I got fired, what should I focus on?

Welcome to Syntax. Today, we got 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 it on an upcoming episode.

Today, we've got really good questions on what to do with the a 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.

Scott 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 Node, 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,

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What's up, Scott? How are 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 Scott. 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, what, a 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 it was great. There's, like, this thing where I would you just think AI can do anything. So there 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 ChattGPT, and they'll tell you how many. So I uploaded it to ChattGPT, and they said there was three people in the crowd.

Uh-huh.

And then it, like, even showed me the Python code and everything that it ran Deno nowhere close. I suppose we could just count the faces in that photo.

What would you that would be we could put somebody on that. Can can we get an intern?

He wants to be Syntax ESLint to count the people in a photo.

Yeah. Also, Randy just told me we're gonna have to upload, like, a 150 videos manually to something. So I was thinking, 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 gate. We did some CSS battles on stage, where we had to switch. We were all working on one computer. We were switching every sixty seconds. It was a riot. And then we had a a great after Sanity 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. 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, we're already thinking about that. It's gonna happen. Let's get into the first question here from Niccolo

Fideli.

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. So they're For sure. Does cash out there? Good. 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 I haven't done personally, but I do think there Yarn 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 have all are always going to be evolving, especially, like, front end frameworks and stuff like that. Because in that case, yeah, you're gonna have to keep it maintained.

One thing I think that some packages have done really well lately is that they've, 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 Mhmm. 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.

You Node, there's people out there. Yeah. Pop it in the Readme and and and put it somewhere. Put it just at the dang top of the Readme so that, like, people might see it. I mean, you never know who's out there looking to, get experience doing that kind of stuff. But reach out to people that way Wes they are, whether it's on Npm, where they're gonna 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 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 is interested in the project or somebody that relies on that package for their job is going to sort of, like, latch on and and start submitting issues, maybe submitting pull requests.

And those are generally good people. They they have a little bit of skin in the game. They need to make sure that this package that they're relying on is is well used. So reach out to those people. Throw it in the readme that you're looking for maintainers because it's generally, yeah, 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 wanna be maintaining this full time or whatever. But if you get enough donations, then,

hey. That kinda 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, a $100 a month of donations, may maybe that's even high. But you get a couple $100 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 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 at the 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 food, especially we we were talking about this at the meetup. Sushi. Man, there's a lot of great sushi in Denver, whether that's, 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, Wenger is a really cool restaurant. It's not like the the cheapest place, but it's also not some place you have to go get dressed up to go to.

And it's really, really interesting kind of, like, blend of of various regional world foods and stuff like that. It's 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 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 it was out of the way, and we had to go wait in the line for it. And so, that's a great place to go. It's just 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 the park and amphitheater JS, like, the coolest dang thing. And you can just show up there anytime,

go through the It's like a mountain amphitheater. Right? Like, you can you

can see concerts there, and it's just, like, out in the the mountains. Yeah. It it's so cool because it is a like, the literal sides of the amphitheater are just giant red rock. They're massive. And that, like, really, like it used acoustically in with the natural landscape. But you'll see people working out there, like, twenty four seven. People are running up the stairs. People are, you know, doing yoga or put it's just a beautiful landscape. So if you can get out to Red Rocks, do that. Yeah. A lot of cool stuff around around Denver.

Rocky Mountain oysters. Where do you where's your favorite spot to get those? I've never had Rocky Mountain oysters.

Node? No. I I think there are good spots to get them, though. Yeah. I know. I've never had them. For me, it's like,

Scott for me. Not not my 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 gonna just say that. Say I've I've partaked before, but,

maybe at one point. Next question we have here from Dan, long time 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 been working on WordPress designing and building bespoke websites for clients using PHP, JS, CSS, etcetera. Though I have been trying to upscale myself in frameworks like React View, etcetera.

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 of 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 Wes JS, but my question is, if you're in my position, how would you tackle this? Have you I guys had to do this yourself. Yeah. This is very common problem in our industry or or problem that people have is that the industry moves so fast.

