Dax Raad, known for his strong opinions on Twitter, sat down for a chat about web dev, career moves, and building cool stuff. He's not afraid to throw some heat at popular tools like Next.js, though he still helps people use it. Dax is particularly excited about local-first development, which he thinks isn't getting enough attention. He argues that sometimes the best web dev move is to step away from web dev entirely and explore other areas of programming.

When it comes to career growth, Dax encourages developers to think beyond the "web dev" label and see themselves as programmers capable of tackling any challenge. He advocates for trying out weird stuff and learning unusual languages, as these experiences can lead to unexpected opportunities. Taking smart risks in your career can open doors to awesome possibilities.

In the business world, Dax is a fan of making "asymmetric bets" - moves with low downside but huge potential upside. He applies this philosophy to his work on SST, reasoning that even if it fails, he'll walk away with valuable experience. He also emphasizes the importance of resisting quick payouts in favor of potentially bigger wins down the road.

Looking to the future of tech, Dax is betting on local-first development. He sees potential in getting in early on emerging technologies like Solid.js. Building in public and making connections in new tech communities can pay off in unexpected ways.

Dax also challenges the notion of constant hyper-productivity in tech. He suggests balancing focused work with time for exploration and learning. Sometimes, he points out, what seems like a "dumb" choice (like learning a niche language) can turn out to be a smart career move in the long run.

Good Stuff Mentioned

• Next.js
• Vercel
• SST
• Elixir
• Solid.js
• RepliCache
• Linear
• Remix
• Shopify
• React

Dev and Joel discuss React Miami conference, praising its fun atmosphere and location. They chat about React Server Components, with Dev sharing his experience building a mini framework. They talk about Vinxi, Nitro, and the unjs ecosystem as tools for creating custom frameworks. The conversation touches on Vue's popularity outside web dev circles and non-web dev conferences. They discuss the benefits of TypeScript and strongly-typed APIs. Dev mentions his upcoming talk on durable objects at a conference in Dallas. They end by discussing WebSockets, PartyKit, and platform-specific frameworks.

What's Good?

-React Miami Conference

• Brenley Dueck's blog post on Simple RSC with Vinxi:
• Vinxi
• Nitro
• unjs ecosystem
• Solid Start
• TanStack Router
• PartyKit
• Durable Objects (Cloudflare)
• Flightcontrol
• SST
• OpenNext

Alex took spent the last year and a half creating his course, The Ultimate Guide to Understanding DOM Events, at egghead. Finding the time to work on a side-project like this isn't easy, and it requires one to examine their current priorities in life. Do they want to be a rockstar developer? Or do you want to have a lot of free time to spend with your family?

No matter what sacrifices have to be made. But the best way to handle it is to have candid discussions with the people around you who will be affected the most by these sacrifices. Alex worked it out so that he'd work on his course one day a week.

Despite the cost in time, side-projects are important to Alex. He says that he wouldn't be where he is now in his career without them. They enabled him to grow as a software engineer and to learn things that he wouldn't be able to during his day job. Because of this, he was able to get a more complete picture of how all the pieces fit together, which made him a better dev.

So remember, really be careful about what you are committing yourself to when you take on a large project.

Resources

• Master DOM Events

Alex Reardon

• Twitter
• Website

Taylor Bell

• Twitter
• Website

Ryan’s background as a musician taught him many lessons that would eventually apply to his current career. As a musician, he learned about composition, sales, and even programming so he could build his band a website.

Ryan also had an actual sales job where he learned that you can do something so well that you’ll be unable to do it anymore. In sales that meant being good at generating leads which lead to a lot of clients which lead to ceasing to generate leads. But, that eventually lead to you have no clients because you let your stream of leads dry up.

It’s easy to become so narrowly focused on what’s in front of you that you get blindsided by what’s coming down the pipeline 6 months from now.

React changed the front-end landscape. We went from having a mutation-based approach to a functional approach. But, React has made it so easy to write code that we are forgetting our fundamentals. React websites are becoming bloated.

