital products, Typically, what you're selling access to with digital products is either some sort of a role. You're selling access to a role, which a role on the user will give them the ability to access different features in your code base, rid Or you're giving them access to digital files or potentially, like, streaming services.

Scott Tolinski

The digital files one might be a little bit tougher because you wanna block rid. Access to nonpaid customers to those digital files, and typically, that involves, like, when they purchase something, you're giving them some sort of, like, a re Key to a very specific URL. If you're storing those files on an Amazon s three bucket, you can get very complex with the ownership of of those files and who has Access to download or access them? Yeah. Like, temporary

Wes Bos

keys, things like that so that if someone sent that link to 7 of their friends, they couldn't all download that?

Scott Tolinski

Yes. So there's a lot of stuff you have to consider there if that's something you wanna get into, but if you really just have a, rid At the very basic, bare bones of all of this, you could have a zip file and a link somewhere. Maybe it's a Backblaze b two, rid A bucket or an Amazon s three bucket. You got a link somewhere. They make a purchase. You send them that link. Maybe you're sending them via email. Rid. That's the very most basics of it. Now granted, you'll still probably want some sort of a database to store some of these things in if you're doing it from scratch. You could always Set up through a a Shopify instance to do this as well. I personally wouldn't. I don't think it's intense enough. I probably, rid Like, me would have a database with users and orders and sales and those kinds of things, but for the most part, when you collect payment, rid You're giving either users a role or you're creating a record in the database that says, here's an order. This user made the order. This is what they have access to. Rid Good. Actually, the one thing I will add is I am

Wes Bos

trying to sell some T shirts right now. And, I'm I'm trying out Snipkart, Which is they've sponsored, like, 2 years ago, but it just says going down the route. I first signed up with Shopify, and Shopify is, like, this massive thing that does absolutely everything, but it was just, like, unfortunately, because of that it does everything. I was just so overwhelmed buy everything. And I was like, I just wanna sell T shirts. Massive. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, oh, maybe I'll try out Snipkart. And they also do digital products. So you could Build a Next or Gatsby website, and then for the that section of it, you could throw a Snip card in there, which would be kinda cool. Like, if you don't wanna build it from scratch, Stimkart's a great option because it can it's just front end code.

Wes Bos

You don't have to write your own database or anything like that, and it is definitely a really good option. You could Even throw it on the static side if you wanted. Next one we have here is from Anan. Do you have any tips on keeping your skills up to date while taking a break from work? I'm a front end dev currently 6 months into my year long maternity leave, and I feel my brain has turned to soup. I listen to podcasts and read blog posts, rid But it feels like it's never enough. Time and energy are very limited for me to work on personal projects.

Wes Bos

That's that's a good question. Yeah. Because, like, rid. If you are away from this stuff for so long, I think, like, it's a bit like riding a bike even though you might feel like you haven't touched it. Like Like, there's even for me, there's certain parts of code where I'm like, oh, man. I haven't worked on that website or haven't worked with this tech in rid 7 years or something like that, and you come back to it. You're like, I have no idea what to do. But then you get you get back into it. You start working on it and and whatnot.

Wes Bos

So I was the 1st day. Don't sweat it. It's good to have have breaks and whatnot. And, also, you probably come back to it with a renewed energy for it even though, like, ready. Maybe not energy in life, but just more excitement for it. And then like you said, podcasts and blog posts are are really good.

Wes Bos

I I think I what I would add to this is also watching coding videos on YouTube or on just, like, a course. Like, rid. Not necessarily you doing it because we know that that takes lots of time and commitment, but just watching others do it will it's Both it can be enjoyable if it if it moves at a decent pace, but also it can be good just to keep your head inside of rid. Things like that. And a year is really not that long. I know that we talk about, like, things changing very quickly, but I think if you were to keep up to date with the podcast and whatnot,

Scott Tolinski

you're not gonna not gonna be left behind or anything like that. Yeah. Rid I I wanted to put this one in here very specifically because 6 months into a year long maternity leave, like, yeah, that rid is going to be very tough, especially with everything that else that comes along with the maternity leave. I know you mentioned that your brain feels like mush.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. I can only imagine, that your brain probably feels like mush because that 1st year is rough. Rid it it's very rough. You're not getting any sleep. It's hard to concentrate on things. I know my wife constantly refers to her baby brain as just being, like, She can't even think straight. Right? Her her normal ways of doing things are just just aren't easy anymore. So whatever you can do to give yourself that ability, like Wes said watching tutorials without even doing it is a good thing because you see the code being written. It puts good Practices in front of your eyes, most likely if you're watching talented coders, because, again, it it it what it does is it's Kind of flipping those same switches in your brain of the text on the page and what that text is actually trying to solve. It's not gonna work your your problem solving stuff as well, But it's actually going to be really good for you to, really visualize a little bit more programming, which can really help. So I think Wes nailed it. Next question here is from Alejandro.

Scott Tolinski

Oh, and I'm sorry for, Anan.

