In today’s all-panelist episode, we discuss many ancillary skills that you might be tempted to avoid learning but are very beneficial to know.  Included in the conversation are CSS, DNS & HTTP, caching, API styles, knowing how to interact with back ends and databases, and command line.

welcome to react roundup. I am your host jack herrington This week and with me are my esteemed co-panelists, Paige Neateringhouse

 

Hey everybody.

 

and TJ VanTol.

 

Hey everyone.

 

All right. Very cool. So before we get into this week's episode, I'd once again like to invite everybody to jump on to the Discord server and jump into our Discord channel. It's linked to in the show notes. And yeah, just ask us any questions you want or have any comments about what we talk about. Ham and pineapple pizza lately. So,

 

The great

 

you know,

 

debate.

 

things like, yeah, that's not even a bad I'm in. I'm in. I'm sold. You

 

Yeah.

 

sold me on it. All right. So, yeah, join in the fun. OK, so this week we do not have a guest, but we are going to be talking about the I would say is a big word ancillary skills associated with web development. And it will just kind of throw in. our thoughts on these things and I'll kick us off that I think a really important thing for react devs to learn outside of just react is really get into CSS. I've seen a lot

 

Mm.

 

of folks get, you know, try to use the components too much and they don't learn like what's underneath them. Like things like learn flexbox layout grid layout, learn all the different ways you can do layout in CSS. That's for sure.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Learn animations because I think people jump right right into things like re-motion when you when all you want to do is like a fade. You

 

I'm

 

know,

 

sorry.

 

there is there's decent CSS animations out there, oftentimes built into the, you know, CSS frameworks that have no name like Tailwind.

 

Hehehe

 

And then also media queries, things like, you

 

Yes.

 

know, just make sure that you understand. Like how to just do a native media query, because the framework is basically doing all of that for you. And if it doesn't do that for you, then there's no reason to go and bring in a whole bunch of stuff. You just use some basic CSS. So just

 

Mm-hmm.

 

understanding those kinds of things.

 

is another basic, how about just display block versus inline

 

Oh

 

versus

 

my gosh

 

inline

 

yes.

 

block? Just like,

 

Yes.

 

it's amazing how often that comes up and how

 

Mm-hmm.

 

lots of times beginners just don't even understand the concept of what those are even doing

 

Yeah.

 

as well.

 

Yeah,

 

Kinda

 

yeah, I mean,

 

related

 

it's

 

to Flexbox.

 

Yeah.

 

it's great when you can take. a component library like Bootstrap or Ant Design or Chakra or any of those libraries and kind of use it as a starting point. But I can guarantee you at least, at the very least, you're going to want to change the colors to

 

Hehehe

 

match whatever your site's colors are, your brand color if you're working for a company. And most likely your designers are not going to want to do whatever the defaults are for those components. you know, drop downs and text boxes and whatever, you're almost guaranteed that margins and padding and text link colors and all these buttons will be different than what is available out of the box. So knowing how to style those and change what they look like, if not build them from scratch, is, I would say, critical to anybody who wants to be a front-end developer.

 

Totally. And if you're using like a CSS preprocessor, like SAS

 

Mm-hmm.

 

or LESS or whatever,

 

Yep.

 

like when you jump onto the project and you're starting to say, oh, I'm going to do front end of this project and you see that, just spend a little bit of time learning it, learning all the little commands because they have things baked into most of those frameworks like lighten, darken, all that kind of stuff so that you can make relative colors, you know,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

and then when you have like your base color set. And then you have a bunch of, oh, well, this needs to be darker contrast. So instead of literally hard coding the hex value, you actually, oh, no, that's that value, but darkened. And

 

Yeah.

 

then when you can change it in one place, and boom, and they all do this.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And I think even to take a step further back, my, probably my biggest CSS tip is for people to just, just take CSS seriously. I think

 

Mm,

 

Ha ha ha!

 

yes.

 

lots of times JavaScript developers will just look at JavaScript as the real code and CSS is something that you kind of have to throw together. And just once it looks good, great, but don't they don't think about why what's happening is actually happening. They don't treat it as actual code that needs to be reviewed and cleaned up and whatnot.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And just in general, I feel like if you take it seriously, you'll start to learn some of the underlines of how it works. You'll get less frustrated with it over time. You'll just be more capable at what you do.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, a big sign that you can get whipsawed around by CSS is if you get a lot of bugs on your code about responsive like, oh, this

 

Yes.

 

works great on desktop. But I'm on phone. It looks terrible. And you're like, I don't know. I just took the stuff that the designer gave me the CSS and I just smushed it in there. I don't know how it works. Don't

 

Hehehehe

 

blame me. Like, you don't want to be that person. You know, you want to be the person who's like, okay, or upfront does it right.

 

Hehehe So another thing that I would throw in as something that you should know that is not necessarily React or JavaScript focused is how to write automated tests. Because this is one of those things that a lot of people are resistant to testing, but as we get further along in web development, it just becomes more and more of a requirement. You have to be able to write unit tests, end-to-end tests, one one of those many of those some combination of them, and being able to figure out how to set up a testing framework and then actually use it and test the things that you want to is pretty much a requirement today like I was saying. So get familiar even if it is just writing a few tests with how to go about selecting a framework, how to set it up in an existing what kind of syntax it needs because it's probably going to be something that you will either need to provide as part of your build process in a company or it'll be one of your steps in your build pipeline. So you know just just get familiar with it. It's it's gonna only help you.

