JS Party: JavaScript, CSS, Web Development

Kelvin Omereshone is here to get you excited about boring, reliable tech. He believes a combination of Sails, Inertia, Tailwind & your frontend rendering library of choice are a great combo for building web apps. Tune in to find out why.

How does Google build Search? What about YouTube and Google Drive? We rely on Chrome?s Lighthouse scores when optimizing our websites, but what does Google prioritize? Recently the Angular and Wiz teams announced their intention to responsibly merge their internal frontend framework, Wiz, with Angular to bring some of Wiz?s best ideas to Angular. We?re chatting with Minko from Angular and Jatin from the Wiz team to learn about how Wiz has been used in Google historically, what it?s good at, and why it?s worth bringing some of its ideas to Angular.

Jerod, KBall & Nick discuss the latest news: Devin, Astro DB, The JavaScript Registry, Tailwind 4 & Angular merging with Wiz. Oh, and a surprise mini-game of HeadLIES!

Alex & James Moore, founding members of the Open Web Advocacy (OWA), join Amal to talk about the critical work the OWA has been doing to ensure users have browser choice and that web apps can be first-class citizens on mobile devices. We learn about how an ad-hoc group of software engineers worked with regulators, legislators & policymakers to help drive some of the most impactful legislation curbing anti-competitive behaviors on the web for tech giants such as Apple, Google & Microsoft via the EU?s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Tune in for this deeply important & timely discussion as we also unpack recent events with Apple and their DMA (un)compliance, and how the OWA helped successfully organize thousands of web developers from around the world to hold ground for a free & open web.

This week, Amal and Nick are joined by Rick Viscomi and Annie Sullivan from the Chrome team to dive into Core Web Vitals, a set of performance metrics geared towards helping developers surface web page quality signals that are key to delivering great user experiences. We deconstruct the different vitals and learn how they are helpful, as well as introduce the newest vital to hit the scene, Interaction to Next Paint (INP). Join us for a fun and nerdtastic discussion as we dive into the humbling universe of web performance!

Nick delves into the intricacies of technical book writing with authors Adrienne Braganza Tacke and Dylan Hildenbrand. We talk about the process of working with a publisher, coming up with an outline, actually writing the book, and everything that comes after the book is finished.

Apple kills EU web apps, Amazon launches a JS runtime optimized for serverless workloads & we play a game of 20 (15) questions to welcome Jessica Sachs to the party!

KBall & Amal dive deep with the ?Dazzle of Zebras? (possible future band name), Angular team members Jessica Janiuk & Mark ?Techson? Thompson. Along with an absolute riot of puns, they cover topics such as Angular?s new deferrable views feature, how the Angular core team handles change, and lessons learned from the AngularJS-Angular 2 debacle that allow Angular to now move fast without breaking things.

The week Amal & guest co-host Eric Clemmons talk to Dan Abramov all about React Server Components. We learn about why they were created, what problems they solve & how they work to improve application performance. We also dive into the rollout and current support status, the origin story, the community response & walk through the 10+ years of React history which have forever shifted the world of web development.

KBall & Amal interview Alex & Pavel from the Angular Signals team. They cover the history, how the Angular team decided to move to signals, what the new mental model looks like, migration path & even dive into community integrations and future roadmap.

Shaundai Person joins Jerod & Nick for a fascinating discussion of her transition from a sales position to Senior Software Engineer at Netflix. Along the way, we discuss sales as a superpower, how to build confidence in yourself & even sneak a little TypeScript talk in there because you know who?

Jerod, Adam Argyle & the CompressedFM crew hang out prior to their Fronted Feud battle! They discuss CSS as a programming language, Apple?s walled garden, how nobody is on the same social media sites anymore, how to choose tech, the community?s sentiment shift on GraphQL & a whole bunch more. (This episode is for Changelog++ ears only.)

Una & Adam from The CSS Podcast defend their Frontend Feud title against challengers James & Brad from CompressedFM. Let?s get it on!

Carson Gross (creator of htmx) & Alex Russell (Mr. Web Platform 3000) join Amal for an EPIC discussion on web architectures, the evolution of rendering patterns & the advantages of hypermedia and htmx. We dive deep on why modern web app best practices are falling short & explore how htmx gives devs an HTML-first approach to use tech that?s over 20 years old. Tune in to learn a new way to do something old, so you can simplify your code & use JavaScript when/where it?s uniquely able to shine ?

It?s our 5th annual New Year?s party! Jerod & the gang review our predictions from last year, discuss what?s trending in the web world, make a few predictions for 2024 & even set some new resolutions for this year.