Scott Tolinski

Good luck for you in your next 6 months. Yeah. Congrats. Alright. Alejandro, next question is, hi. Thank you for the awesome podcast. I've been listening for a 100 episodes or so. Still trying to catch up below 200.

Scott Tolinski

Wow. That is crazy to me. It is crazy. You know what, Wes? I wanna start at episode 1 and just listen to them all. I wanna do that.

Scott Tolinski

That would be a lot of time. I've listened to them all when they came out. I wanna listen to Megan. I wanna I wanna go on that journey. Go for it. Enjoy. Yes. Thank you. I've learned and enjoyed a ton. I'm a web developer, so syntax allows me to stay up to date with the web dev and learn from other people's experience. Here's my question. I remember you guys saying something about making your own UI component libraries.

Scott Tolinski

I have been wondering, do you use Some CSS library like Tailwind or Bootstrap for doing this, or do you write your SCSS or CSS from scratch? Thanks in advance. Okay.

Scott Tolinski

So Alejandro, I write my CSS from scratch for the most part. I use styled components to make my component library, but I've been getting away from this. I don't know how you feel about this, but we can have another conversation about this some other time, but I've been getting away from using styled components for everything, Specifically because CSS variables have become my bay, I absolutely love CSS variables to the point where they have made so much code that I've written redundant. I've I've gotten better at systems. I've gotten better at design systems. I've gotten better at classless CSS as in my Base CSS file that I wrote where I style all of my elements and whatever has gotten Yeah. Me to the point where I've written such efficient CSS that I'm almost having to write overrides anymore. Not that I don't have to for specific features, but, like, overrides or specific instances.

Topic 6 26:08

Tips for building UI component libraries

Scott Tolinski

What I've done is I've taken an approach where I have all of my base stuff, and I've started to craft my own utility rid. CSS classes when I need them. Now that might seem contradictory to some of the things I've said about utility CSS in the past, But what I've kind of pushed back on in utility CSS is is just importing some utility CSS library or going from those starting points Because you don't need all the stuff they give you, and you have to learn somebody else's thing. But if I want maybe, like, just a text align center on something, it's okay to make a a Center class and then throw that text align center on there, to to augment your own things. So I think you'd be surprised if you wrote it from scratch rich. Just how little you end up having to write to do some of these things yourself and write them for when you need them. That said, it it does depend a little bit on your time Time levels, how much time you have. Maybe using something like Tailwinds could be a nice way to, rapidly write some code. Me, personally, I maintain it all in styled components, CSS variables.

Scott Tolinski

If you wanna learn more, I have a course on this called modern CSS design systems Talking about writing really, really good base level CSS. I write everything from scratch as well. I've got lots of different projects. Some of them,

Wes Bos

just use Classes that target things and you apply the CSS to that. Some of them use BEM. Lots of them use style components.

Wes Bos

I don't use re Any of the theming values from style components, and I very rarely actually use the ability to stick rid JavaScript data into the style components, but I still really like style components for what it's good for, which is scoping CSS, Making reusable components, just writing the CSS like it's regular CSS, and, and sticking in there. So I really like that. I I think if I were to ever switch away from style components, It would be just to something that uses, like, the almost the same API as style components, but is a smaller footprint because it I don't necessarily need rid the variables thing any longer. That's not to say that you shouldn't use stock amounts. It's just I have found myself not needing it as much now that we have CSS variables.

Wes Bos

And I wanna be clear. I'm not people always take things like, oh, I'm not using it as much. People always say like, oh, you're not using that at all anymore, and it's Dead. No. No. No. I still use it all the time. I still it's still my choice if I'm doing

Scott Tolinski

CSS in a, React project. So that's it from scratch. And sometimes using a library can save you a bunch of time.

Wes Bos

1 of our sponsors could save you a bunch of time on the back end, and I'm talking about rid Prismic. Yes. Prismic is a headless CMS for your project. It's awesome because the way that it works is you sign up for Prismic, And you log in, and you don't have to write any code. You just start creating your content types. You create your relationship types. They have this really neat thing called slices, which we're gonna talk about in some coming episodes as well.

Topic 7 29:57

Prismic sponsor ad

Wes Bos

And then you can rid Give that to your marketing person or your your end user, the person that's using your website. They log in, create all the content types. And then on the other end, you can grab a GraphQL API. We'll talk about slices coming up as well. It's a it's a really big thing that Prisma has rolled out. Re Pretty nifty. It's it's awesome because you can go ahead and make a React or a View or a Next or a Nux or any project you want and pull in all the data from Prismic.

Wes Bos

So check it out for your next project. Go to prismic.i0forward/ syntax, and they have a really, really awesome landing page with a bunch of starter files. Rid. They have other features. Slices previews is really cool. You can preview your data, and they also have image optimization. So they have Imajix built right in. So that also solves the problem not of where do you put your data, but also where do you put your images. So check it out. Thanks so much to Prisma for sponsoring.