 

It's going to save your butt. Exactly.

 

Yeah.

 

The question I'm sure we could talk all day about which EDE, you know, what is Cypress

 

Mm.

 

or whatever, you know, which EDE framework to use. But I guess my question is for you, what, how do you, what, how much do you EDE and how much do you unit test?

 

So I've, I follow the testing pyramid, which is, has been established, I think, by multiple people at this point, but it's basically end-to-end tests are the, the things that I write the fewest of, but they're the most comprehensive tests because they are supposed to go from the time that a user starts using your application to the time that they're done and it, and all the things that they could do in between. But typically there's only a few of those because

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

they take the longest to run.

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

And then unit and integration

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

tests kind of

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

are the things that I write a lot more

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

of, but they cover a lot more of the

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

edge cases that you would see for

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

particular interactions

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

between various components.

 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

 

So that's where you would test things like, does this error occur when, you know, when I pass in a bad value? Does this error message get triggered? Or when I render this component, are all of these buttons visible or things like that? So very much the big, heavy, expensive tests of end-to-end, I write the fewest of, and then the integration tests which run quickly and are headless and need a lot less in the way of setup, I tend to write the most of.

 

Mm-hmm. How about

 

And

 

you,

 

I

 

TJ?

 

think too with any of those sorts of setups the more you can automate the better because You want to put yourself in a situation where writing tests is convenient so that you actually do it Versus if it's a painful process, you're gonna be less likely to do it ship without your tests and and whatnot So any automation you can add is is definitely a plus

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, I think the trick is you don't want to get to the point of like 100% coverage though, because then, you know, your application becomes so stiff that it's

 

Mm-hmm.

 

really hard to make even minor changes and have it still work. And the other caveat I put in is... Kind of don't use the snapshotting. I know it's super easy, but like

 

Oh

 

to

 

yeah.

 

snapshot, you know, some dialogue or something and you snapshot the text in the dialogue and then your boss is like, hey, we want to change, you know, an and to an, you know, a whatever. And like, the next thing you know, you're like breaking unit tests on

 

Mm-hmm.

 

and and they're like, no, this is not good. And you can't break the build on that. That's crazy.

 

I feel like knowing what to test and what to not test is very much an art that

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

there's definitely good stuff you can read on it, but some of it is just, you have to experience, like you have to write flaky tests to identify flaky tests.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Because Jack, clearly you've written that test before. Like I can

 

Oh,

 

tell

 

yeah, oh, yeah.

 

that

 

Oh, yeah in

 

was

 

the

 

not

 

beginning.

 

a hypothetical

 

I was like,

 

That was

 

story.

 

experience.

 

I'm lazy. I'm lazy as hell. It's like, oh, yeah snapshot That sounds great. Let's do that like

 

Yeah.

 

I don't know, you know, but then

 

Yep.

 

you know, really you realize it like Yes, now your codes at 100% unit test coverage, but like always anyway when these tests break it has tells me nothing It literally like

 

Yep.

 

this test broke. OK, well, why did it break? Well, since the test is basically test snapshot and you're like, well, oh, so yeah, you should really just go in and make sure that like instead of using the snapshot, go in and test the specific things that you

 

Mm-hmm.

 

really care about. Like, did this data value get computed and put on there, you know, in some place? You know.

 

Yeah.

 

Like, did you calculate the total of the cart or whatever it is? You know, that that's the test. Like all

 

Mm-hmm.

 

of the little like did the CSS values, like the munging CSS class names equal? No. Right. Who cares?

 

Yeah.

 

Right. You know, there's a difference. There's a whole different thing for like E to E tests that do visual comparisons, which is like a whole weird area.

 

Yeah, that's still, that whole visual regression testing

 

Mmmph.

 

stuff is something I've never gotten into. It seems useful and I've definitely seen where it could have been helpful when stuff has gotten really, really wrong looking, but it's also something that I don't really want to get into.

 

I'd love to have a guest on sometimes that really knows that and could like walk us

 

Mm.

 

all through it. Like, hey, here's

 

Mm-hmm.

 

how to do this in a way that is not nuts.

 

Hahaha

 

Well, speaking of knots, I can

 

Hahaha!

 

transition to my, to my, the first one that came to mind for me, which is DNS, because

 

Mmm.

 

Oh!

 

I, I feel like that's a topic that as a React developer, you don't have to know. every day, but knowing some background of how it works. And I could even expand that to like DNS and just HTTP in general,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

that like the basics of how that works, how requests work, how different things like a records work is not something that's going to come up necessarily day to day, but having some background on there is super handy. Like

 

Yep.

 

if you need to spin up something quick, having the idea of how that works, how that works with hosting providers can be. just a handy little skill to have.

 

That

 

Mm-hmm.

 

used to be a classic interview question. How does that, when the user hits your link, your URL,

 

Yeah.

 

give me every step to the server and back. And

 

Mm-hmm.

 

down to the DNS stuff.

 

It can come in handy like when you're trying, even when you're trying to debug a problem and you want to know what layer the problem is happening at just knowing

 

Yeah.

 

the basics of how requests flow around the internet. And I don't think anybody that is a front end developer needs to know this stuff like in and out because you can go all in and fully DevOps and

 

Yeah,

 

you can go deep.

 

that's what it was. It's DevOps right there.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

You can go deep with this stuff. And I think if you're, if you're the type of person that wants to do react, wants to do front end, that's probably a little bit overkill, but just knowing how to set up a basic site on a host, like with some really, really simple a records and how that site gets accessed, um, can just come in handy. Yeah.

