Developing as a Developer, Appreciating Workers, and Navigating Framework Wars with Chris Garrett

When someone hands you an opportunity to specialize, to do something crazy with people you like, to learn from people building something before your eyes, it's difficult to pass up. An opportunity like that prompted Chris to leave LinkedIn for Bitski, a digital wallet for buying, selling, and storing NFTs. 

Leaving what's safe and secure for what's largely unknown is definitely a risk, but Chris is a risk-taker. Despite loving Rust, Chris wanted to move away from JavaScript in the years ahead and expand his developer horizons. Plus, he's learned from experience that becoming emotionally attached to whatever you're using is a dangerous game. 

In this episode, Chris talks with Chuck and Robbie about a lack of resources and corporate greed in open source, the framework eras we've lived through and what's to come, why workers are incredible, choosing a career path, and how to keep developing as a developer.

Key Takeaways

• [00:23] - Introducing Chris and his recent good news.
• [03:20] - An heirloom whiskey review. 
• [10:12] - Why Chris left LinkedIn and what he's up to now. 
• [17:20] - What Chris learned from React.
• [18:58] - A chat about Classes, Functions, and Tailwind.
• [26:20] - What goes awry with execution in open source.
• [34:33] - Why open source is not sustainable and a brief history of the framework eras.
• [40:40] - Why Bitski has moved away from Ember. 
• [46:49] - What Chris thinks about Web3. 
• [53:37] - A DC, Disney, and Cars-themed whatnot. 

Quotes

[14:33] - "Honestly, I've worked with JavaScript for 10 years now and I don't ever want to become one of those one-language devs. So I would like to be able to transition away from JavaScript at some point. Or at least transition into being able to work in multiple languages" ~ @pzuraq [https://twitter.com/pzuraq]

[28:51] - "We built these primitives so that anybody can do it. Anybody can go and build that functionality. You don't need to RFC it to Ember. You don't need to have it be accepted by the core team." ~ @pzuraq [https://twitter.com/pzuraq]

[44:06] - "I didn't understand workers at first. I didn't understand that it fundamentally changes the dynamics of writing web applications." ~ @pzuraq [https://twitter.com/pzuraq]

Links

• Chris Garrett [https://www.linkedin.com/in/pzuraq/]
• Chris on Twitter [https://twitter.com/pzuraq]
• LinkedIn [http://linkedin.com]
• Google [http://google.com]
• Laws San Luis Straight Rye Whiskey  [https://lawswhiskeyhouse.com/our-whiskeys/#rye]
• Netflix [http://netflix.com] 
• ABC Stores [https://abcstores.com]
• Rob Jackson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwjblue/]
• Tom Dale [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommothereffindale/]
• Dave Hermin [https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidandrewherman/]
• David Hamilton [https://www.linkedin.com/in/hjdivad/]
• Chris Krycho [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriskrycho/]
• Bitski  [https://www.bitski.com]
• Ticketfly [https://www.linkedin.com/company/ticketfly/about/] 
• Julian Tescher  [https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliant/]
• Patrick Tescher [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ptescher/]
• Rust [https://www.rust-lang.org] 
• JavaScript [https://www.javascript.com]
• Wasm [https://webassembly.org]
• React [https://reactjs.org]
• View [https://reactnative.dev/docs/view]
• Svelte [https://svelte.dev]

Veteran web developers RobbieTheWagner and Charles William Carpenter III host this informal, whiskey-fueled fireside chat with your favorite web devs. They discuss all things web development including JavaScript, TypeScript, EmberJS, React, Astro, SolidJS, CSS, HTML, Web3, and more. They take a unique approach and focus on getting to know the human side of developers and their hobbies outside of work, all while sampling a new whiskey that they rate on their unique tentacle scale.