Wes Bos

Next question from Dan hey, guys. Would be interested to hear some common ways to use dev tools, Chrome dev tools, React dev tools, Redux dev tools, etcetera. Rid. I feel like there's a lot of information out there that I'm not utilizing, to help you figure out problems during development. Would be here to hear an overview of how you use different different tabs. Re I think that this would be awesome. Like, maybe we should do a bunch of hasties on the different tabs and how we use them. But, like, real quick, my most used tabs are Inspector with CSS.

Topic 8 30:52

Effective use of dev tools

Wes Bos

I use Firefox dev tools, and there are some really nifty stuff around CSS and unused properties or invalid rid Properties.

Wes Bos

I use the network tab a lot to see what's being pulled in, when things are being pulled in. I use debugger statements in the in the Dom. They also have you can put in break statements, which will break when some data is added rid. Or when a dom is dom element is updated and whatnot.

Wes Bos

I use the storage tab quite a bit for local storage and cookies, And those are my big ones.

Wes Bos

Firefox just rolled out this really nifty multiline console sort of playground. You read. You know, if you're just trying out some JavaScript and you wanna run it and you just type it in the console, but it's multiline and sometimes you hit enter at the wrong spot, they they just they just rolled out this sort of, like, little playground where you can put your write your code and then hit a shortcut key, and it will run it in the console. So I like that a lot. I've not I've not seen that yet. I gotta update to get it.

Scott Tolinski

I have been using, I think, primarily I mean, obviously, the elements And the styles tab are probably the the defaults.

Scott Tolinski

I write so much CSS in the styles tab. Like, I really like to try things out. And that's actually another area where my variables and design system stuff has, like, really come in handy because you can tweak so much by modifying a couple variables in our system. So that's always really nice for me. Even Chrome added so many of the nice new layout tools now, like the the grid stuff that Firefox dev tools had. So Chrome's really been stepping it up. Did they add did they add that? They have a bunch of new stuff. Oh. I wanna check out the grid thing. You can you can even Extend the grid lines. Show the I mean, all the stuff that you can do in the Firefox version of it, it it's really nice. There's some some really cool tools there that they've been adding lately, Specifically around that kind of stuff that you're used to in the Firefox developer tools, but even, like, color pickers and little things like that.

Scott Tolinski

I think the Chrome dev tools rid Has responded well to the Firefox dev tools being so dope.

Scott Tolinski

They're just like, well, we gotta gotta step it up a little bit. I think my most used tab rid in Chrome developer tools nowadays is probably the network tab.

Scott Tolinski

I really rely on the network tab. And, also, I've been doing a lot of ESM stuff lately rid Where you're able to see the modules being loaded as individual network requests. Yeah. I like I said, I spend a lot of time in the network tab, but it is Endlessly helpful once you get to use it, not from, like, perf.

Scott Tolinski

I mean, perf, yes. Absolutely. But be able to see, like, Alright. This thing's not working. What is actually being returned to me? Like, for instance, maybe I was expecting a file to be returned, but it's actually getting my in. My request is returning my index dot HTML file. You know, have you ever seen that that that error that's, like, unexpected token forward slash bracket? Rid Yeah. That can be super confusing. Yeah. But if you head to your network tab and you can see, okay, what's actually being loaded with this file? Oh, it's loading an HTML file? Rid That's unexpected.

Wes Bos

I get that one all the time. Our course issues is issues. It would the error would just tell you rid because, of course, but you can actually see what came back. And if you see the data that came back properly, but it didn't come into JavaScript because, of course, Then you know, okay. There's something wrong with my my server, or I'm not sending,

Scott Tolinski

the right cookie over. And even just, like, inspecting individual requests. Rest. Like, for instance, like, you you might know that your your site is slow, but you might not know why it's slow and being able to see which request specifically is taking up that amount of time. It's just endlessly useful to have all of those things right in the easy place.

Scott Tolinski

Side note here, Wes, I don't we've I said that's unexpected or something.

Scott Tolinski

Rid. That's what we always say to Landon when we're like, he's doing something weird, and we don't wanna be like, what are you doing? No. You know? Because, you know, you don't wanna shame a little kid like that. So what we're say we always say, rid That was unexpected.

Topic 9 35:05

Overcoming programming imposter syndrome

Scott Tolinski

That I got that one from Courtney. That's great. Alright. Next question is from Harry. Harry says, Hey, Wes and Scott. Thank you for everything that you do. You are both truly a gem for the community. You know, remember when we said that, you gotta say something nice about us Before that's just Hi, everybody.

Scott Tolinski

Yeah. I really need some help or advice.

Scott Tolinski

I'm graduating from a boot camp next month and feel like I am rid Feeling severe insecurities or imposter syndrome. For whatever reason, I freeze up when it comes to writing up or coming up with code myself, Mainly in JavaScript.