 

Mm-hmm. If you don't want to deploy everything on Netlify, where you have to think about none of that. Ha ha ha.

 

You still have to think about some of it if you're setting up a custom domain on Netlify.

 

That's true.

 

So

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

if you haven't already started a bad habit, start buying up some domain names and then

 

Ha ha ha

 

just figure out how to get

 

Yep.

 

a hosting server to point at them. It's like a rite of passage for every web developer.

 

It is, and I still hold my breath every time I change those things and hope

 

Mmm.

 

that it works correctly.

 

And this is when you get like all those little $10 hosting, you know, or DNS bills or whatever. Or, you know,

 

Yup.

 

at the end of the year, you get like a $300 domain name renewal thing. You're like, all right. Yeah, fantastic. But those are the bad decisions I made coming back to get me.

 

Yeah, I registered my kids' names as domain, like.com domain names years ago.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And it seemed like a cool idea at the time, but

 

Ha

 

I've

 

ha

 

never

 

ha

 

really

 

ha ha!

 

done anything with them. And I still pay the bill every year when it comes

 

Yeah, yeah,

 

in.

 

yeah.

 

And

 

Mm

 

Oh

 

I'm

 

yeah.

 

hmm.

 

starting to really question why I even did this at all.

 

I'm sorry.

 

Don't feel bad, I pay my daughter is like six dollar a month, like Minecraft host thing

 

Oh yeah,

 

from

 

I pay

 

years

 

that too.

 

ago, and I don't think she's used it in like six months. So and whenever I whenever I say, hey, can we get rid of this? No, no, no, no, no. Like

 

Yeah.

 

Yep.

 

you you are and use

 

Yep.

 

this in once. But so back on the DevOps thing, I would say, yeah, definitely knows some, at least some serverless. Like have deployed stumbling in the serverless model, but also understand, also spend a little bit of time understanding like Docker. Because I think Docker is still

 

Mm-hmm.

 

super vibrant out there. And in

 

Yes.

 

fact, actually, I think like Docker just came out with something in the CI CD space. What is it called? Dagger?

 

Hmm

 

Which is basically, oh yeah, it's really cool. It's actually like, well, you know how like every CI CD is different? Like GitHub CI CD is one thing and then

 

Yep.

 

GitLab CI CD is something else.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, Dagger is basically trying to unify that. Like you have a CI CD, you can run it locally, you

 

Mmm.

 

know. Whoa. And then you, you know, then then you put the dagger configuration up on whatever host dagger, I guess. And

 

Yeah.

 

there you go. Now you're in. And so you can actually test your CI CD without having like the the whole host. Oh, my God. The check in list of like, now I'm trying this value. Now I'm trying that value and like

 

Mm-hmm.

 

fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, you know, like and finally

 

Hehehehe.

 

get the green light. You're like, yes. And they

 

Yeah.

 

get.

 

I think I just saw a conference talk on some work Visual Studio Code is doing to try to make Docker, because they have really good Docker

 

Mmm.

 

integration now,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

and they're doing more to try to make it simple so that you can set up a repository with just like little configs. and then VS Code will take care of everything else, like setting up your whole environment. It's based off Docker, so that's what they're using under the hood, but they're trying to make the whole part, the part of setting it up, like the whole Docker container specification, which is a little bit of an ugly mess. They're trying to help clean that up a little bit. So it's getting easier and easier to set up that sort of stuff, and it's becoming approachable for people like us even to dip our toes into it.

 

Yeah.

 

interesting. Yeah, I mean, I love Docker

 

Thanks for watching!

 

when it works. Setting up Docker containers is not fun, and it's not something that I'm very good at. But when somebody else has done it for me and it just

 

Exactly.

 

works, it's fantastic.

 

Yeah, when you got on get onto a project and they've got like a Docker development set up so you don't actually have

 

Mm.

 

to do all of the you know the DB install and blah blah blah blah blah it's like okay just hit Docker and there you go you're

 

Yep.

 

good it's really nice

 

The last thing, just before we move on to the next one, so I've said DNS and HTTP, but I think along with that, I would also include caching, which was part of HTTP,

 

OHHHHH

 

Yes.

 

which can get a little bit hairy, but if you really know how those HTTP headers work, it can get you out of a lot of confusing bugs that you're almost guaranteed to run into, like why is my CDN holding onto this? Why am I still seeing the old value? it's pretty much a certainty you'll hit that at some point in your career. So just knowing the basics of how some of those cache headers work and how to use the browser tools to read them can,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

can be super valuable as well.

 

I'm gonna pull up TJ. TJ, what is a CDN?

 

Yeah, content delivery network, right?

 

Distribution

 

Yep.

 

Yeah.

 

or delivery, whichever

 

Distribute,

 

one, yeah.

 

yeah, I get tied up. But basically it's like somebody else's server that's CDNs are specifically designed to distribute static assets, or at least they usually are. So it's

 

Yeah.