And if you cannot skill up during your day job, you kinda are in the spot where you you work on the same tech stack all day long, and you never increase your 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 kinda out of luck. So your your approach here is, first of all, try and eek these things into your day job. Your if your day job is constantly standing still, then the company you work for is probably gonna be in trouble as well at 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 the latest and greatest. 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 gonna 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 Scott, like, I'm gonna start something. I'm gonna build something that I want, and I'm gonna learn a whole bunch along the way, and then I'm going to be done that thing. You might wanna 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 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. Like, 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 Bos that way you aren't having to do it outside of your nine to five.

Because I know as somebody you know, I I worked outside of my nine to five for many years just by being, like a business owner working on Vercel 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 Coding Garden. I have been trying out Nuxt inspired by CJ's mammoth tutorial and loving it. So CJ dropped a massive tutorial on Nuxt to on our YouTube channel. One thing I still haven't totally grasped is when I would reach for pina? How do you say it, Scott? Penia.

Penia 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. Oh. Woah. Hello.

Hey. Hey. Look who's here. What's up, guys? What's up, CJ? I I thought you popped in for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just lying lying in dormant wait for Nux questions, but I'm here.

And,

I have an answer for this. Yeah. So, like Wes mentioned, Pnpm is a global state management.

So I'll I'll try to relate this answer, like, a little bit back to React so I don't bore any of the non Vue and Nuxt people that are here. But you could think of Penia as global state for Vue. It's kind of like Redux or Zustand.

Essentially, you can have state that you use throughout your application.

And then composables Yarn, 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 comp composable called use debounce Wes you have all the code that can debounce a value or something like use geolocation Wes 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, use geolocation.

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 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 Propenia because simple apps technically could create custom composables that share Scott.

But the moment you need a larger bit of state or something used across a lot of components, Penia is just gonna be a whole lot easier. So simple answer is is just use Penia. 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.

And, technically, you could do some things where they share state, but think of them as, like, one off uses, whereas Deno is a singleton. Right? You have one Pena instance, and then it's that same instance throughout your application. Yeah. Yeah. You have that in in React land as well where, 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 you pass it down. But then you also have your your global state management, which is, like you said, a singleton once,

and that is global for your entire app. Exact. And and I think one thing I'll add to that is Nuxt does have this composable called use Scott, 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 confusion's coming into play because you could create a composable that uses the use state function, and now you have a state variable that that technically is the same throughout your application.

But it gets a little bit cumbersome if you're the the moment your store starts to get get a little bit bigger. So I would say, well, if you if you've installed Pina, just just start using it because it's the way to go.

Nice. Beautiful. Well Yeah. Thank you so much, Jay. Popped in, CJ. I appreciate that. Yeah. No worries. I'll see you guys later. Thank you.

He goes down.

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 finish the darn thing and I run out of time to minimize it all. But, also, some of the removal, I Wes, 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 re like, that's not adding anything to the technique.

And, also, when you write the code, it's harder to read if it it, you know, by default. Like, CJ just writes this in a giant block, which, that's amazing. I 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 the chaos of trying to remove the white space at the end is 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 what does, like, all the CSS next stuff use? Basically, we would, like, write like a tree walker that would then apply all of the minifying properties. Because, like, the stuff we use, which is, like, leave off pixels if if for some and then leave off the last semicolon of the property. You Node, there's all those little tricks.

And, like, someone's gotta build a a little minifier that takes all those hacks into account. Right?

Oh,

maybe that someone should be Wes, and I'm just going to do it for myself. That's the thing. It's like, who can build that we all are given a a block of CSS, and then we all have to try and build the smallest minifier while it still renders a 100%.

Oh, that's a great Yeah. Fun. Although, like, I don't know why That makes for a fun video. Because writing the, 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 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 Node, and it sucks.