Remix’s goal is to bring back the Web 1.0 ways of doing things that lead to lean, performant websites. It’s Web 1.0 that is progressively enhanced with React and React Router.

“The technology that sticks, and wins, is the technology that can sneak its way into your existing stack because no one wants to rewrite!” Remix is built on this philosophy, allowing you to incrementally incorporate Remix into your existing application.

—-

Resources

• Michael Jackson’s YouTube video on component composition
• Remix

Ryan Florence

• Twitter
• Website

Joel Hooks

• Twitter
• Website

Perhaps the most important skill that a software developer can have is the ability to ask good questions. Questions will lead to the answers that you actually need. Formulating good questions is key. Often, you'll find that you answered your own question in the process of forming it.

Mentorships are a great learning and growth opportunity but it's important that you respect the person that you desire mentorship from. Don't just take up their time by asking questions regularly without being upfront about the relationship that you are wanting. It's also important that when you do ask your mentor questions that you continue to respect their time by making sure that your question is good and well researched.

Included in the links below are a couple of articles on how you can take your questions game to the next level. Try to read them before asking your next question!

Resources

• Stack Overflow - How do I ask a good question?
• Julia Evans - How to ask a good question

Jacky Alciné

• Twitter
• Website

Joel Hooks

• Twitter
• Website

Programming might be the quickest path for someone to start earning six figures. But, it may be a quick path, it is not an easy path. You have to either be having fun or be interested in some way. You have to have some backing motivation that's going to keep you in this.

Many people try to learn to code only to stop. They either decide that they don't want to sit in a chair for eight hours a day for the rest of their life, or they don't think they're smart enough, or somebody's telling them they can't do it. People also get hung up on trying to learn the "right" language or framework instead of choosing something that they actually enjoy.

You should learn whatever keeps you doing it tomorrow.

When Chris played sports he figured out that the only thing that made him good at anything was that he showed up nearly every day. His skills, athleticism, and networking opportunities all came from showing up every day. Your mindset plays a significant role in everything you do and you need to pay attention to it, if you don't, then you're not going to do as well as you could have.

Chris Biscardi

• Twitter
• Github
• Website
• LinkedIn

Joel Hooks

• Twitter
• Website

Getting a job as a web developer right out of the gate isn't easy. People often face rejection after rejection. But, you don't have to take the "front-door" to get a developer position. You can also take the "back-door" by taking a developer-adjacent role like a support engineer and then work to become a developer in the company.

There are many disciplines and technologies for you to choose to learn. There is always the question of do you become really good in one area, or do you become more of a generalist? You can be successful as a generalist or a specialist. Founders often have to be generalists since they have to figure out how to manage the trade-offs of choices in multiple disciplines. At the same time, specialists can be successful since people will seek you out for your expertise.

It doesn't matter if you choose to generalize or specialize. You have to build a reputation in order to fully realize your potential success. Programming is a special industry when it comes to making a name for yourself. You can build your own reputation and network much more freely than in any other industry that Shawn knows about, which is good for you long-term.

Once you've established a reputation, it's not uncommon for people to ask you to mentor them. An ongoing one-on-one mentor/mentee relationship isn't often the most efficient use of your time. You could be broadcasting what you know to a wider audience—Shawn advocates for a "project-based" mentorship style where the mentorship is not uncapped. You engage with them on their thing. You meet together, let your minds meld together for a while, and then you part ways

Resources

• Antifragile
• Free Code Camp
• Hacker101
• fast.ai

Shawn Wang

• Twitter
• Website
• egghead.io

Joel Hooks

• Twitter
• Website

Epic React is Kent's attempt at making the biggest impact on the world. It's Kent's philosophy that he can have a much larger impact by teaching other people to write excellent software instead of just doing it himself. 

Epic React has been in the making for a long time. Its methods are much more thought out than your average course. You can't just throw it on your Chromecast and 2x your way through all of the videos. You have to put in the work. Kent uses the proven methods from the book "Make It Stick" which have you trying to solve the problems yourself first before Kent provides his instruction. 