 

oftentimes a place where you host your HTML, your JavaScript, your CSS on a server that's carefully constructed to deliver those things super fast.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And normally those types of sites put cache headers that last a very long time. Like part of the whole reason that we're using them is you want users to get stuff fast. So usually you wanna cache those values and they have some way of busting the cache by like changing a version number in the URL or something.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

But things do go wrong with those processes,

 

Hehehehe

 

even if you're using tools like that. And so knowing a little bit about how all that works or at least like, I can't remember the syntax myself, but I've dealt with it enough that I know like the things to Google and the things to kind of look for, which honestly, for a lot of what we're talking about this entire episode, that's really the depth of understanding we're kind of talking about is a

 

Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

lot of this stuff you don't have to like have memorized. If you put me in an interview question right now and ask me like all the HTTP headers and what they do, I couldn't do it. But

 

now.

 

I could like find around Google like no roughly where to look in the dev tools to kind of poke around at it. And I think that's kind of the depth of understanding. probably is worth striving for.

 

Page and

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I were talking about this before the show and I was like, Oh my gosh, the really good engineers I've worked with in the past always have a notebook. I got actually a physical notebook or some sort of way or an or virtual notebook where they, when they research something like this, they just keep notes on it because you know, you forget, right? Oh, I'm going to look into cash, you know, the, you know, whatever cash values for HTTP and you know, I'm going to come to this understanding of it, but Like later on, you're going, oh, do I need to relearn all that? Well, at least, you know, you've got this thing you can go to. So I strongly recommend doing that. Not that I do that all myself all the time.

 

Or you could make YouTube videos on it.

 

Ha ha ha 

 

I mean, that also works too. Or write blog posts, right? Like

 

Right.

 

it's amazing how much, I have quite literally referenced blog posts I've written years ago because it was

 

Mm-hmm.

 

something I ran into, completely forgot the details and looked it back up. So

 

Yeah.

 

whatever medium that works best for you, paper pencil

 

Inc. Including

 

or something virtual.

 

medium.

 

Yeah,

 

Yeah.

 

Hehehehe

 

exactly.

 

But that's a great idea. Oh, my gosh. That's like, yeah, we've talked so many times on these episodes about how, you know, get your name out there, get some blog posts.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

It's a brilliant idea.

 

I

 

I've

 

mean,

 

seen

 

that's

 

some

 

where

 

people.

 

I... Well, that's where I get a lot of my best blog posts that I write about is just stuff that I've had to learn at work. And then I'll just take a quick note of it in a word document that I keep on my phone of like new blogs to write in the future at some point. That's all it is.

 

And if you don't want to turn something into a full, like a complete blog post, there's other places you can put them for just quick notes. I've used a Gist, G-I-S-T

 

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

for quick little things because those are searchable in the future

 

Yep.

 

and you can make them public. So if you put out a little tip and you're like, hey, I think other people could benefit from this, you can make it public. Other people might find it and use it too. And if you want it to be private, then you can all of it, you know, there's a simple button, so.

 

Mm-hmm. And I've seen seeing a lot of code pens lately when I search

 

Mmm.

 

for like very

 

Oh, that's

 

specific

 

another good idea.

 

things it seems like a lot of people are making really nice little example code pens of stuff that seems like it or stuff that probably is covered in documentation somewhere But also you want to take it that one step further to do, you know XYZ that's slightly different and that's been quite helpful just being able to fiddle around in those and test things out and try them. So good on you people who are actually putting up those examples.

 

Yeah

 

And good on you people to do that and also put those on their resumes because man there's nothing I like more

 

Mmm.

 

in a resume than like some code I can click on and go to and just see I don't want to go to your get up I don't want to go and I will go to your get up but I'm not going to go and clone your repo but code

 

now.

 

sandbox. Boy, you know, that's it runs. It runs right there.

 

Yeah.

 

You know, you want to show me some cool stuff? Show me some cool stuff.

 

Mm-hmm,

 

I'm like.

 

or it doesn't and that tells

 

Or doesn't.

 

me all I need to know

 

Well,

 

as well

 

that's the thing. I mean, a lot of these things rot, right? Like,

 

They do

 

you know, yeah, oh my gosh, especially the bleeding edge stuff.

 

yeah that's the worst though i've been in in the svelte documentation a good bit

 

Hehehehe

 

lately and there's there's tons of it which is great i'm really happy that svelte is so thorough but there are a few things that have broken so you look at the console of the svelte demo and it's like i can't find this thing and you're like well crap how do i find it if this svelte demo doesn't know how to do it either

 

Yeah, exactly.

 

Ha ha.

 

Most felt page. Are you on the list for the next one or shall I dump it?

 

Um, go ahead and jump in, Jack.

 

Okay, all right. So I would say the next one I would look into is API styles. So there's GraphQL,

 

Yeah.

 

Mmm.

 

there's REST. I mean,

 

Yup.

 

in some ways there's gRPC and TRB. Well, TRBC is its own thing and then gRPC, you know, and then, so, I guess WebSockets as well. Um, you know, just, I have seen, like, I get a lot of questions from Beginning developers and sometimes the frameworks, particularly next, can kind of hide the fact that there is this differentiation between the server and the client.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And those aren't, you know, the same thing. And they'll get into this notion of like, well, there's no like, you know, the state is automatically synchronized. It's like, no, that's not how that works. You're not a desktop app. You know, you're on a client server app. And so understanding the different protocols. You know rest the different flavors of rest graph QL. I think is again fantastic. And then if you want something in between those two like TRPC, if you're in a in a TypeScript is great. Although you don't need to use TypeScript. It just creates a rest API so you can still use that stuff. But if you're on TypeScript, it's just better. And then if you're in a world of. See any media and gaming, you know, you definitely get some GRPC as well, device control. So there's kind

 

Mm-hmm.