It's no fun. People that write that stuff are It's no fun. Are really good at it. I've had to do with that a couple times, and then I also wrote a, a code mod recently, which would walk through my code base and and modify it. And that was a little bit easier, but still, it's 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 that would be pretty fun. Alright. Thank you, Bobby Tables. We like that one. Al 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 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 Sentry, I was using an a seven three, 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 a seven, series cameras Yarn just really great for this type of thing. I am currently using a Sony FX three, 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, and, and that's It's like $4 if you It's crazy to have that. Yeah. Yeah. As your webcam. Wes is using the same camera as well. I I have my 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 JS a backlight. So I have a backlight LED panel. I have a, I I Wes you would call this a key light LED panel because it's kinda 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, Vercel like, we've had this comment, like, probably 10 times since you've put this light on. So it's everybody's noticing.

So it it which is it's wild because it is. You Node, I've been using the same camera and the same stuff for a little bit. This is a I use a a light dome from Aputure Light Dome, and it is the this, like, big old softbox with a grid on it and a light thing to diffuse the light. And then for the light itself, I'm using an Aputure Amaran one fifty c.

This light rules. It is not cheap. It's $350.

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 it gives me a little bit, just a more color.

And, yep, I I think this light right here is the star of the show. I 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 it it was a little too harsh all the time. So this is the backlight. And it's I I don't even like having it on because it's 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. Node, dude, you get the softbox, and you're gonna 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, this is the backlight here. I have the this is the fancy light. So you 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 ElectroVoice RE.

Oh, man. I always forget the number on this. RE 20. 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. Alright. Let's get into the next one. Mark CSS, 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 ten 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 a 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 wanna 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, JS easier to read for everybody, but me, personally, I find it tremendously easier to read. So that's why I use it. But I I didn't even consider using Snake Case until Rich started talking about it, and then I, started checking it out and was like, 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 the light and fill box that Nice. You had while you were talking. I get this, like, like, Amazon credit every now and then from my, like, uses page, westboss.com/uses.

Go please go click the links.

And every now and then, I'm like, I I use it for, like, the the splurge stuff. You know? Or, like, I don't wanna spend real money on this, but I'll put my Bezos bucks towards this.

Yeah. Right.

I will tell you, the softbox is a Yeah. 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 Oh, yeah.

For fiberglass tension rods, and that sucked. I will tell you that. I had a bruise on my palm from sending that thing up. And this thing, I'm just like,

ah, But when it's done, it's amazing. Tent. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. Once it's done, it's amazing. I will say that, but get ready for some tension rods. I had to Why do they 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.

Where's that? Pump it. That isn't that a good idea if you just blow it right up?

Yeah. A million dollar idea right there. I mean There you go. Joner

asks, have you ever had impostor 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 impostor syndrome? Imposter syndrome is, if you don't know, where you don't feel like you have the skill to do something.

So you you have a job and you think, man, how did I get this job? I'm I'm an impostor.

I 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 a $100,000 a year. But have you had it? Yes. I I don't think I have it as 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 gonna know everything, but you get to a point where you realize I probably can figure that out given enough time and resources.

So I 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 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 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? And then Wes Scott to be. It's a good spot to be if you can, step up to the plate. Because if they 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 and I found personally, again, that, like, that is where the massive jumps in my education have always come from because, you 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 Yarn 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. Oh, yeah. Totally.

Again, like I said, in any job that I Scott, 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 you're ready for the next big jump in in your scary, trajectory of

constant progression and growth. Mhmm. We 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.

Alright. Next one from boot camp grad. 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, and 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, like, deep technical, you know, 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 an 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 a degree on anything related to just engineering in general beyond that or, like, just in general AI.

So I 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 gonna be doing will certainly probably be replaced more and more by AI every single week here. But, man, somebody's gotta build the AI. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

I I think, like, those are the skills that are are gonna be needed. Right? Like, deep math, algorithms, data science, analysis, those things are are what we use to to build AI. You Node? It's one thing to ping the open a OpenAI API and put a clever little prompt in there and and parse the JSON that comes back, but it's it's another one to be able to, like, figure out, like, a middle out 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 Mhmm. Because you can also be in this, 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 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 Node? It's for a Scott of time, we had you just have to learn React, and you can get a really well paying job. But I 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 poop poop poop TypeScript into chat GPT, that's probably a good idea.