Scott Tolinski

When in class or watching tutorials, following along or viewing other people's code, I can tell you exactly what's going on or why it's being done. I can change things and add things and explain them, but when it comes to starting from a blank slate, I freeze as if everything I know about programming has gone out the window. I forget simple syntax having to Google the oddest things, and sometimes I don't even know where to start my own application. Do you have any advice on how to get past this hurdle, Like some sort of system or template that you follow when starting out. I'm a very visual learner.

Scott Tolinski

When there is nothing here, I choke. I know doing projects are supposed to help, But figuring them out is my own issue. I feel like, at this point, I shouldn't be feeling like this, but is this normal? Okay. Let me just stop you there. Yes. Very normal.

Scott Tolinski

In fact, rid This, just like anything else in programming, is a skill that you need to practice.

Scott Tolinski

Now, I like to organize rid my code by writing out some little, like, notes to myself in terms of comments usually in the form of comments. Like, first thing, alright. I'm starting a new JavaScript. Let's say it's a node server, and this node server needs to connect to an a a database. Alright. What do I need to do first? I'll leave a comment that says, Very broadly, connect to DB.

Scott Tolinski

Another comment. Once DB is connected, start server. Okay.

Scott Tolinski

So, like, rid. You could think of it as, like, when you were writing a term paper or something, you're writing a paper in school, and they always, like, told you to do, like, an outline first. Rid I like to do an outline in comments if there is a project that I'm not sure where to start. Here's what I need to do, and here's what I need to do in plain English. And then what you can start to do is just start to fill in those blanks with the code that accomplishes those things that your text is saying to do, And that will at least get you through a place where like, typically, when you're solving a problem or you're writing an application, you typically know what the problem is. And if you start at the very most broad way of describing that problem and then drill down, drill down, drill down, and next thing you know, you're ready to write some code? That is usually a good strategy for me, but this is an entirely normal thing, Harry, and you just need more practice. Rid. And if you're struggling in googling a lot, hey. That's cool. Don't get down on yourself about it. Struggle in Google because that's the only way you're gonna get that practice. This is totally normal like Scott said. I I think what I I do, and I still do this, is,

Wes Bos

like, you're attacking a problem, And you have no idea even where to start, and then you panic because you don't know. And then there's this added thing about, like, is what I'm writing the best way to do this? So 1st of all, throw out that that part, which is is this the best way to do it? It it doesn't matter. Like, I did a I did a little YouTube, video the other day. Go to my you can go to my channel, and it's about, like, a rid Tricky. What's it called? Can you solve this tricky JavaScript array problem? And I think that was that was a good example of how I approach it where I explain it, and I just rid Think like something needs to happen here, and then just start doing a brain dump of different things you think need to happen And and write them in comments like Scott was saying, and then just start to do little pieces.

Wes Bos

That's How programming works is that you are, constantly just changing the way you're doing something and reapproaching and refactoring and and whatnot.

Wes Bos

So just know that that is is normal.

Wes Bos

The only other thing I would say is maybe even try to record yourself Solving a problem as if you were going to post it on YouTube. That's not to say you you should, post it on YouTube, but just Getting comfortable with attacking a problem while you feel like somebody is watching, I'm using air quotes here, I think is also, really helpful. That that's rid helped me over the years tackle things better.

Wes Bos

Sometimes when I have a problem, I'll flip on my screen recorder and just talk through it. And probably 4 out of 5 times, it's not very good, and I don't post it. But that 1 5th time, it it is actually a good video. But just rid For that for just for me thinking this might be a actual video for people, it helps me me post it online. And, also, it's helpful because You get past that, like, imposter syndrome. I just posted my video, and I had 300 people telling me I did it wrong.

Wes Bos

You know? I used to get really upset about that, and now I'm just like, there's literally lots of ways to do it. Who cares? Like, this is how I did it. And then there also is helpful little tips in the comment of, oh, you could've used this little method or maybe a bit easier or faster to do that, and it's helpful. So That's what I think. I think that you should just it's totally fine. Keep practicing. You'll get better at it. Embrace the, the rough, You know, patches that you have when starting out and just know that it is totally normal. Next question from David p.

Topic 10 40:39

Developers' role in reducing emissions

Wes Bos

Do you think Developers have a responsibility to help reduce c o two emissions caused by the web. A BBC news article, bbc.uk Stated that HD video streaming on phones generates about 8 times more emissions than standard definition video. What? And noted that on a small screen, the viewer might not even notice the difference.

Wes Bos

Should the developer limit the resolution on the mobile device, Or should they let the end user choose? Thanks for the hard work. Oh, that's that's a good question. Yeah. I I should maybe read this article here, rid. But I'm assuming the processing of the video is what causes a lot of the emissions because it takes so much Heat and CPU power and whatnot.

Wes Bos

So do you think that we have to to reduce CO two emissions? Absolutely not. We're web developers, and we can do all we no. I'm joking. Rid. About to say yes. Thing like, what the heck?