 

of a little sub genre there. But if you guys are going to learn to for sure learn rest and GraphQL.

 

Yeah,

 

Yeah.

 

and I feel like even at bigger organizations, it's pretty common for front end people to get involved with the API design, because oftentimes

 

Hmm.

 

the front end will know how the data is actually going to be used. And

 

Right.

 

so

 

Yeah.

 

it's important to have some constructive feedback in terms of how you want the data to come back, how you want to send the data. So if you know the basics of how the back end is structured ideally, or how APIs can be best reused, it can be

 

Mm-hmm.

 

very, very useful.

 

Well, and if nothing else, being able to understand how to set up a server in JavaScript, like a Node.js server of some sort is going to very likely be beneficial to you because yes, there is Next.js, which kind of does it for you, but pretty much any other front end framework that you pick up, whether it's React or, um, Svelte or something else, you're going to need to fetch data from an API. And the, the tried and true method of that is through a Node.js server with Express or Happy or one of the many

 

Hehehehe.

 

backend frameworks running on it. But knowing up how to set up those routes and actually connect to that API in a safe fashion where you're hiding keys and secrets and things that should not be sent on the client side or visible to clients, uh, is really important. and I'm going to be back in a minute. Bye!

 

Yeah, and also I guess that kind of gets you into the world of monorepos, because oftentimes

 

Mm-hmm.

 

in when you have that, when you have it like you've got your next app or your create react app or whatever you spell it up, you know, and they're talking to an API, but that API isn't part of that project. Then you have it in the same repo, right? But in a different directory and different project, and then understanding all the mechanics of like, okay, so if I want to just run it. then making sure that both the projects get compiled and both the projects get run. They're on different ports, and so that they can

 

There

 

connect

 

are no

 

with

 

Coors

 

each other.

 

issues.

 

And no core issues, exactly, even on localhost.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, definitely.

 

Well, and that kind of ties into another one, which is not only knowing how to at least interact and kind of find your way around back end applications or pieces of an application, but also to know how to interact with databases. And it could

 

Mm-hmm.

 

be NoSQL databases. So it could be MongoDB, which seems to be everybody's favorite if you're a JavaScript developer, or it could be SQL databases. So MySQL, Postgres, you know, the list goes on. There's a million of them at this point, but just knowing how to connect to them, set them up, write queries for them. use an ORM if you want to, which will basically write your queries for you. Those are all things that you're probably going to need to do at some point or another, or at least want to know how to do when faced with something like that.

 

Certainly and knowing which types to use, like when you want to use a relational database, when you want to use a document object database, you know, what the advantages and disadvantages are of each. You know, there's no one true winner. That's why we still have both, you know, Mongo and Firestore. And then on the other hand, we have Oracle and all that.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

It's definitely handy. I have to admit to being like, I try to avoid databases like the plague. That's one

 

Mm-hmm.

 

career decision. It's one of the reasons I went into front end development

 

I'm sorry.

 

is my brief forays with databases were not fun times, but I have

 

Yep.

 

to admit that knowing, knowing the basics of how to throw together an SQL query or whatever, it's going to come in handy. Even for debugging, I'm looking into a front end issue. It's like, crap, is this my problem or is the data underlying data bad? I might have to go into the database, run a quick where clause, get back things and compare it to what I'm seeing to kind

 

Mm-hmm.

 

of differentiate. So having those skills, even if you don't know the in-depth bits of how a database works, I have to admit is kind of handy to have.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

It kind of I guess TJ that kind of goes along with they were talking about like on the HTTP side like understanding the entire chain from, you know, your up on the UI all the way through either the rest of the graph QL. Actually back to the database or back to the some microservice or whatever and being able to like put in a probe each one of those levels like hey is that number right you know coming out of the microservice or okay because it's not it's not right on the UI. So it's got to

 

Right.

 

be somewhere

 

Yep,

 

in between

 

exactly.

 

those three and being being able to poke in there and debug is kind of like you know being able to fix your car it's like it

 

Bye!

 

is a smart blogs is it run out of gas

 

Is it the battery

 

you know there's

 

right?

 

a battery

 

Oh yeah, is, was

 

you

 

this

 

know.

 

something I could, yeah, is this something I can fix myself

 

Hehehe

 

or like,

 

Where did my

 

or,

 

dad take it to the shop?

 

or in which shop do I take it to? Right?

 

Right.

 

Like

 

Right.

 

that's the other thing too,

 

Yeah, yeah,

 

cause

 

yeah.

 

I got to figure out if I know this is a database issue, well, maybe I have like

 

Right.

 

database people at my company or whatever. Right. Versus

 

Yeah.

 

I don't

 

Mm-hmm.

 

want to annoy them if it's not that problem and

 

Sure.

 

whatnot.

 

Which Slack channel do I put this in? Because I mean,

 

I'm afraid.

 

you don't

 

Yes.

 

want to get the microservices guys going, Yeah, it looks fine to me. Looks good on my

 

That's

 

machine.

 

the, yeah, that's like the 2020, 2020s version of that

 

HAHAHAHAHAHA

 

phrase.

 

right? Which slide channel? Or if you're unlucky, which teams channel? Oh my

 

but then

 

god...

 

Oh,

 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

our Discord.

 

but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but Discord if you're lucky.

 

Hehehe

 

So I can take the next one and that

 

Sure.

 

is Git or just

 

OOOOOOOH

 

source control.

 

Yes.

 

Maybe you're

 

GOD!