Word.

Rand mom says, hi, Scott and Wes.

I was listening to episode seven ninety eight, which was self hosting reverse proxy servers. So what we did is we discussed what a reverse proxy is when you're 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 getting setting up a small tutorial repo for others to use with a small project to teach yourself some of these practical applications.

Alright. 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 Vercel. Maybe you're running a Node application.

Maybe you're running a web server that serves up a a front end front end. Maybe you have, like, like, a database. Maybe you have an API server that's running, or maybe you just have literally 20 WordPress installs running all in the on the same server.

When it comes time to visiting those applications, generally, what happens is you you visit, like, the IP address, colon, the port that that application is running on, and that's how you run each of them.

What you wanna do, likely, is you wanna have a single domain name like syntax.fm, and then you wanna put each of those applications at, like, a forward slash, you know, forward slash API, forward slash admin, forward slash, watch Wes you're logging in.

So what a reverse proxy will do is it will like, Caddy Server is is one that I use all the time. NGINX is another really good one as well. Mhmm. What's the other one that they have in Coolify? They have Caddy Server and Oh,

I don't

know.

Traffic. T r Traffic. Yes. That's the default one. Yeah. 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 Wes, you know, 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 Node, I'm going to capture admin forward slash whatever, and I'm gonna just pipe that straight into the admin application, which I know is running on port one two three four. And then if something else comes in that doesn't match those, then I'm gonna route it to 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, somebody just static file hosting that is is on your server. So 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 wanna run, like, 50 different things on one server for $5 a month, that a reverse proxy is certainly something you're going to need to figure out. Word.

Yeah. Great answer.

Next question from Redliz.

Found your podcast back in 2019.

You've been inspiring me to be a better dev ever since. Many thanks.

Well, thank you, Redliz.

I've spent the last three years working for a company that used Braco 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?

We probably, like, probably around 2019, we we have a Node where I'm like, what the hell JS Umbraco? Yeah. It's like a.net CMS. Very popular in the, like, corporate world.

Yeah. It looks they have a nice looking website. I have no idea how the CMS looks, but,

looks nice. I think it's better than like, what's the other one that .net does? SharePoint. That's the one that Share. That everyone SharePoint's not really like a like a proper CMS, but it kinda is. It's 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.

Node that I've been laid off, I feel like I'm way behind in 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 gonna be right now make make stuff. Because if 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 gonna wanna study specifically the things you are interviewing for. I I feel like React React Native is never gonna 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 Yeah. 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 is, 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 gonna get the job. You you're saying like like like a cursor

or Copilot, 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 Vercel Yeah. Like, oh, I just paste my code into chat g p t 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 JS, like, a much better thing to bring to the table than Shrug. You know? Yeah. So I I think yes.

Obviously, I I do think learning React, you know, React Native, that those are 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 I think you gotta bring those those cutting edge AI skills. That's a really good point because,

like, people don't wanna hire someone who just type in the box and the AI come code comes out the other end. They wanna 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, the as much as, like, people listening are probably being like, no.

It's gonna it's gonna bad code is gonna come out, and it's gonna be unmaintainable in a couple years. And those are valid concerns, but the person hiring you doesn't necessarily care about that. What they they care about is that, a, you understand how the code works, and and, b, you're able to use these tools to effectively create stuff and and, like, 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 hirable right now. So Scott says, of course, React React Native, those are very hirable 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 Veed 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 Vercel.

Because a lot of people right Node, as these businesses get sort of scooped by AI, they're gonna they're gonna be kind of reactive and say, oh, we need to put AI in our own product as Wes.

And they're gonna wanna 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. I you know, it 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 on Tailwind. Right? I I've made that clear on this show enough times, but it's not an uninformed opinion. And and, people may not agree with it, and that's fine. But, like,

I don't think It's not a, like, it breaks my HTML too long opinion. Yeah. Right. Those people are

I don't like the way it looks. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Totally.