Scott Tolinski

I was, like,

Wes Bos

really about to get upset. It's it's all fake. No. No. Honestly, yes. I think if you can re Eke out another place in your life where you can, stop the c o two emissions from from going. Even just like the other day, I spent, like, 10 minutes trying to get my freaking monitors to sleep at the right time because it's sometimes that you just I leave my desk, and I come back In the morning, and the my monitors are still blasting on. And I was like, why why are these not going to sleep? And I had to, like, dig down the rabbit hole of that. But if you can find more ways, absolutely. Should you degrade the performance of the video and the quality? I think that's what an algorithm should do, not you or the user can do it, but I think, like, if the YouTube video like, YouTube does this already. They can detect if you're watching it on a specific device and the speed of your Internet and whatnot.

Wes Bos

So there's that. I wouldn't rid Serve up your users a worse version of a video just to help the environment because there are other things you can do. There's lots of rid environmentally friendly hosting companies you could put it on. There's carbon offsets that can be done. I'm not an environment expert, but I think that there would be other other ways to rid Offset that. I'm not an expert either. I do think that

Scott Tolinski

what you mentioned being, like, not necessarily their responsibility because, typically, if you're Serving video yourself, you're serving a singular file. It's not gonna get that many plays. But the companies who are doing the Heavy lifting in the serving of video, whether that is YouTube, Vimeo, or, let's say, like, even my my host, Mux. Right? Those companies, they're doing the heaviest of the lifting because they're choosing which to serve up for users, and I don't think rid. That I would imagine that those companies would like to keep their bandwidth bills, all of that, as small as possible. So that's where the biggest Savings are going to come in general, was going to be from those companies who are able to make those changes as well as, like let's think about, like, The biggest, I think, carbon, c o two emissions decrease is going to come from better compression and newer formats, and that's really, like, something that's sort of out of your So the things that are in your control, yeah, absolutely, I would say go for it. And and that should be even like a rid That should be a differentiator. Right? Let's say there's there's 2 hosting companies or something, and one provides those types of rid. Features and what doesn't, you know, maybe start looking at the the one that provides, you know, what are they're doing for environmental causes or whatever. I I A very, very, very pro environment, and I would like to see everything possible be done, but I don't think changing your video output To only allow for SD video streaming, I don't think it's really the the right solution, but, you know.

Wes Bos

Yeah. They say in this article, they there's a little update at the bottom that says the story should have said 4 k, not Not HD. So it's they're they're comparing 4 k to 3 20 p, which is massive, massive difference in video quality. And I would say, like, unwatchable on on 320 in in most cases, especially

Scott Tolinski

for me on programming. The text needs to be super crisp. Rid And and you know what? Like, there is going to be much bigger offenders than you, whatever you're doing. That's not to say you shouldn't do everything you can, but Netflix is serving up 4 k, and they're doing it to They're burning diesel. No. They're not. I'm just like, dude.

Scott Tolinski

Rid. So far, like, you know, net that's Netflix's they're gonna be the ones who are hitting that major c o two emissions bump. And in fact, if you wanted to do your part there.

Scott Tolinski

Maybe you should just set your Netflix, and your YouTube qualities to auto be on HD rather than 4 k, and then that way you won't get that 4 k if you don't need it. I think that would probably do more than whatever you're serving in terms of environmental offset or something like that. Alright. Let's actually this is, I don't have any any prepared transitions for this new sponsor that we have with us. You know? It's been a little while since we've had a new sponsor because all of our current sponsors are just so, amazing and keep coming back.

Scott Tolinski

So rid. This new sponsor is Linode. Now if you have been around in the web development space for any amount of time, you probably have heard of Linode. Rid. Linode is a historically tried and tested cloud hosting platform. And if you haven't been to linode dot rid lately. You're gonna wanna check it out because they offer a ton of really, really awesome services beyond just simply hosting a VPS because I would say, like, Linode has I wanna go, like, back in time back in the time here. When we were looking for new cloud hosting providers at some point, There were a handful of companies who did VPS stuff, and Linode was always at the top of that list. Right? And so they have evolved as they rid. Should have, and they have come out with a ton of cool new stuff. And I don't know about US, but I'm looking into Kubernetes more, which is, I don't know why, but I am looking into Kubernetes more. I've learned how to say it, and, that's a good start. And there's Some really, really interesting Kubernetes products available on Linode.

Topic 11 45:54

Linode sponsor ad

Scott Tolinski

So today, you can get started with Linode with a $100 free credit, which, we all know in the VPS world will get you a very long ways because virtual private servers, especially, companies like Linode are cheap. So $100 in credit is going to get you a lot of stuff. So you're gonna wanna head on over to linode.comforward/ Syntax, that's l I n o d e.comforward/ syntax.

Scott Tolinski

Linode has 11 global data centers and provides re 247365 human support with no tiers or handoffs regardless of the plan size. In addition to shared and dedicated Compute instances you can use your $100 credit on an s three compatible object storage managed Kubernetes or more. So check it out. Rid. Linode.comforward/ syntax. Click on the create free account button to get started. Thank you for Linode for sponsoring.