 

using something else.

 

YES!

 

Yes.

 

Oh my god, yes!

 

I, I feel like that's another one that a lot of us have a love hate relationship with, but

 

Yep.

 

Git is sort of, it's a tool that you almost use basically every day as a developer, you probably should be using every day if, if you're not and

 

Yeah.

 

It's once again, like you can almost have an entire career on Git because you can get in the weeds at some point, but

 

Mm-hmm.

 

knowing how to do things that are like one step beyond the basics, like how to do rebases, for example, uh, how to undo your work, how to like cherry pick, how to move things around branches, having a basic understanding of what's going on under the hood can be super valuable. You learn how to like save off your work, how to keep other people in touch of what you're doing, like how to collaborate most effectively, how to keep things from getting like in the way, how to, knowing how to integrate changes, like deal with merge conflicts,

 

Hmm.

 

Yes.

 

coming up with a workflow you're comfortable with and that's consistent at your company. Like all of those things, I feel like are, are super important and valuable. And it's another one of those two that like, It's probably worth investing. This, this will kind of flow in with what we talked about with CSS, but it's worth understanding what's actually happening versus like, Oh, Hey, this worked. Let me just move on with my day. But like knowing, like if something didn't work, right, like trying to figure out why it didn't and learn what you need to do in the workflows, you, because those sort of understanding those sorts of things will come in beneficial. If you do truly like grok, how these processes work and don't it just accept like, well, the right thing happens, so let me just move on with my life and get back to the next year issue or whatever.

 

You know, it's weird, though, because I like I've done the actual like I'm going to spend a week figuring out get thing in my life before. And then just 100 percent. Well, not 100 percent, but like 95 percent lost all of that knowledge. And it's

 

Mm-hmm.

 

just

 

Yeah.

 

so tough. Like some

 

Yeah.

 

it's very. very environment specific. Like, you know, some work environments have been in really push git. Like they, you know, there's lots of branches and there's whole conversations about branching strategy and

 

and naming

 

merging

 

and

 

and naming

 

mm-hmm.

 

and, you know, all of that. And then other

 

Yep.

 

companies are just kind of like, everybody's just in the main, let's go. And, you know, it's

 

Heheheheh

 

like, whatever. Yeah. But you're

 

Push

 

a

 

to production!

 

push to prod. Woo. Yeah. Let's go.

 

I mean, I think like with any of these tips, like you wanna be learning stuff that you either are A interested in or B have a need at work. Like

 

Oh yeah.

 

that's the stuff that's gonna stick because

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you don't wanna like, I wouldn't recommend going to the Git documentation and looking all the commands and just like reading

 

Ugh.

 

through them sequentially. You'll hate yourself within like, but by the time you get 10% down the list, but. It's more that if your company has a process like, oh, hey, we rebase, we do interactive rebases before we merge, right? Like, well, if that's part of your work process, then it's probably worth knowing how that works and how to do those really, really well and understanding the process. But

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I wouldn't go out learning Git commands just to do it. Like make sure you have some reason for going down that path.

 

Yeah, I know about a handful of git commands off the top of my head, and they're the ones that I use every day. Like, I don't rebase very

 

Yeah.

 

often, so I always have to go look that up. I don't reset heads very often, so I have to go look up that syntax. I don't change repo origins very frequently, so all that stuff that you do once in a while, maybe it's good to write down a note about it, so future you can thank past

 

Haha,

 

you for learning it again.

 

yeah

 

But,

 

Yeah,

 

yeah,

 

but

 

there's only a handful.

 

I'll point out though, like you knew what to say there, right? Like you knew what to Google,

 

Yes.

 

you knew what to look up and that's really like the key to all of what we're talking about, because I don't know half of that stuff either, right? I don't know who has that in-depth of a memory that they're remembering the specifics,

 

Hehehehe

 

but if you've done it before and you like either have notes or you just have some bit of a memory of what, where to go and what to do,

 

Yeah.

 

it can be extremely valuable.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

And another one that kind of is along the same lines, TJ, is learning a little bit about the command line, because you're probably

 

Oh, yeah,

 

going to be

 

yeah,

 

in

 

yeah.

 

terminals. And I took one, I actually had the opportunity at my last company to take like a week long command line in depth. tutoring thing where it was a whole classroom full of us just learning all about bash and shell scripts and all that good stuff

 

That's

 

and it

 

awesome.

 

was it was super helpful and then i went back to my regular team and forgot probably 75 percent of it even though i'd taken great notes which i can refer back to

 

Hehehe

 

Nice.

 

but honestly knowing how or knowing where to look to go to write shell scripts or do things along the command line in the future is beneficial. Knowing how to copy things, how to print out what's in a file, how to move a file or make a folder, those are good things to know how to do. Because VS Code is great, but you got to start with something for VS Code to open up before you can get to that.

 

It's also amazing what you can automate with those sorts of scripts as well. Cause the, I've had to do this a couple of different times. Like if you know the syntax for like actual bash scripting, it's incredibly

 

Mm-hmm.

 

powerful, but it's also like a syntactical nightmare.

 

Oh, it's-

 

Like

 

Yes.

 

you,

 

it's line noise. It's line- it's- it's- ugh.

 

Yeah.

 

it's chaos, but there are some tools that allow you, like if you just know how to run, like write a node script, and there are tools in node that lets you just, execute arbitrary shell commands. So you could do that and automate some processes that would take a long time to do manually. I've done that sort of before where I need to move some files around or I needed to do some image processing on a set of images that I was working with. And I found a little script that would do what I wanted that kept me from having to manually touch each image. And

 

Hmm.