Epic React has 350 videos. How did Kent even begin to climb that hill? Kent didn't think Epic React would be as epic as it is today when he started. When he started thinking about doing Epic React, he thought it'd be like Testing JavaScript. He made Testing Node for the Testing JavaScript relaunch and he used  a workshop format instead of the egghead style and it was a big success. So he decided to do the same thing, but for React. 

Having a team also made a huge difference. A lot of people do this themselves but Kent worked with a production team. There are so many advantages. Lots of instructors struggle with all the extra stuff you have to do when selling content that isn't creating the content. The production team let Kent focus on the content and the hype. Kent did not want to deal with editing, support, payments, design, or copy. He wants to take knowledge from his head and put it into other people's heads. 

What's the next Epic Journey for Kent? He likes the idea of updating stuff. He plans on continuing to update Testing JavaScript. Kent also has a laundry list of ideas for future Epic React content!

Epic React

• Epic React
• Join the Discord!
• Credits

Kent C. Dodds

• Testing JavaScript
• kentcdodds.com
• Twitter
• Github

Joel Hooks

• Twitter
• Website

Tomasz highly recommends companies hire interns and train them  because you can get some amazing engineers that you know are going to fit the company's needs. Another great advantage of training interns is that it levels up the senior engineers by giving them mentoring experience!

But, what really is a senior engineer? Basically, a senior engineer isn't a person who programs more, faster, or better. They're a person who makes others better at what they do and a person who can solve problems.

So how do you advance your career? Tomasz says that speaking at conferences had a major impact on his career. He strongly recommends that if somebody wants to start talking at conferences, to start at local meetups because one, you will get experience, and two, they're always looking for speakers.

Transcript

"What is a Senior Engineer with Tomasz Łakomy" Transcript

Tomasz Łakomy

• Twitter
• Github
• Dev.to
• Website

Joel Hooks

• Twitter
• Website

Shirley Wu is a freelance data visualization expert. Data visualization, at its core, is when you take lots of data, and it's hard for you to look in Excel. You visualize that into some graph or chart, and the most simple could be a bar chart or some graph so that you can understand trends within it easier.

In data visualization, there is an entire spectrum of approaches you can take with a dataset. You have to decide on the balance between art and the data. With clients, choosing where in that spectrum is asking yourself, "What do I want for the end-user to experience?" The difference between a purely artistic piece and a visualization is that with data visualization, there's a goal to it. You're taking data, and you're trying to communicate something, or you're trying to build a tool to help people explore that data.

Transcript

"How Shirley Wu Built A Career As A Freelance Data Visualizer" Transcript

Resources

• Data Visualization Society
• Data Stories Podcast
• scrollama.js
• GreenSock

Shirley Wu

• Twitter
• Github
• YouTube
• Website
• Medium
• LinkedIn
• Frontend Masters

Joel Hooks

• Twitter
• Website

"Indie Hacker" - An entrepreneur that is working to gain some form of independence.

Courtland Allen is the founder of indiehackers.com. He didn't take the venture capital approach. He just wanted to make enough money to support what he was trying to do. Courtland was trying to build a community of indie hackers who would share their stories, help each other, and support one another.

You can't force community growth. It takes good content, time, and consistency. At first, Courtland would make good content and share it with his mailing list, and he'd also make fake accounts and have discussions with himself on the indie hackers forum to try and spark real interactions. The efforts paid off. Over a year, a real community blossomed.

It's tempting to rely on your intuition when you are first starting as an indie hacker. But, Courtland encourages you to take a more thoughtful approach by relying more on the experiences of others. Over time you'll develop wisdom.

You can go too far, though. If you spend too much time preparing and learning, you'll realize how much you don't know, and it can be crippling. In Courtland's interviews with indie hackers, the most common advice people have is to go for it! Be okay with experiencing failures and starting over.

Transcript

"How Courtland Allen Found Freedom with Content, Consistency, and Community" Transcript

Resources

• Indie Hackers
• Hacker News
• Nomad List
• stratechery
• Own goals
• Discourse

Courtland Allen

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Joel Hooks

• Twitter
• Website