Scott Tolinski

Alright.

Scott Tolinski

Next question is from Ben k.

Scott Tolinski

What about BenQ? Isn't that a tech company? Yes. Okay. Ben k. Hey, Scott and Wes. Rid. I was hoping that you guys could give me and other listeners advice on knowing when you've bitten off more than you can chew.

Scott Tolinski

Often, I'll be working on a project for fun and possibly building my portfolio, and I'll continue to be excited about the features that I'd have to add as my current app or what have you. At a first glance, the ideas or features rid Seemed reasonable enough to tackle, but hours later, I find myself stuck realizing that I'm in over my head as I've At the same time, I want to challenge myself so that I can grow, but sometimes I feel like I'm not using my time wisely. So my question to you is, where does the line between rid Challenging ourselves, take on a new and difficult test, and scaling back our current work to make it more approachable and less overwhelming. Okay, Ben. I I think there's 2 things here because the 2 things that stuck out to me were I'm realizing that I'm in over my head And I'm not experienced. Okay? So 1, the experience level to tackle something. To me, that's a great problem to have because This is a good opportunity for you to become experienced in this. Number 2, the lack of manpower to complete something. That is a different problem, my friend, because there are problems That are just way too big for you to code up in a side project, or else everyone would just write Google in their side project. You know? It's like, rid There are certainly problems that are not going to be easy for you to solve or possible for you to solve as the solo individual.

Scott Tolinski

But if it is a problem of you don't have the experience, this is a good opportunity. If this is something that you want to learn Or you feel I could benefit you in the long term in your job hunt, your career, then you're gonna wanna go ahead and just look at the problem for what it is. Okay. I'm trying to solve this problem. Here's a good one. I'm building a video site. I have no experience with video. What do I have to do? Well, rid I have to figure out, how to upload video. Okay. Well, I gotta have a a way to upload the video. Well, I gotta Maybe it's an API that already exists, a Vimeo or whatever.

Scott Tolinski

And, okay, I pick the service. Now I have to write the code that connects the 2. Rid. I gotta upload the video to the service, hit the API, do that stuff. And and that to me is, like, fully understanding the problem And the solution before writing any code, and then you can then try to execute. Now a lot of the times when you are trying to solve a problem with writing any code, You will have missed a substantial amount of things or perhaps your brain did not think of the things that it does not know about it. Rid Imagine that if you don't know about something, you don't know about all the little things you have to think about. But it's a good opportunity for you to then dive in further, dive in further, dive in further. And you know what? By the end of it, you may not even get a functional product, but you will have learned a ton about the intricacies of these little things. And maybe Next time when somebody says, hey. Can you write me a video uploader? You could say, I could possibly write you a video uploader, but rid. These are the things that we need to consider. Do you have the budget for this? Do you have the time for this? Do you have this or that? Whatever. So it's not always about Getting the code and results, but it's sometimes about, like, learning the things that you just don't know,

Wes Bos

exist out there. Yeah. That's I always would tell people, ready. Push yourself maybe 12 a half percent past your comfort level. So, don't take on something that is, like Like, massive. Like, sometimes we see people do that where they're like, yeah. Like, I'm just gonna push myself, and, like, you should know how far you are pushing yourself. And, how do you do that? Well, like, okay. I'm taking on a project with, like, a store locator. I know I always use that example, but it's a good example. Re I've never built 1 before, and I've never done mapping before. So let me do a quick little bit of googling around. Let me look at some of these packages And say, okay. Well, this thing allows me to plot map points on a map, and and this thing allows me to pull in my store my data, and I can have latitude longitude.

Wes Bos

I think that with a little bit of work, I can get those 2 things working together. I think that's a good example of pushing yourself. Right? It's not going in blind. Pushing yourself is not being blind about it and and destroying yourself into deep water and learning how to swim. It's just saying, like, I am rid I'm a little bit afraid of that. I'm a little bit intimidated, and there's a lot of unknown.

Wes Bos

I think, also, what is worth having is if you can find some sort of mentor Who it will be your phone a friend for this type of stuff. Yeah. And just, like, not necessarily do the code for you, rid. But just be like, look, I'm trying like, I remember my buddy, Darcy.

Wes Bos

I was building a integration for a real estate website, rid And I was just trying to, like, hack their query params and pull it into their website.

Wes Bos

And I was just like, yeah. Like, it should be rid. And then I was I was in over my head, and I didn't know how to do it. And then he just came along and said, like, alright.

Wes Bos

Like, this is how I would approach it. You need to make rid You're getting the data from the client, and then, like, hot potato, send that over to to whatever proxy you're working on. And I said, okay. Good. Like, In that case, I knew that I was pushing myself, and I knew that it was possible, but I just hit, like, a actual technical hurdle, which I didn't know I didn't know what the piece of technology was to to fix what I a thing I had in. In that case, having a a phone a friend is key. So, hopefully, that's helpful. Yeah. Rid I I think the the phone a friend thing is is a a really good idea, but at the same time, you gotta

Scott Tolinski

be aware of that. You know, you're Placing a cognitive burden on somebody else, so making sure that the questions are, like, is this a dumb idea? There were those types of things. Where should I look to learn about this? Don't be, like, learning something for me. Right? Yeah. Just having like, it's true. Coming to people with your questions. Like, sometimes people will Send me DMs. All all the time, people send me DMs with questions, and sometimes it's just, hi.