 

I just like wrote a loop that's like brought in each file and like ran that command line thing and ran it on the thousand images or whatever that saved me from having to just like, honestly, it would save me just the monotony more than anything. I probably spent more time reading the stupid script and it would have

 

Oh yeah.

 

taken me to change all the images,

 

No,

 

but at least I

 

no,

 

didn't

 

no,

 

have

 

no,

 

to.

 

not a thousand. No, no, no, there's definitely like there's these cutoffs of like, you know,

 

Right.

 

10 files,

 

Yep.

 

I'll do it by hand. 100 files.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Thousand files. No,

 

Yeah.

 

we're doing a script.

 

Like, well, it was working on Pokemon image files. So I know for a

 

Ah,

 

fact it was around 800 at the

 

808.

 

time.

 

Exactly. Yeah.

 

Ugh.

 

Yeah, so.

 

I think I know exactly that Pokemon DB by the way, and it's grown. My daughter tells

 

yet.

 

me that there's many new expansion packs to be had.

 

Is it the API that everybody likes to use for demos and stuff?

 

If it's the same one as like 800 and something, my my my copy is 808 because there's all you do like some of the characters have like special special names like Nidoran with a little male symbol on it or something. And I just scrape those out because I'm like, I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal with you. You deviate encoding stuff. Whatever. Bye. You know, bye. Nidoran. I don't care.

 

There is an API, there are

 

Yes.

 

GitHub repos that have, that people have graciously put out like a lot of work to put images of all of these together. And I found one of these image, cause I wanted to get into the stupid domain names. I have a domain name that I use. I've registered for doing this.

 

Oh my god.

 

But anyways, I have all these images, but I needed them to work slightly differently. And I can't even remember that this was several years ago. So I can't even remember the exact problem. But I was like, oh, these images are so close to what I need, but I just need to tweak them this little bit. And so I ended up writing a script to do it. And yeah, maybe save time, maybe didn't, but in any case, I learned something new.

 

Right, it was fun.

 

Yes.

 

If memory serves that that API is awful, by the way, it's like the worst of rest. It's

 

It

 

like,

 

could

 

Yeah.

 

be.

 

yeah, because like in order to get like, like if you search my name, then you get a response back that just has the ID and then the name and then you have to make subsequent. And you're like, well, yeah, but I want to show like the hit points or whatever. And you're like, no, no, no. You've got to make like a request for every one of those to get the hit points. And so, no, it's like the worst. It's like it just

 

Ugh.

 

rested

 

Let's,

 

its most evil and terrible.

 

we'll see because you know API design, you

 

Right?

 

got, there you go.

 

Yeah,

 

Like this whole episode is coming around.

 

could

 

Yeah.

 

build the better one

 

Right.

 

Yeah, well, that's

 

Yes.

 

and

 

why

 

make it GraphQL.

 

I, I'm not.

 

That's what that's what he did with his shell script is like right. Better ones.

 

Exactly.

 

Yeah, that's why I ditched that. I'm not using the API itself, but I am using the underlying images which were provided because the images themselves are great.

 

Oh, yeah. And then they make for awesome, like thumbnails and stuff like,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

you know, look at this,

 

Yep.

 

you know.

 

Yeah, I like the movie database API for the same reason. It's like I pull out

 

Yeah.

 

all the

 

Yes.

 

movie poster images. It's great for demo apps, looks great.

 

Oh, yeah, that's true. That's that has been in the Pokemon for sure, actually. Yeah. So I will say for those of you at home playing the home game, if you're on Windows, use the Windows subsystem for Linux

 

Yes.

 

and then you get access to like all the good shell scripting stuff. And, you know, because you don't want to automate. I mean, I know that there are folks that do like PowerShell automation on Windows. I was like, yo, I mean, this is nasty. I mean, I, I, okay, fine. I'm sure if PowerShell fans are going to enjoy it. That's the thing. That's where he's all the way around. Jump in the discord channel. Tell me I'm terrible. Tell us saying that that PowerShell scripting is terrible.

 

that

 

There

 

Windows

 

you go. Yeah,

 

is just terrible for development in general.

 

I will. I will go

 

Oh,

 

that far.

 

now

 

Yeah.

 

the adnone page, that... and there's the line.

 

There it is. Yeah, I'm with Paige actually, but but that's fine. Yeah, I'll

 

No,

 

join

 

Windows

 

Paige on the

 

is not

 

other

 

that

 

side.

 

bad, but the Linux subsystem makes it a lot

 

Oh, yes, that's

 

easier

 

true.

 

to work with.

 

Yeah, for sure. For sure, for sure. Would you have any more or do we want to do picks? Because this has been great. I mean, I could riff on this for hours. Hmm? No more?

 

Going once, going

 

Going twice?

 

twice.

 

twice.

 

All right. Well, I think that brings us around to picks time. So let's see. So let's start with TJ this week.

 

Sure, so I'm gonna pick, I'm gonna keep a running theme going, but I'm gonna pick There's Only Murders in the Building, season

 

Oh.

 

two,

 

I'm sorry.

 

which by the time this comes out, you'll be able to binge the whole season two. I made the grave mistake of starting the show when nine out of ten episodes were released,

 

Dun dun dun!

 

Oh TJ.