Or or anything. Like, I peep people come at me about my React opinions now because I don't use React. But I used React for, like, ten 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, the problem problematic stuff around it. Not why. I never even said anything to that degree. I don't like React, because of, a lot of because of JS, 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 DOM. Up DOM is what you are. Give me give me the DOM. Yes. Yeah. Alright. Yeah. Give me that DOM. That's all I want. Alright. Alright. 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.

And this one is Canada. We are free from the capitalism that is the 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 a cordless cardboard cutter, which is essentially just like a blade and a handle. You squeeze it, the blade spins, and you go,

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 a power tool for cutting cardboard, but we have our cardboard day is once every two weeks, which is crazy. And you you got cardboard in these modern times. And so I I 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 the delivery cardboard is like a full time job. It's it JS in in your 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.

That's awesome. I I I've 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. Oh. 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, like, cut myself many times. Knife. It's so much easier. Yeah. And I will say, like, we have two cardboard bins. They 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 our our this or that. Man, it is crazy.

The the people the people that, owned this house before us on our like, while we're 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 gonna take it away. But at 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.

Yeah. You never never want anyone to find out about those things. First, like, at our college 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, like, grid of them, and you have a key. I don't know what happened, but we have a mailbox, and I, I don't want it to get messed up.

That's right. Yeah. I'm gonna sick pick another thing for cutting, which is just scissors. We do a lot of, like, prep meal prep for our kids, obviously, and we are big kitchen scissors family. Instead of having to get a cutting board out and cut it up with a 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 kids' food or if they're having pancakes or whatever. And I think that using scissors in the kitchen is severely underrated. So I'm I'm here to sick pick to you using scissors in the kitchen.

Yeah. Are you you a scissors kitchen kinda guy? We got kitchen scissors. We got kitchen scissors specifically. Yeah. They, they Well, I have some that can cut through chicken bowls or chicken bones or whatever, but, like, those are are decent, but they're so big. And, like, we just ordered a, like, a a 12 pack of just the regular paper cutting scissors, and they've been great for the kitchen. Costco's good for that. They sell, like,

normal pairs of scissors in a three pack that are nice scissors.

Alright. That's good. I'll look at that. Node scissors, like, in every room. You always do. It drives me nuts that, like and the kids take them away and oh, man.

Check this out.

My wife even wrote Tolinski on them, so no one's gonna take these scissors. They're mine. Too.

Oh, yeah. We both got to pick. These are these are technically chicken scissor or chicken kitchen scissors, but They look like it. 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 tea bag, holder. So shout out to Gridfinity.

Everything in my my house is Gridfinity. Deno. I did the whole utensil utensil drawer. So anyone doesn't know, Gridfinity JS, 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 Scott into the the grid that is in your drawer, and then things won't slide around or ever. So I redid our whole utensil drawer, and 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 sized boxes for things like our scissors. And it's, like, game changer. So good. Makes me so happy.

My wife is just like, I I'm happy that you're happy, but, like, it wasn't a problem before. I'm like, are you kidding? This was a major problem in our house.

I I did I did the whole, like, angled spice drawer because, Courtney's always wanted, like, a nice looking spice drawer. And I I like I 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. Man. I'm not impressed then. I gotta have everything acrylic. But one man. I think the acrylic looks kinda 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, coding challenge or Syntax CSS dev battles, and watch one of our videos because they're absolutely hilarious.

Yes. The dev battles let me tell you. A lot of people have been tuning in. I've been getting comments saying, I can't I I don't even program, and these things are a riot.

And I gotta say, I I agree as somebody who has been really enjoying watching them myself.

Randy does just such an 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 he everybody comments, CJ did the best job. No chance. CJ did by far the worst job on the last Node. And, like, all of these, like, anonymous accounts come out of the woodwork and are like, CJ did the best job.

It is it 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 we have to fight back with our words because might need to get rid of it. Wes 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 on him. Yes. Rip it on him. We love CJ though, though. Alright. That's it for today. Peace.

Peace.