Daniel Ehrenberg (software engineer at Bloomberg, web standards author / champion & VP of ECMA International) joins us to discuss new features that have landed in JavaScript and to preview what?s cooking in various standards bodies across the web platform. We cover a wide array (get it?) of topics from improvements to built-ins such as Promises, Maps & Sets, as well as new primitives like Records, Tuples & Temporal. We round out this epic discussion with a look at cross-project standardization efforts like WinterCG, open source sustainability & how Bloomberg?s open source program gives back in important projects in the web ecosystem.

Gregg Tavares (author of WebGL/WebGPU Fundamentals) joins Jerod & Amal to give us a tour of these low-level technologies that are pushing the web forward into the world of video games, machine learning & other exciting rich applications.

Amal, Nick & special guest Laura Kalbeg geek out over the remarkable growth and evolution of the XState project and its team in recent years. Laura also tells everyone about Stately.ai, a SaaS platform that uses AI to create seamless state management solutions compatible with various tools like XState, Redux & zustand.

Una Kravets, web platform ambassador & lead of the Google Chrome UI Developer Relations Team, joins Amal & Nick to take them CSS to school as they start this podcast in CSS kindergarten and end it with a Level-Up CSS Diploma. (LUCD?) We explore all the amazing features which have recently landed in CSS ? enabling super-charged user experiences with no JavaScript. Don?t forgot to check out all the epic links & demos in the show notes ? and hold on to your butts, kids, this one is a ride!

Amal & Nick are joined by Saron Yitbarek (developer, podcaster, community leader & serial entrepreneur) to catch up and discuss her latest project: Not A Designer We discuss all the ins & outs of tech entrepreneurship & the challenges of building something new in today?s saturated market. Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at how she does it & get a sneak peek on what?s possibly next! (Spoiler Alert: we brain stormed it here)

JS Party listeners and panelists celebrate great moments from the last 100 episodes! You?ll hear from 14 of our favorite humans (and 1 horse) across 11 episodes. Here?s to our first 300 episodes and the next 300 as well. ?

Valerie Phoenix from Tech By Choice joins Amal & Kball to tell them all about her non-profit that?s passionate about helping people interested in technology, no matter their experience level.

The 2nd ever React Jam is on and poppin?, so Jerod & Nick invited the previous winners to the pod to tell us all about the 10 day online game jam. Turns out React and video games are like peanut butter and jelly, after all!

Prisma founder Johannes Schickling has been using the Effect library for the last couple years. Today he joins Jerod & Nick to tell us all about this very interesting tool for building robust apps in TypeScript.

With a name like PartyKit, you know we just had to get its founder and CEO Sunil Pai on the show! PartyKit is an open source tool that simplifies creating collaborative, multiplayer applications. Join us to learn all about it and the journey of Sunil and his team!

Fresh off Bun?s big 1.0 launch, Jarred Sumner goes one-on-one with Jerod to discuss the all-in-one JavaScript runtime that?s captured the interest of many. We get into it all: what problem he?s solving, how it?s so fast, why no Windows support, answering the critics, the (not real) beef between Bun and Node, how the VC-backed startup will sustain & more.

Amal, KBall & Chris convene a ?semi-emergency? pod to discuss the recent (deserved) hype over Bun and what it all means for Node?s community, maintainers & users. They?re joined by Node Technical Steering Committee members Matteo Collina & James Snell who are here to dispel Bun antagonism rumors, discuss the pros & cons of each runtime, explain how Node continues to thrive & even announce a VERY big upcoming feature!

This week, we?re joined by Ron Perris, a Security Engineer at Reddit and software security enthusiast. Together, we dive into best practices and common pitfalls, covering topics from dangerous URLs to JSON injection attacks. Tune in for an educational conversation, and don?t forget to bring your notebooks!

Love it or hate it, TypeScript is here to stay for the foreseeable future. But, what happens when widely adopted packages go completely Type free or remove TypeScript in favor of JS with type annotations? Join us to unpack these recent events with Rich Harris, creator of Svelte, as he walks us through the nuanced decision his team made for the Svelte project, and ofc, lots of laughs along the way.

Jerod & the gang discuss the news (Astro 3.0, Vercel + Astro, Python in Excel) then play eight crazy rounds of HeadLIES! Headline or headLIE? You decide?

Mark Erikson (web dev professor/historian, OSS Maintainer & engineer at Replay) joins us to talk about the shift from CommonJS to ESM. We discuss the history of module patterns in JS and the grueling effort to push the world?s biggest developer ecosystem forward. Get ready to go to school kids, this one?s deep!