 

which was just a tragic mistake that I, but I binged... I binge the whole thing and then I went to like, you know, of course the one before episode ends at a cliffhanger. So then I

 

Of

 

go

 

course!

 

to like hit the next button and then it slowly dawns on me that that's not a next button for the last episode. And then I look and it's like, oh, it's not coming out until next Tuesday. And I'm just, I don't know, I'm devastated, especially for a show like that, right? Because the whole thing is it's just like a somewhat silly comical murder mystery, but it builds on mysteries and intrigue and but by the time you're listening to this it'll all be available so season

 

Thanks

 

2

 

for watching!

 

is was equally as good as season 1 so I recommend it

 

Nice.

 

Awesome. Okay, page.

 

My pick this week is gonna be a show as well. It's a show that's been over for ages and ages But we've been my husband and I recently have been getting into the Star Trek

 

Hmm

 

Theme of things so we've been watching we watched Star Trek Next Generation, which was the first two seasons were rough, but John

 

Oh,

 

Yeah

 

until William Riker gets his beard, nothing is good. Nothing is good. It's just

 

Patrick

 

a terrible

 

Stewart

 

show.

 

is great though, love Sir

 

Oh, yeah,

 

Patrick

 

that's true.

 

Stewart.

 

Absolutely.

 

But we've been watching now Star Trek Deep Space Nine, which is,

 

Oh, that's good.

 

yeah, it spun off of I think Next Generation and there were a couple of crossover episodes, so we've been into that recently and it is much better from the beginning and it's kind of fun because there's a lot more aliens who are just part of the regular cast and it's been good. So if

 

Have

 

you're

 

you seen it before?

 

looking, sorry.

 

Is this your second? Have you seen it before? Is this your second time around or is this your first

 

no,

 

time

 

this

 

around?

 

is the first time watching it all. it's on paramount plus, so if anybody wants to just binge it, it's all there for the watching in, you know, in letterbox form 480 or 720 or whatever

 

Right,

 

they were filming

 

right,

 

in,

 

right, yeah.

 

but it holds up quite well, I

 

It

 

will

 

does.

 

say. the the cgi is not the best, but they just made a lot of the stuff themselves, you know, for the sets and everything, so it they did a pretty good job for what they had to work with at the time.

 

So...

 

I've still never done the Star Trek, so

 

Really?

 

I'm, yeah, nothing

 

Wow.

 

other than the occasional, like some of the newer movies I've seen, but that's about it.

 

Yeah.

 

Never

 

Wow.

 

the old shows though.

 

Interesting. Okay. So yeah, I love DS9. It's like my, honestly, my favorite of all of them. Except for I guess the newest one, the strange new worlds, maybe is like almost as

 

Mm.

 

good.

 

I heard Picard was also good. No.

 

I hated Picard so

 

Oh,

 

bad.

 

no.

 

It's so bad. But back to the S9 for a second. So later on, it gets very serial like later in the series. And that's when it starts getting really, really good.

 

Yeah.

 

But there's this one episode and it's like between Cisco and his son. And you'll you'll see it when it starts like they build this like solar sailor together and you will be crying your eyes out at the end of that show. It was kill kill you. I mean, I cry every time I watch it and I love it. But I cry so hard every time I see it. Have you seen it yet?

 

Yes, actually we

 

Oh.

 

just watched that one the other day a couple days ago.

 

Doesn't that just oh my God. Oh

 

Yeah,

 

yeah.

 

it really gets you

 

It really does.

 

all the feels.

 

Oh everyone everyone. OK. I'm kind of bummed you didn't do a cooking recommendation because your oil recommendation from last week was so good and thank you so much for that. I totally rocked my recommendation. I guess I'll fall on a trend here. My recommendation for this week is a movie on Netflix called Day Shift. It has See, Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg,

 

Yep.

 

and it's a vampire horror comedy. But I'm a huge fight movie fan, like like martial arts fan. Like it's

 

Mm-hmm.

 

not the violence that gets me. It's the it's this the sheer acrobatics of it. And and and watching it is like, whoa. Like

 

Yeah.

 

the wire work and all that. And when it's done really well, it's done really well. And this movie is that I mean, this movie is kind of like a combination of like John Wick and like the raid is very weird, kind of like Malaysian movie called The Raid from years ago, where like just just awesome fighting. If you just want to like see, I think there's like YouTube like best of moments in the raid and the fights are just insane. But like I've never seen anything like this, like this, like a combination of John Wick plus parkour. fighting

 

Hahaha

 

styles and it is so nuts. And then it's kind of good. I mean, from a comedy, it's also got some good comedy moments and things like that. But anyway, yeah, my daughter and I just fired it up. Like we were just like we literally hit the button like you'd never hit on Netflix, which is like the play something play anything button

 

Oh yeah.

 

Heheheheh

 

because I'm doing the dishes. I'm like, OK, we just need some on the TV plays something. And it came up and we were just like instantly glued and like done. Oh, crap. But it was fun. It's just a fun Saturday afternoon movie. Snoop Dogg nails it. Snoop Dogg is actually better than I've ever seen him before. So yeah, that's a really good one.

 

Nice.

 

All right. Well, this has been super fun. I think it's been super helpful. Certainly things that I have, for sure, boy, you know, gear up on myself. So,

 

Mm-hmm.

 

wow. Thank you, guys. It's been an awesome episode.

 

Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

 

Yeah.

 

Absolutely.

 

All right. See you next week.

 

See ya.

 

Bye everybody.