Wes Bos

And then I'm just like, yes. What do you need? No. Hi is is what you're sending to me. Rid And then other times, people will say, hey, Wes. I know you're busy. Here's a code pen or code sandbox with the exact issue that I'm running into. What do you sandbox. The best. Yeah. Yeah. And then, I was like, oh, man. Like, then I can just, like, dive into it quickly. And and, usually, it's a a question where I'm like, I bet I could figure this out. Like, it's almost a rid Almost a challenge. You know? Like, the last YouTube video I did about the array thing, that was somebody who came into my DMs. I was like, why would you approach this? I'm like,

Scott Tolinski

You obviously know me very well because I want to fix this myself. Yeah. Like, if I'm in GitHub Issues and And I'm, like, just pawn around some other library that I use as GitHub issues and somebody comes in with a CodePen, man, I feel compelled to I it's bad For me, my productivity, but I feel compelled to click that and be like, what is going on there? Yeah. In the live episode, we did that little game where we could see who could See if we could find the little bugs in the code. To me, syntax error. Yeah. That's a lot of fun. I like it.

Scott Tolinski

Okay. Last question here is from Mateo Wong, And he asks, thanks for the fantastic show, Scott and Wes. I've been listening to every single one as soon as the GitHub commit oh, jeez. Mateo's on the GitHub of Oh, there's The GitHub game. For those who don't know, there's a couple people who scope the shows early by watching

Wes Bos

GitHub, And

Scott Tolinski

the the GitHub commit will have the m p three URL in it. So we can see from our stats that there's, like, between 5 12 people that do this. Rid Yeah. Right? It's very fun. Mateo on the GitHub gang here. What is the right use case for a database, and what is the right use case for rid A headless CMS.

Scott Tolinski

Is a headless CMS just a database plus a user friendly way of entering data into the database? Is there a secure way of querying Sanity directly from the front end? Lot of questions, Mateo.

Scott Tolinski

I have re Data that I want to be only available to logged in users. Thanks again for the podcast. Okay. So for the large part, there is rid A bit of a difference between the headless CMS and a database with a user friendly way of entering the data because oftentimes those systems, the CMS, rid. They're taking care of things for you beyond just entering and retrieving data. There's a lot of, like, you mentioned permission based things. Re So, like, you only want to have data available to logged in users? That's something that you can't just do with only a database. Rid. Right? There needs to be logic in the application somewhere to look at, like, who is the current user in a secure manner, what are they doing, and what do they have access to? You do need code logic in between there, and your options are to either write it yourself or to have the CMS have it being written for you. Of course, there is trade offs there. Like, a you can't use a database straight to your your front end code, because, like, a database doesn't

Wes Bos

You can't just connect JavaScript on the client to a database, because there needs to be layers of, like, logic, how when things get updated.

Wes Bos

Rid. There's a a layer of authentication, who can update and pull data. And then finally, I think one thing you're thinking of here is that, A headless CMS gives you a GUI to actually manage all of that data, even though you you can obviously go straight rid to the like, an API. Like, the difference between an API and a database is a database is just where the data lives without rid Any sort of restrictions on I guess some databases do allow you, but usually, you need another layer on top of that, which is rid Who can do it in in what in the Lair. And then finally, you have a GUI, which is if you log in, you wanna be able to manage, update, delete, query, things like that. So that is the the difference.

Wes Bos

Some people will go straight for a database and build their own rid. Layer of logic authentication and gooey on top of it. I think in most cases, people go for a no. Maybe not most cases. That's not true. But in a lot of times, people just say, like, yeah. I have the use case that headless CMS fits. I have content. I've got data types. I've got the relationships between the things. I just wanna define what those are and to spit out an entire GUI and GraphQL or REST API for me. Word. That was good. Rid So thanks to Dale for that one. Now we're gonna get into the part of the show that we call

Scott Tolinski

sick picks.

Scott Tolinski

Sick picks are where we pick things that we find to be pretty sick. Sometimes it's products. Sometimes it's podcasts. Sometimes it's,

Wes Bos

meat. I don't I have no idea, Wes. What do you got for us this week? I'm gonna sick pick a hot sauce rid. That is very hard to get in Canada. I had somebody send me a bottle of this, and it was awesome. It's the secret secret aardvark habanero hot sauce, And it's unlike any other hot sauce I've ever had, and it's I was gonna say probably top 3 hot sauces I've ever had.