Nick celebrates a decade of writing everyone?s favorite language with guest Josh Goldberg, who contributes to TypeScript, maintains typescript-eslint, and is an all-around great person! Jerod is also here to join the celebration, but let?s keep that a secret from him!

Jim (Hyphen) Nielsen joins Jerod & Nick for a fun conversation about language-level toll roads, when (and how) to quit, the stratification of social networking & the state of the world in publishing your thoughts on the internet.

Val Town is a shiny, new social programming environment to write, run, deploy and share code. Steve Krouse ?Val Town creator? joins Jerod & Amal to tell us all about it.

KBall and Amal go deep on careers. They share their career journeys, talk through learnings and mishaps that happened along the way, and break down key factors to understand about big role transitions like ?Senior->Staff? as well as ?Engineer->Manager?.

Una & Adam from The CSS Podcast defend their Frontend Feud title against challengers Chuck & Robbie from Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Let?s get it on!

Justin Fagnani joins us this week to talk about Lit, a library that helps you build web components. With 17% of pageviews in Chrome registering use of web components, Lit has gained widespread adoption across a variety of companies looking to create reusable components which leverage the power and interoperability of the web platform. Tune in to learn about what makes this tiny library so incredibly lit!

Austin Gil returns to JS Party, bringing a fresh perspective on the fundamentals of file uploads. Brace for an insightful session as we navigate the complexities of this key JavaScript topic together, much like a dedicated coach drilling the fundamentals into his team!

Darcy Clarke, former GitHub Staff Engineering Manager and founder of vlt, joins us to discuss a major bug in the npm ecosystem that he recently disclosed. We cover the bug?s timeline, nuances, and impact, all while setting some important context on npm packages, clients, and registries. Tune in to learn how to protect your codebase and gain a deeper understanding of this crucial part of the JavaScript ecosystem.

Let?s debate debugging techniques! Do you print debug or dive deep into debugging tools? KBall & Jerod argue that print statements are all you need while Amal & guest Eric Clemmons take the other side. Who will win and why will it be Jerod? ?

The panel dives into all of the supporting structures that we build around writing code, what works in different environments, and good and bad practices they have seen. From PR etiquette to CI/CD to how to write a ticket, they look at them from an open source perspective, an enterprise perspective, and everything in between.

Million.js is a JavaScript library that helps render large datasets in the browser efficiently using a virtual DOM and custom diffing algorithm. Aiden and Tobi join Nick to talk about what it does, it?s goals, and where it?s going.

KBall interviews Nick Nisi about the Pandora?s box that is his tooling/developer setup. Starting at the lowest layer of the terminal emulator he uses, they move upwards into command line tools, into Tmux (terminals within terminals!), his epic NeoVim configuration, and finally into the tools he uses for notekeeping and productivity.

Nick is excited to explain CVA to us like we?re five (then again like we?re 41). KBall is excited to share details of his new stack (for the new app he?s building). Jerod is excited to share some recent news items (but he?s the only one). And finally, we?re all excited to debate TypeScript vs JSDoc comments!

Nick & KBall sit down with the brilliant Stephen Haberman to discuss all things ORMs! ?? From the advantages and disadvantages of ORMs in general, to delving into the intricacies of his innovative project Joist, which brings a fresh, idiomatic, ActiveRecord-esque approach to TypeScript. ? So sit back, relax, and let?s dive deep into the world of ORMs with the experts!

Developer slash artist Alex Miller joins Jerod & Amelia to discuss the challenge he faced after deciding to eschew fancy frameworks and libraries in favor of vanilla JS to build an interactive essay called Grid World for the html review.

Dax Raad joins KBall and Nick to chat about SST, a framework that makes it easier to build full-stack applications on AWS. We chat about how the project got started and its goals. Then we discuss OpenNext, an open source, framework-agnostic server less adapter for Next.js.

Adam Argyle joins Amelia and Nick to catch them up on all the goings on within the world of CSS colors. There are a lot more options than you?d expect if you haven?t been keeping up, and Adam?s here to help you avoid the ?gray dead zone?!

Feross and his team at Socket recently shipped a wrapper library for the ubiquitous npm package manager?s command-line interface that brings enhanced security when you need it most: before executing any code Bradly Farias lead this effort, so Jerod & Chris invited him on the show to learn all about it.

The panel dives into a topic that makes most software developers cringe: Professional networking. Starting with a definition - what does it even mean? - they go into hacks they?ve found for getting more comfortable with networking, building your network in person or online, and then using your network to find new job opportunities or consulting work.