Wes Bos

It's thick. Ready. It's almost like almost like a salsa, but not a salsa. And it's got the right amount of heat. Like, it's not, like, gonna blow your brains out re Super smoky and, like, your like, I get the hiccups. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's chunky, and it it comes in, like, a bit of a different bottle than than you would think. It comes in like a bottle like a squeeze bottle, but it's got a big wide mouth on it because it's a little bit chunky. And, man, is it good? I ran out, rid. And I was really bummed because it's, like, $17 a bottle if you wanna buy it in Canada when it's just, like, a couple bucks if you buy it in the States. So I am Waiting for the borders to open up so I can go buy some more of this because I loved it. Secret aardvark habanero hot sauce.

Scott Tolinski

Ready. Sounds good. I am a big fan of habanero. We grew our own there. You can find habanero everywhere in Colorado, so, I'm I'm a big, big fan of that. That type of burn, it's like a a little bit less upfront burn than you get with a jalapeno.

Scott Tolinski

And, like, in my experience, it's a little bit more of a rid and it's a good linger. I'm a big big big habanero fan. I I put them in my ceviche a lot. That's my my jam. Oh. There's ready. There's several dishes I made, and ceviche is one of them. Alright. I don't know. I've never made ceviche. I need to do that. That sounds awesome. Yeah. Get some nice sushi grade Tuna, chop it up real fine, dice it up, throw it in there. Oh, yeah.

Scott Tolinski

Squeeze in the grapefruit. That's what people don't know. They often think it's just lime. You squeeze in grapefruit in that bad boy? Grape? You got some BJ going. Yeah. Big fan. Okay. So my sick pick is going to be kind of funny here. This is 3 m double sided mounting tape rid Because I did not believe that double sided mounting tape would be exciting or interesting, but I I have double sided mounting tape, and I have my, like, You know, the CalDigit is our our, hub for our computer.

Scott Tolinski

That CalDigit hub has a beefy power supply. It's a big old power supply. Oh, mine mine just fell off.

Wes Bos

It's sitting on the ground right now because there's, like, 800 cables in it. Yep. Rid. If you get the wrong one, it falls off, so this is awesome. I need this. What I've done in addition

Scott Tolinski

to having this, like, because I wanna you know, I gotta keep my cables organized and whatever. Rid I I wanted to have a power strip underneath attached to the underside of my desk so I could plug in anything or whatever. In addition, I wanted to be able to mount that power supply, that giant power supply. So I've used this 3 m double sided mounting tape, and I have had a, you know, a power strip. You plug things, you unplug, it gets a lot of action in that up and down way. So, like, that has not budged. It hasn't budged at all. And the power supply for my three m, I just took some sticky double side tape, popped it right up in there, and it is stuck like a rid Moever. Moever. It is it is stuck. So I've used this tape. In fact, I've used this tape so much that I already went through a whole roll, And I ordered 2 more because I was like, you know what? Mountain tape double sided mountain tape by 3 m. This stuff is legit.

Wes Bos

That's good. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to get a roll of that. We have rid of it. We have it for our rugs. Keep them in place. That is so smart. Yeah. I'm gonna do that. Yeah. I've been using Velcro for all of my stuff So that if you do need to take it off, you still can.

Wes Bos

But this, for some cases, you don't This is more sturdier than

Scott Tolinski

More sturdier. This is more sturdier than, Velcro because,

Wes Bos

like, that Velcro, the sticky isn't gonna be the weak point of it. It's gonna be the Velcro. The heavy duty Velcro, I literally I could hang, like, myself up with a strip of it. It's it's so heavy duty. Like, it's like you don't think like, I riff. Rid You should see my ceiling right now. I used to put all my hard drives on the ceiling because I have this, like, angled ceiling. And I took them off, and I ripped the drywall off, because this the, the velcro was so strong, so maybe go easy on that. But, yeah, sick pick. Shameless plugs. I'm gonna shamelessly plug all of my courses at westboss.comforward/courses.

Wes Bos

You'll have a list of master Gatsby, beginner JavaScript, rid. ES 6 for everyone.

Wes Bos

Full stack advanced React to GraphQL, React for beginners, CSS Grid. There's lots of them on there. Go check it out. Use coupon code syntax rid bucks off. Awesome.

Scott Tolinski

I want to plug all of my courses at leveluptutorials.com.

Scott Tolinski

We Do a new course every single month. It's like a magazine subscription. You sign up. You get the latest course. It's very cool. You get me teaching you all sorts of awesome stuff Like Deno, one zero one for web developers as well as animating Svelte or even animating React.

Scott Tolinski

Love that rid Stuff. So if you want to check all of that and more, head on over to level up tutorials.comforward/pro and sign up for the year

Wes Bos

Today. Alright. Thank you so much for tuning in, and we will catch you on Monday.

Wes Bos

Peace.

Wes Bos

Peace. Re

Scott Tolinski

Head on over to syntax.fm for a full archive of all of our shows, and don't forget to Drive in your podcast player or drop a review if you like this show.

Scott Tolinski

Rid.

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